The Shelf Life

Welcome to the New World

2012-01-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

We are so excited to be part of the HarperCollins 'Comprehensive Backlist' Program. Now, over 3,000 Harper titles are available Print-on-Demand through our Espresso Book Machine. Together, with 9 other bookstores in the country, we printed our inaugural Harper backlist title: Ann Patchett's Truth & Beauty.

You can follow the whole #podbookday conversation on Twitter and check out more of our photos on our Facebook page.

Here's a little more about this exciting new venture.

Feel free to email Anna, our Print-on-Demand & Self Publishing Coordinator with any questions about this: ubs_publish @ earthlink . net

If you find us together, which we often are...

2012-01-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

Here is the final book in our holiday-adjacent giveaway! It's been so fun reading all your comments, and now I hope to get your creative juices flowing once more. This last book is a real beauty: A Zeal of Zebras! It's a wonderfully illustrated, large-format hardcover that is truly great for all ages.

Collective nouns are a linguistic phenomena that you suddenly realize are a thing. For me, this happened somewhat recently. I took for granted such oft-heard phrases as "pride of lions," "murder of crows," and "school of fish," but it came as a shock to open James Lipton's An Exaltation of Larks and see lists and lists of collective nouns! They were overwhelming! They don't really fill a lexical gap; after all, saying "a group of parrots" gets the idea across. But "a pandemonium of parrots?!" It's so... linguistically indulgent! Poetic, even! Anyway, I like the ones that are also insults, such as "an embarrassment of pandas," (see above) because, well, pandas. They're a little embarrassing.

So here's my challenge for you, intelligent readers of this blog. Make up a collective noun for us booksellers. Don't cheat and Google it! I did that and there's no consensus, so there's no right answer. Be a little mean if you must, but mostly, be witty.
And as always: if you want to win the book, include your e-mail address in your comment!
--Seija

What did I read in 2011? (and will 2012 be any different?)

2012-01-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

Last year I took to reading books on a whim: considering whatever looked entertaining that came my way. I also kept in mind books that my co-workers, friends, and Nancy Pearl liked, and that Kirkus or Publishers Weekly gave starred reviews to ... because it is fun to have company once you've read a good book, right?!

So for 2011, I got a fair bit of reading done considering my own pacing and standards. [Please note: I am not a fast reader, and often will sound out words in my head so that the beauty of them doesn't escape me.]  I read around 36 books. How many books did you read?

36 is not a number with bragging rights around here: in fact I have a co-worker that can easily read a book a day (... plus she has super-duper-high retention, and it seems that she can easily refer to the specific details of books read in days gone by) and other co-workers who plumb loads of the non-fiction variety. Me, I mostly read fiction with a dash of the non.

Further, I was talking to my new friend Misha the other day and we were discussing top reading picks for the year (persuasion enough for me to actually come up with a list.) So, without further ado, here are some books that stood out for various reasons with a few guilty pleasures:

Sunshine, re-released with a silly gold-sparkly cover in trade book size, by Robin McKinley ... not sure which year I re-read it tho' ... could've been in '10. Love it, love it, love it. My fav vampire book to date.

Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin, her first book. Expansive fantasy freshly done. I will be reading the other two books in her Inheritance Trilogy.

The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell.
I fell in love with Temple .... And my only complaint was that it was waaay too short. :(

Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh. Dystopian served up with a side of plausibility. Will look forward to other books by Will.

  
The Strain, first of a trilogy which I may not be completing, by del Toro and Hogan. Why not? Well, read it and we'll talk.

  
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson ... easily a classic and nothin' like the movie starring Will Smith (although I liked that, too.)

Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. I am going to hold off on reading book number two until book number three in the trilogy comes out. Mr. Rothfuss was at the book store and he is a scholar and a gentleman.

 
The River, by Mary Jane Beaufrand ... the beginning got me hooked ... I wanted to visit with these folk for real.  Mary Jane works at the book store sometimes, when we are lucky. She is an amazing bookseller and co-hort.

 And finally Icefall, by Mathew Kirby. Great main female adolescent character ... heroic. This is my seasonal book pick. Brrrrr! Definite thumbs up.

So, that's only nine ... yah, I know. I liked a lot of other books ... and would love to read your list(s.) With the final question that I pose to myself being: will 2012 be any different? Well, I may be hashing that out with you through my posts that follow ... 

Jan

Caution: May Contain Cats

2012-01-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

Finally! I have an excuse to post a picture of my cat on this blog. Here he is:

Umm... were we interrupting something? Oh, just your unrelenting adorableness?
That's cool.

Back to books! This week we're giving away a copy of Crafting With Cat Hair by Kaori Tsutaya, the book that launched a thousand double-takes. Is it a joke? Nope. It's really quite earnest and sweet. Not only is it full of shockingly cute cat photos, it will also tell you what to do with that excess cuteness (aka cat hair). The answer? Felting!
In order to win this book, you must leave the name of your favorite cat (along with your e-mail address) in the comments. A winner will be chosen at random.
Shall we all say a collective "Awwww?"

**UPDATE**
Comments are closed for this giveaway. Thanks to all who entered! We have one more book to give away, and all you animal lovers will probably want to see what it is.
--Seija

Down and Out in Tokyo and Osaka

2011-12-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

We're giving away another book! This time it's 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's massively popular, long-awaited 900 page novel. Murakami needs no introduction, you're either hooked or you're not.
Here's your challenge: Reimagine another George Orwell title with a Murakami-esque twist. (I know you all can do better than my title for this blog!)
Leave your e-mail in the comments if you want to be eligible to win! We have two more books after this one to give away, so check back, and as always, thanks for participating!

** UPDATE **
Comments are closed for this giveaway. We have two more books to go! Thanks!
--Seija

One Down, Four to Go!

2011-12-18T16:09:00.000-08:00

Here's a pile of mystery books...

Are you guys ready for the next book in our giveaway? It's Before Seattle Rocked by Kurt E. Armbruster. This one's just about as local as we could get without giving away our teenage diaries (in your dreams!!).

From the introduction:
"Seattle is a music town, and for many, that means Rock & Roll. The "Northwest sound" of the region's early rock bands is universally acknowledged and the fact that their city succored in her bosom Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain fills Seattleites with proprietary pride. Fifty years of rock, however, were preceded by more than a hundred years of music that was equally exciting to its listeners and important to the community's evolution."

Sounds good! "...succored in her bosom" is quite a gem.
Here's the criteria for your comments. Describe the best live music show you've ever seen in Seattle. Make sure to leave your e-mail address in your comment if you want to be in the running! We'll randomly choose a comment and get in touch with the winner.
Three more books to go!

**UPDATE**
Comments are closed for this giveaway. Thanks!
-Seija

Stranger Advice

2011-12-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

Our own Michael Walenfelds welcomes The Stranger's paul Constant to the booth.

Paul gives up the goods on this year's best books.

And finally... The End.

More Expert Advice at the Booth!

2011-12-17T17:20:00.000-08:00

Seattle Time Books Editrix Supreme, May Ann Gwinn keepin' time at the advice booth.

Beloved Random House Rep and conversationalist, Katie Mehan sellin' and makin' merry like Christmas.

Calendars! The Easiest Panic Gift!

2011-12-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

Don't worry. There are plenty left. They're beautiful and everybody likes them. Go on. Pick a few. Maybe one for yourself.

Holiday Gift Advice!

2011-12-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pearl offers counsel today, at our Holiday Gift Advice booth, while Marilyn Dahl looks on.

Our experts are waiting! Come on in and they'll halp you find the perfect gifts!

And the Winner Is!

2011-12-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

Congratulations Tsara! You were randomly chosen as the winner of The Swerve. Please send your contact information to:
ubs_askabookseller@earthlink.net
Thanks for participating, everyone!

Spread the Word... Free Books!!

2011-12-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

I have five books sitting on my desk, and they could be yours, for free. Three are hardcovers, one is a novel, two are nonfiction, one is Seattle-related, two are for animal lovers, and one just won a major award. Those are some clues to get you excited. There's just a little bit of work you'll have to do to get your hands on our books.

Let's start with the National Book Award winner: The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt. It's about the profound impact of the rediscovery of Lucretius' On The Nature of Things in 1417. Here's a quote from the dust jacket:

"It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in external motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions."

Maybe you would like to win this book? Ok, just one little thing you have to do first. In the comments, post a short anecdote about a book you've rediscovered in your life. Something you hated as a teenager, maybe, but then grew to love in adulthood. Or something people had been recommending to you for years, and you avoided for one reason or another. We will choose a comment at random and get in touch with you. And remember, the other four books are going to be given away in the next few days, so keep checking back!

***UPDATE!***
Comments are closed! We will contact the winner soon. Stay tuned for a chance to win another great book in the next few days.
--Seija

We Have The Books Everyone Wants!

2011-12-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

The elves up in the office at University Book Store have been hard at work this holiday season, making sure we have all the hot new titles you want. If you're having a hard time finding these books, never fear, we've got 'em! But hurry, once the word gets out, they may not last!

Just in case you were still on the fence...

2011-12-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

...about where to buy your books this holiday season, our most awesome local paper, The Stranger, has published a gift guide for the 99 percent, and has included a great piece by Paul Constant that you should go read. Then come into the store and let us help you find some books!

A HAPPY WITCH ... and 99 more things.

2011-10-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a seasonal kid's book that you will still get a kick out of even after the season is over: How to Draw a Happy Witch and 99 Things that Go BUMP in the Night.

 
I have had no trouble selling the heck out of it, because it's a treasure and priced at only $9.95(minus any discount you may have with the book store*!) Joy Sikorski and now Nick Sunday have partnered to bring this gem to us just in time for All Hallows Eve. But don't expect anything really scary: I mean, the book is for kids age Five and Up (!) and for adults like me who have never grown up and are fond of a cat named Little Man. :D 

Here are a few of the drawing tutorials just to wet your appetite:

I love me some foxes! (so cute)

 Just a few lines and you have a porcupine ...

C'mon now, who can resist kittens drinking milk?

One other piece of good news is that we also have another book by Joy Sikorski on our shelves in the Kids Book Department. Check it out when you come visit us next.

Happy Halloween!

Jan

*If you haven't already, please sign up our Readers Club card (our free discount program.) 

Food, Glorious Food!

2011-09-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, check out our new foodbook display!*

Is there any book more tempting than a foodbook? I've decided to rename this genre, because its contents have spilled over like a particularly frothy puree onto the shelves of memoir, fiction and nonfiction. In our store, the cookbook section now includes the ever-growing "food essay" section; home to such recent hits as Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter, Suzan Colon's Cherries in Winter, and David Lebovitz's The Sweet Life in Paris. The only unlikely thing about the current surge of popular foodbooks is that it took so long to arrive.
Maybe there was always some deeper insight itching to escape the rigorousness of recipes, the strict how-tos of browning meat or folding in egg whites. I like to imagine the sheer weight of food-borne emotion busting the seams of cookbooks, spawning blogs and research and novels.
We haven't neglected the genre that started it all, and our food-crazed staff have recommended some new classics that you may just start to gnaw on as you stand in line:

Fried Chicken and Champagne by Lisa Dupar
"Congratulations Lisa Dupar! Fried Chicken and Champagne is the winner of the 2011 IACP Julia Child Award. Share the goodness of Pomegranate Bistro with your friends and family."
-Anna

Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry
"Proving that healthy doesn't have to equal boring, Terry brings an eclectic "remix" to traditional Southern recipes that is creative and flavorful. Strongly recommended for vegans and non-vegans alike who are looking for some variety."
-Mechio

We also have some citrus-centric novels:

The Particular Sad ness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
"Aimee Bender writes a sensitive and insightful character in Rose Edelstein: a young girl whose coming of age is framed, for better or worse, by her ability to taste emotions in the food she eats."
-Anna

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
"Harris dissects village life so well; here in a more somber tone than in "Chocolat." The result is an intriguing, complex interplay of past and present, youth and age, memory and truth. And, of course, food plays a major role."
-Mary

And as we all know, the best gifts are edible, so here's some inspiration for your next project:

Delicious Gifts by Jess McCloskey
"How better to enter into the gift giving season than with this treasure of a book by Jess McCloskey. There is no better way into someone's heart."
-Jan

I'm going to go home and cook something now. Happy Fall!
--Seija

*This awesome sign was made by Jaime.

The Cats of Ulthar, by H. P. Lovecraft

2011-08-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

Extra Credit: Cory Doctorow

2011-08-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, you should know that we're giving away 2 copies of Cory Doctorow's new book which is available on our Espresso Book Machine!

For those of you who want to double their luck, we have an extra credit question for you to answer. If you get the answer right, we'll enter you in the drawing twice! Leave your comment here or on the first post and make sure to include your email address for us to contact you. Contest ends at 10am PST on Wednesday 8/17.

Extra Credit Question:

In a pdf version of one of his books, Cory dedicates a chapter to our bookstore and, specifically, our stellar Sci-Fi/Fantasy Buyer, Duane Wilkins.

Cory says: "This scene is dedicated to the University Bookstore at the University of Washington, whose science fiction section rivals many specialty stores, thanks to the sharp-eyed, dedicated science fiction buyer, Duane Wilkins...."

In which book does he give this dedication?

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain, Part Four

2011-08-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain, Part Three

2011-08-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain Part Two

2011-08-14T00:30:00.000-07:00

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain

2011-08-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

Cory Doctorow!

2011-08-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

You have to get your hands on Cory Doctorow's new DIY publishing project!

frank wu cover

Cory has ingeniously embarked on a self publishing adventure for his new book, With a Little Help. With a Little Help is a collection of stories that are available instantly (and in book format) through a handful of Espresso Book Machines, including ours. You choose 1 of 4 different covers. We print it for you. You read it. If you find any typos you can email Cory and he'll update the next printed copy with the typo fix and your name in the footnotes. Imagine that!

pablo defendini cover

We are so excited to be part of this project that we want to give away a few books. Leave a comment here telling us about the last book you read and we'll enter you to win a copy of With a Little Help. Don't forget to put your email address in the comment so we can contact you. Enter by Wednesday 8/17 at 10am PST.

You can see all the covers and order the books here.

A Preview of Saturday's Dog Stories!

2011-08-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

Girls Rock!

2011-08-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

One constant that is almost always guaranteed to pull me into a book is a kick-a.. heroine. I love the portrayal of remarkable women in fiction. And to be a kick-a.. girl you don't have to be totally together all the time; in fact I find that the girls who figure things out as they go are much more interesting. Yeah, the messier the better! Remember tortured Temple in the Reapers are the Angels? (A book by Alden Bell that I gave a nod to in an earlier post). T-T rocks as a kick-a.. heroine! Because even as she can't give herself a break, she is still a force of good in the dystopian world that she inhabits.

So it probably won't surprise you to find that I have found a few new heroines to write about.

N.K. Jemisin's first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, might never have been written if she had listened to the advice of others, and not entered into the seemingly male-dominated scifi/fantasy genre (according to a Kelly Link interview.) But now we have Yeine Darr, deemed barbarian and outcast by the court city of Sky. Yeine, daughter first, who is still grieving the loss of her mother, granddaughter second to a cold and calculating King who would make her his pawn.Yeine who quickly falls in with the childlike god Sieh, eventually ignites the passions of the brooding and dangerously mysterious nightlord Nahadoth, and then proves divisive to the rest of the gods. I nominate Yeine as an up-and-comer in the kick-a.. heroine category, and it appears that I am not alone in this nod because Ms. Jemisin received the 2011 Locus Award for Best First Novel! Hoorah! I am looking forward to reading great fictions by N.K. Jemisin.

Next on my reading list is Girls Kick Butt, a collection of short fiction from a variety of different female scifi/fantasy authors filled with kick-a.. characters. I like collections of this kind, centered around genre and theme: it is a really great way to get introduced to new writers, ones that you haven't read before, along with seeing what the oldies but goodies are up to these days.

Take Jenna Black's protagonist exorcist Morgan Kingsley, in Nine-Tenths of the Law, reluctant to take on a paying client who may want to terminate her own daughter using the excuse that a demon has taken possession of her, as a powerplay. How might Morgan be kick-a.. heroine? Well as I see it, she pushes past the lure of fast cash to try to get to the truth of the matter, holding the desire for the highest good for all in her heart even if that reality seems to be orchestrated by a demon possessed teenager. And then there's Red in Elizabeth A. Vaugh's short story. Red rocks it as a fighter, a rebel with a cause, she is duty-bound to freeing all slaves, even the ones that walk on four feet. But that's enough of a spoiler.

Go on, read the rest of this collection with me and let me know what you think. Duane, our scifi/fantasy guru, told me that Jeanna Black's protagonist has walked the pages of fiction already, but I didn't know that. I am coming in with a beginner's mind and report to you in that way.

Namaste,

Jan

Dog Days of Summer!

2011-08-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

August is here, and something not unlike Summer has come at last to Seattle. Huzzah! No one is suggesting that this glorious weather will last. Can't count on scorchin' temperatures in the high seventies every day of the week, people. But for now though, the flip-flops, the cargo-shorts, the general pale shirtlessness and or tanktops, to say nothing of the beery block-parties all over the city last night? Totally justified by the glorious sunshine.

Enjoy!

And for our canine companions, please remember, summer need not be just the usual routine of Frisbee in the park, stagnant, standing water, and panting boredom on the hot sidewalk while someone gets a single serving of green tea gelato that will not be shared. Oh no.

All this month, right here at the always-dog-friendly University Book Store, we will be hosting a new series of public readings for dogs and their grown up humans, every Saturday at 6PM. Dog Days will feature classic and contemporary short stories on four-footed subjects, read by our own booksellers, right here in the store's event space on the second floor. Dogs, of course will be welcome as always.

To get things started, this Saturday, the 6th, our own Usedbuyer2.0, Brad, will be reading a story from the great P. G. Wodehouse, and a classic reminiscence by the Scots essayist, physician, and lifelong friend to nearly all dogs, Dr. John Brown. Rab & His Friends -- that's old Rab is pictured above -- is a remarkable, heartbreaking tale of perfect loyalty, endurance and love. (Which explains, I think, the need for something from Wodehouse on the bill as well, for balance.)

Do please join us, and bring your human. We don't mind, so long as they're quiet and well behaved.

Sit. Stay.

We're the Geekiest

2011-08-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know if, at this point in history, any credit could yet accrue to our own fantabulous Duane, but in the late '70s the bookstore was already a bastion of Sci-Fi goodness, according to Rainn Wilson, who haunted our aisles as a nerdy suburban youth. Although I'm biased, I have to say that the quality remains: a carefully curated, broad selection of the best of new and old (subject of course to the curse of out of print, which leaves vast gaps in classic science fiction that can only occasionally be filled). Duane's love for his subject is never hard to see, and his section reflects it wonderfully. Check it out!

--Jason

Hey You Readers...

2011-07-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

The publication booksellers turn to for news on the book industry is now publishing a version for book lovers! Shelf Awareness: Enlightenment for Readers is a FREE emailed newsletter with reviews on the 25 best books publishing each week along with author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways and more. Right now they’re running a contest for new subscribers. Check out the widget on our website to sign up for the new publication and to be entered for a chance to win a great book!

A Test You Don't Want to Pass

2011-07-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I was watching the movie “Being John Malkovitch” for maybe the 3rd time in my life, and found that my interpretation of it had been completely altered by a book I'm reading. If you have somehow missed this black gem of 1999, that's OK. It's not really a movie that one can spoil. In it, a character played by John Cusack discovers a portal in his office that grants access to the consciousness of John Malkovitch. Cusack teams up with a coworker, played by Catherine Keener, and they devise a scheme to sell tickets to Malkovitch. The last few times I've watched this film, I've experienced it as a dark comedy populated by pale characters who either ignore or screw up all the wonderful things around them (see: John Cusack and Cameron Diaz hoarding an apartment full of sad animals) This time, I was struck by a realization: Catherine Keener's character, Maxine, is a psychopath!

Let me just backtrack a little and say that if you read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, you will recognize psychopaths all over the place. It can be fun! But it also can be a little horrifying. Like Ronson, I'm beginning to notice items from the Bob Hare Checklist (the list used in prisons and psychiatric hospitals to diagnose inmates and patients), and movies are a rather harmless thing to practice on. For example, I've bolded the characteristics which Maxine demonstrates throughout the film:

1.Glibness/superficial charm
2.Grandiose sense of self-worth
3.Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4.Pathological lying
5.Conning/manipulative
6.Lack of remorse or guilt
7.Shallow affect
8.Callous/lack of empathy
9.Parasitic lifestyle
10.Poor behavioral controls
11.Promiscuous sexual behavior
12.Early behavior problems
13.Lack of realistic long-term goals
14.Impulsivity
15.Irresponsibility
16.Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17.Many short-term marital relationships
18.Juvenile delinquency
19.Revocation of conditional release
20.Criminal versatility

Needless to say, Maxine scores quite high.

I've been trying to think of an apt comparison to the relatively short history of psychopathology that Ronson investigates in his book. The best thing I can come up with is autism, in the sense that the two conditions share a unique cultural retroactivity. We often hear neuroscientists and psychologists speculate that with our current knowledge of the autism spectrum, famous people like Mozart, Newton and Jefferson likely place somewhere on it. And it's interesting to us because specialness is interesting, whether it results in extraordinary intellectualism or cold ruthlessness. I make the comparison because Ronson (The Men Who Stare at Goats; Them) is exactly the kind of author to launch such an intriguing concept into the pop culture lexicon. I suspect that the next trend to take off will be the labeling of various notorious figures as psychopaths. After all, the checklist is available for any armchair psychologist to find on the internet.

Psychopathy is not a diagnosis you want to receive, and as Ronson points out, if you are anxious that you might be a psychopath, you probably aren't one. The only sure way to find out about someone is to interview them at length, and then analyze not only their answers but their mannerisms and appearance. It's subjective until it isn't; recidivism rates among diagnosed and incarcerated psychopaths are much higher than non-psychopaths. The data suggests an ominous, Minority Report-esque course of action: longer sentences for high-scoring criminals.
The book is filled with Ronson's own nervous speculation, a sort of feedback loop of reacting to psychopaths and then assessing his reactions. His writing is self-effacing, but it is the sort of self-effacement that can only be achieved after one has become more confident and self-aware than one lets on, therefore undermining any real awkwardness. Do you see what he's done to me? All his bashful posturing about how he could never be a psychopath makes me suspicious...
To conclude this blog post that wants to turn into a research paper, I will just say that this is a great book for people who don't read much nonfiction, and for those interested in the history of psychology. It may not be a great, however, for those prone to paranoia.
--Seija

Thackeray Celebration!

2011-07-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

As seen at last night's reading of "A Little Dinner at the Timmins's", featuring the bookstore's own Pam Cady and Brad Craft. Though the actual anniversary doesn't come 'round until Monday, July 18th, we nevertheless wish a most Happy Two Hundredth Birthday, to the memory of the great author of Vanity Fair, etc., William Makepeace Thackeray!

For a Special Occasion

2011-07-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

And here we have the special edition of a Google Book, The Sense and Sentiment of Thackeray, reprinted, with new covers, on the bookstore's own EBM. The occasion is, of course our upcoming celebration of the great man's 200th birthday. Our reading of "A Little Dinner at the Timmins's" will be the centerpiece of the festivities, but we thought it worth doing to offer something in the way of a take-away as well. So, this little book, from 1909, offers quotes and brief selections from all the novelist's major and minor work. Charming little book.

Our own Anna -- Queen of the EBM -- designed the reissues cover, and our host for the reading, Usedbuyer2.0, aka Brad, did the pencil sketch of Thackeray on the front cover.

We're rather proud of the little thing, which is available now, for nine bucks, at the bookstore and of course, at the reading July 14th, at 7PM. Do come and try a bit of William Makepeace Thackeray.

A Glimpse into the Inner Workings

2011-07-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

You will WOLF this one down!

2011-07-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

Big news! I just read a book about werewolves, and loved it! Not just werewolves, the LAST werewolf, which also happens to be the title. Glen Duncan (author of I, Lucifer) has a fresh, exciting writing style that kept me pleased and engaged sentence-by-sentence, no matter what was going on with the plot.

Whenever there's a character who by some supernatural phenomenon or another has become immortal (or is enduring a 400-year lifespan, as is the case here), I often find the personality of that character to be quite unbelievable. I never knew why until I read Duncan's book. His protagonist, Jake the werewolf, has lived 200 years and is utterly sick of life. He's painfully aware of the mundane and relentless cycle of cause and effect, punctuated by his monthly transformation. Even in the most nail-biting moments, he is just kind of done with all of it, and it made me realize that yes, that's exactly how one would feel after a life sustained by mandatory cannibalism. Jake is believable and likable because of his humanity; without the “curse,” he would just be another sex-crazed existentialist writing in a journal. Werewolfism turns out to be like a steroid and a depressant: both the best and the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.

At its core, this novel explores familiar territory. How do we ever really connect with others, especially if we feel different from the rest of the world? I finished the book thankful, however, that Duncan decided to explore a very old and sometimes cliché subject with a very honest sense of the philosophical and the visceral. Never before have such highbrow and lowbrow references shared the same page so gracefully. Give this one a try if you are looking for something refreshing, frank, and scary. I know I'll be recommending it left and right.

Requiescat

2011-07-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

thackeraMo' Thackeray, mo' Thackeray, and yet more Thackeray!

--Usedbuyer2.0

On the Superiority of the Fairer Sex

2011-07-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

And, yet another selection from the great Thack.

--Usedbuyer2.0

Thackeray's Dinner

2011-07-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

More Thackeray, in anticipation of our upcoming celebration of his 200th Birthday! Please join us July 14th, 7PM, at the University Book Store !

-- Usedbuyer2.0

Summer Reading Rocks!

2011-07-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

Summer reading programs are awesome, because reading is already awesome, and getting prizes for doing something that is already awesome is awesome squared. Is that too many awesomes? NO! Impossible. That is how awesome summer reading programs are.

Why should you care? Because we have one this year! Finally! Yay! Here's how our summer reading program works:

1. Come in, sign up (just give a name and e-mail, no money or long questionnaire-answering or microchipping of your children required) and you'll get a reading log to keep track of the books your child reads, a lanyard on which to keep said reading log, a button that says some variation of "Summer Reading Rock Star," and a coupon for 20% off an entire book purchase. Then y'all set about filling that reading log up. You do not have to only write down books you've bought from us. Library books and books you have at home are a-okay. We just want to make it easier to stock up on new lit with those coupons.

2. When the kids have read five whole books (read-alouds are okay, especially for the Pre-K set) come back in and show us the reading log, and they can choose from a bin of prizes scientifically designed to drive elementary schoolers wild—silly bandz, erasers shaped like sushi, tiny slinkies, those giant pink bouncy balls (and honestly, we could all use a giant bouncy ball). They also get another button, and y'all get another coupon.

3. After ten books, kids get a big button that says "I Rocked Summer Reading at University Book Store," and they get to pick out a FREE book from our selection behind the Kids Desk. And hey, what's this, another coupon? These things'll be saving you money till September.

4. If any industrious readers want to go on from there, they can get another reading log and start over, and keep getting those fabulous prizes. At the end of the summer, we'll have a drawing for all the folks who've signed up, and someone from each participating branch will win a backpack full of school supplies! (All the school supply-loving children like me say, Yeeeeeaah! All the other kids'll groan, I know. How can you not love the smell of fresh binders and pencils, huh? It's the best.)

5. We're also encouraging readers to write and turn in Young Reader's Review cards, because we put those up on the shelf to help recommend books that you liked to other kids. And also because it's really fun to talk and write about the books you love. (And also because we do a monthly drawing of those cards and the winner gets a gift card to the store.)

And that's it. You're welcome. We are loving this program. So many people have signed up already we can hardly believe it. It's super exciting. And if you want some book recommendations from our professional book recommenders in the Kids Department, head over to the Summer Reading page on our website. Three cheers!

--Anna, Kids

What are you reading this summer?

2011-06-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

If you come into the store in the next few months (and why wouldn't you?), stop by our new Summer Staff Favorites display. We have everything from childhood favorites (A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle; Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome) to new nonfiction (Fire Season by Philip Connors; Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch) and classic fiction (Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry; The Hunter by Richard Stark.) If all you can think about this summer is eating delicious things, there are some beautiful cookbooks to choose from (Fried Chicken and Champagne by Lisa Dupar; Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi)
I promise there will be no more parenthesis in this blog post.
These and many more great picks await your perusal. If you don't live around here, why not give our new "Ask A Bookseller" button a whirl and let us recommend something to you? Tell us what kind of books you like, give us a price range, and we will send you whatever sounds good. Personal shopper + free shipping = summer reading success!!

--Seija

For your bathroom reading pleasure...

2011-06-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, now who is going to start making these!? We need these in the store!

Ask A Bookseller!

2011-06-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

Big (medium-sized?) news around here: we've added an Ask A Bookseller button to our website. It looks like the green square above. Now, that one's not a link, because I'm not quite savvy enough to do that, but if you go to our books homepage, it'll be there on the right-hand side and clicking on the real one will make your computer send us an e-mail. Here are some kinds of questions you could ask us through e-mail:

1. Do you have any used copies of that new hardcover that was just on the radio? (Maybe.)

2. What's the perfect book for a precocious six-year-old who likes adventure-y or fantasy books? (David and the Phoenix.)

3. Can you put Zeitoun on hold for me at your U District store? No, wait, in Bellevue? (Absolutely. Do you want the paperback for $15.95, or the remainder hardcover for $9.98?)

4. Are you guys going to do a summer reading program? (Yes!)

5. What was Lewis Carroll's real name again? (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.)

That's it! Easy as pie. And if that button doesn't work for you, you can e-mail us at ubs [underscore] askabookseller [at] earthlink.net. Except you should put an actual underscore and an actual @ sign instead of those brackets. I think if I write it out fully, robots from space will start sending us e-mails about certain medications and princes who need our bank account numbers.

Ask us a question!

-Anna, Kids Books

One Last Response to the Wall Street Journal Dustup

2011-06-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

Our beloved UsedBuyer2.0 has his own take on Meghan Cox Gurdon's anti-YA piece.

Mrs. Humphry Ward on Sensational Fiction, Sufferage, and the Servant Problem
Contemporary fiction for domestics & humble persons is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

Mrs. Albert Bunthorn-Pandowdy, wife and mother of thirteen, recently stood amidst the cheap paper novel section of her local commercial library, in Minge Lane, Worcestershire, feeling thwarted and disheartened.

More where that came from.

Twenty Twenty Twenty Four Hours Ago...

2011-06-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else ever get songs stuck in their head while shelving because of the titles/authors/covers/subjects of the books? I was just shelving this:

Starfish by James Crowley

...and I without realizing exactly why, I left the kids fiction section with this song stuck in my head (for people who can't/don't follow links, that's Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne). Knowing that I haven't listened to that song since high school, I had to think for a second about how in the world that popped into my head, and it made me laugh to realize my brain was quietly making those kinds of connections while all I consciously thought about was the alphabet.

The other titles I can remember getting me are parenting books, which seem to be really big on this, for some reason:

I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
edited by Faith Conlon and Gail Hudson
(this one used to drive me crazy- that song is so hard to get out of your head!)

Beautiful Boy
by David Sheff

Does this happen to y'all? I imagine this is one of those librarian/bookseller phenomena that we all endure at some point.

--Anna, in Kids

#YAsaves

2011-06-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is old news but important anyway, so we apologize for getting it up here late. On June 4 the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the topic of young adult fiction. Specifically, she asserts that most young adult (YA) fiction is dark, violent, horrible, etc. The article contains stuff like this:

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

I stopped reading the thing somewhere around there, annoyed by the whole tone and not interested in feeling defensive about this category I spend much of my life reading and selling. It doesn't sound like she even reads YA for fun, so I felt okay dismissing the whole thing to save myself from a weekend of teeth-gnashing.

Well, one of the reasons I love YA is that the community of people who read, write, publish, review, and sell these books are particularly awesome and loyal people, and I should've known that the responses to this article would be worth keeping an eye on. Compiled below are some of my favorite responses so far.

The Twitter hashtag #yasaves got started (by Maureen Johnson, I believe) with authors and readers tweeting about YA books that saved them in some way. The New Yorker wrote about it. Maureen Johnson wrote about it in the Guardian. From her piece (she's referring to Cox Gurdon's suggested titles):

For non-dark, age-appropriate reading, she chooses Fahrenheit 451, a lighthearted romp that features suicide, teenagers who run cars into people, mechanical hounds that hunt living creatures for blood sport and nuclear war. It's a fantastic book, but its inclusion implies that the author of the article has a slippery definition of the term "dark". The fact that she breaks this list into books for girls and books for boys is another subject entirely.

From the Publishers Weekly article about the controversy:

To many, Cox Gurdon appeared to be cherry-picking the darkest stories to fit her thesis. “I found it was akin to walking down the street and seeing three dogs and saying every dog in New York is a terrier because you saw three of them,” said Rebecca Sherman, a literary agent at Writers House. “To say, ‘This book is dark, and this book is dark, and that book is dark, therefore YA fiction is dark’ is a leap of logic to me.”

Beloved local author Sherman Alexie's response is a favorite. He brings up the privilege angle of this debate, which I appreciate immensely (and will remember the next time an article like this comes out):

When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.
No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.

And finally, there's these: "The Darkest Children's Books Ever Written," which are your favorite picture books reimagined to include the dreaded "dark" teen themes.

So hooray to YA for a mostly classy and energizing and smart response to criticism. This is, again, a big part of why I love this stuff.

-Anna, Kids Books

The Age of Wisdom, by William Makepeace Thackeray

2011-06-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

, by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Sorrows of Werther, by William Makepeace Thackeray

2011-06-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

2011-06-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

is the book dead?

(via McNally Jackson Bookmongers)

Selection from Thackeray's Henry Esmond

2011-06-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

William Makepeace Thackeray Comes to Shinbone Alley

2011-06-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

I did not grow up surrounded by English literature. Fact is, I grew up in a place where books were somewhat suspicious objects, not unlike a good stray shoe; seemed a shame not to be able to find a proper use for the thing, but damned if anyone could think what that might be. (Maybe put it under the low corner on that busted Lazy Boy?) In childhood, what I was surrounded by was some rednecks; practical folk, liked a good demo derby, maybe go-carts for the kids, Smokey & the Bandit, pancake suppers, swimmin' in the strip-mine, hillbilly music, snuff-dippin', that sort of thing.

You know the great Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys? Why, sure you do. The master of Western Swing, ol' Bob was a favorite of my Dad's. We'd be out together on a Saturday, delivering dog feed -- a little sideline of my Dad's-- and the old man used to sing "Cherokee Maiden", "San Antonio Rose", and "Ida Red", top of his lungs, driving country roads in the old panel-truck.

To this day, the sound of a party, somewhere in the back of my head, is still and will always be "Stay a Little Longer",. You know it. Sure you do:

Stay all night, stay a little longer,
Dance all night, dance a little longer,
Pull off your coat, throw it in the corner,
Don't see why you can't stay a little longer...

Now, that's a party, son.

I had to cross to the shady side of forty before I could listen to country again. Hillbilly was, frankly, everything I fled when I came away from home. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, the Socialist Party USA, just about any kind of party I'd seen in the movies, any party where people chatted about the latest books, sipped from glass-tumblers, pronounced the final "g" in words like "darling", ate sophisticated portions from little china plates, that was the kind of party at which I wanted desperately to be. Eventually, I even went to a few such. Not all one might have hoped, most of them. Now, I'm fine with a good shindy. Love me some Bob Wills now, too.

We're planning a little party here at the bookstore, come Thursday, July 14th. A month or so ago, I was shocked realize that the 200th birthday of the author of Vanity Fair was coming up on the 18th of July, and so far as I could see, there wasn't a damned thing planned for the occasion anywhere. (I've been searching.) How could such a thing be? William Makepeace Thackeray was one of the greatest, most successful novelists of the Nineteenth Century -- which is rather like saying the greatest and most followed "Tweeter" of the Twenty First, I suppose, for those that may not appreciate the three volume novel. Not a candle being lit nor a word said, save here. To celebrate, we're going to do a reading of Thackeray. I'll be doing my part, as I hope will at least a couple of others from the bookstore -- if all goes well, we may actually even have at least one genuine Englishman on hand.

As unlikely as it may sound, I believe the novelist would be pleased, with or without our Englishman. Thackeray was enormously popular in America. At the height of his fame he came over and lectured here on the four bad English kings named George, among other things. We loved that, and he was glad. Thackeray liked Americans. He came to see us twice.

The night of, I'm thinking we'll do a Thackeray story about a party. Not the kind of hoedown I remember from my rural childhood, and certainly not the dazzling ideal of the cocktail party as thrown in the movies by Nick & Nora, Thackeray's "A Little Dinner at the Timmons's" is a perfect little satire of mid-Victorian, middle class pretensions -- still perfectly recognizable today -- with a bit of slapstick and other silliness included on the bill, gratis. Should be great fun. Thackeray could be specially good describing snobs and climbers, and pretensions of every kind (see, for another example, his A Shabby Genteel Story) in other words, individuals like me, if I'm not careful.

It may seem specially strange, such a redneck as me proposing the memory of William Makepeace Thackeray, gentleman. I suppose it is a little odd that I should have become so devoted to such a writer. That's the beauty part, my dears. It is cliche of the slack reviewer to describe the writing of almost any Tom, Dick or Harry as being "universal in its appeal," and I would not say that everyone should like a novel like Pendennis, or The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., or even Thackeray's masterpiece, Vanity Fair. What I will say is that more should read Thackeray than do now, not as a duty or any nonsense like that -- I don't believe in reading books because they might be good for us -- but we should more of us be reading Thackeray because he is that good, in fact masterful in many instances. He can be deucedly funny. No lie. More than this though, he was a brilliant writer, capable of many moods besides the comic. He could be quite gentle, even sentimental about things like the superiority of the female, and the kindness owed to children. (I'll put up a short reading here somewhere, from Thackeray in a quieter, more thoughtful, even melancholy frame.) Rather than trust me about all of this, come to the celebration and see for yourselves, read one of the novels, and see if I'm wrong. Don't think you won't like it. You may well be surprised. Remember, if some rube like me can get to appreciate his finer qualities, well then anybody might.

Again, please don't be put off from coming to the reading then because of any unfamiliarity with the writer. You will have a good time, believe me. I'll do my best by him, I hope, try not to lower the tone much, keep my shoes on.

So, do please join us, won't you? When we have good ol' William Makepeace Thackeray down to Shinbone Alley for the evening of the 14th. Should be a barn burner, you bet.

-- Usedbuyer2.0

Revealing the secrets of life and death

2011-06-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 1980s when the Hernandez brothers (Jaime, Gilbert, and Mario) launched their comic book series Love and Rockets with a self-published first issue, they could not possibly have known that their work would redefine alternative comics for a new generation. However, they did have ambitions, as evidenced by an interview with Jaime Hernandez in 1985. He said that what he wanted of comics as a medium was “…to just make it good, so when someone who reads comics is asked, they won’t have to be ashamed. I just want to make them legitimate, not only for the comics fans in their little rooms wishing they were Wolverine or something.”

While this battle for legitimacy is still going on today, it’s obvious that comics have come a long way, baby, and that J Hernandez has contributed greatly to this shift in perception both with his own work, and also by inspiring other artists. With his knack for depicting believable (flawed, complex) characters in an elegant yet dynamic style, he has undoubtedly influenced many comics creators working today.

As a long-time reader of Love and Rockets, I was quite excited to stumble upon the book The Art of Jaime Hernandez: the Secrets of Life and Death by Todd Hignite. In this beautifully designed book, Hignite uses a wealth of images as well as text to paint a vivid portrait of his subject. The pictures – from family photos to punk rock flyers to pages from Jaime’s sketchbooks – are a fascinating collection for any L & R enthusiast. More importantly, however, these images are always the perfect complement to the writing that they accompany, and vice versa. The reader doesn’t get to see, say, the doodles on Jaime’s PeeChee folder just because, but because they serve some purpose in the larger narrative of the book.

Hignite details Hernandez’ career chronologically, beginning with a childhood spent reading comics, and creating his own from an early age. In twelve well-researched chapters, Hignite guides the reader through the artist’s continuing love of comics in his teenage years, and then his prolific career, which has spanned more than two decades. The book explores how influences beyond other cartoonists have shaped Hernandez’ work, particularly Latino culture and the punk movement. Interviews with Hernandez, as well as a few family members and associates, offer personal insights and keep things from getting too dry.

If you are a fan of Jaime Hernandez, this book offers an excellent behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a beloved artist. If you are interested in alternative comics and aren’t yet familiar with the works of Mr. Hernandez, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.

--Margaret

Revisiting the Enchanter

2011-06-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

While shelving in the Fiction section (ah, the sweet rewards of shelving!), I came upon a used copy of Nabokov's stories and began leafing through its pages. Years ago, I'd read his charming and much anthologized "Mademoiselle O," but all the others here were new to me, each luminous in its own way. They range from tender to devilish, whimsical to darkly funny, wry to deeply heartening. And now I've happily added Nabokov's to my bedside stack of favorite short story writers, like Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, D.H. Lawrence, Mavis Gallant, and William Maxwell.

One of the first I glanced at was the sly, keen-edged, “A Dashing Fellow,” that grabbed me in its first paragraph. The first-person narrator speaks from the rather roguish viewpoint of “we,” which turns out to include a pair of inner accomplices plotting an act of brief, extramarital mischief.

We have a swarthy complexion, a network of purple-red veins, a black moustache, trimly clipped, and hairy nostrils. We breathe hard through our nose as we try to solve a crossword puzzle in an émigré paper. We are alone in a third-class compartment—alone and, therefore, bored.

When the trio's much-anticipated, but ultimately humiliating, fling with a young woman ends a couple of hours later, they're back on the crammed and heat-stifled train.

We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have fed and slept, life will regain its looks…. And then, sometime later, we die.

What I love most about these tales, besides their wit, is Nabokov’s enormous sensory appetite, and that of his characters—all fine by me since I’m definitely a reader (and a story writer myself) hungry for sensory details. One of my favorite writers, Claire Boylan, wrote, “I love the feeling, with the short story, that the world is in the detail and that small random acts can set ordinary lives alight or consume them to ash.” Nabokov's mother had nurtured his visual memory from a very young age, and fostered an acute sensory response to facets of color and light in, say, a handful of jewels or the play of sunlight through stained glass.

Throughout his writing, Nabokov joyfully savors, for himself and his wished-for readers, the rich life and complex people of the many vanished worlds he had known (Petersburg, Prague, Berlin, Paris, Switzerland) through scintillating combinations of detail. More than merely evoking his readers’ empathy with his characters, Nabokov invites his readers to perceive sensually, let’s say, the interior of a sleeping compartment on the Moscow-Petersburg night train of a hundred years ago in which, say, a drowsy Russian boy and his English governess are whisked away.

Two of his shortest and most radiant stories, “A Letter That Never Reached Russia” and “Beneficence,” are striking examples of his visual magic and the sensory ambience he wove around his characters to glean their consciousness, to capture fleeting changes of mood or attitude. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon remarks that “Nobokov’s English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language.”

At the end of “The Fight,” the narrator confesses,

The story could have been given a different twist, and made to depict compassionately how a girl’s happiness had been mortified for the sake of a copper coin, how Emma spent the whole night crying, and how, after falling asleep toward morning, she saw again, in her dreams, the frenzied face of her father as he pummeled her lover. Or perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all, but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled on this particular day, at this particular moment, in a unique and inimitable way."

Nabokov believed that the ability to marvel at the mundane world—to “wonder at trifles”—is the key to understanding his characters’ pain of loss or mortality’s destructive power, and the life force that is then mysteriously released within and around them. In the beautiful story, “Gods,” a father refuses to share his wife’s sorrow over the death of their child. Rather, the strange beauty of arbitrary things around him persuades him that “there is no death.” He tells his wife,

“Forgive me if I am incapable of weeping, of simple human weeping, but instead keep singing and running somewhere, clutching at whatever wings fly past…”

It’s as though this man’s utterly nondiscriminating vision of ordinary things—of intersecting wires in the sky, of the hazy mosaic of factory chimneys, the afterglow of lightbulb filaments on a suddenly darkened underground train—lends him a kind of clairvoyance into what lies beyond.

In her new and delightful book, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness, Lila Azam Zanganeh agrees with this.

Literature is but scintillating texture… [for Nabokov] “The demonic artistry of words perhaps conceals ‘galaxies divine’, where death might be no more than a lifted corner of the eternal present.”

Nabokov tells in his memoir Speak, Memory that he experienced instances of “a strangely translucent” state in which he could envision in vivid detail simultaneous events that he couldn't possibly have known. One senses that this surely informed his abiding preoccupation with gazing into a timeless ‘otherworldliness’ in his stories.

According to Stephen Jay Gould, Nabokov’s vivid and patient attention to detail in writing stemmed from the same source as his devoted attention to the fine points of butterfly genitalia as he stared through a microscope for hours on end at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. It was his love not only of detail, but of the contemplation of detail and the hidden symmetry to be found there. In the most autobiographical of his novels, The Gift, the main character describes “…the odors of butterflies—musk and vanilla…the voices of butterflies…the incredible artistic wit of mimetic disguise” as a cunning Brazilian butterfly imitates the whir of a local bird.

Nabokov once explained to an interviewer,

When I was younger, I ate some butterflies in Vermont to see if they were poisonous…. I didn’t see any difference between a Monarch and a Viceroy. The taste of both was vile, but I had no ill effects. They tasted like almonds and perhaps a green cheese combination…. Will you eat some with me tomorrow for breakfast?

But there’s something more to this, as Barbara Wyllie points out: His expertise as a butterfly specialist “informed his themes of transformation and transcendence that seem to dominate his work.” After all, what’s more transformative than the life stages of a butterfly?!

One of the shortest and most touching stories in this book, titled simply “Christmas,” describes a grieving Russian widower on a snowy Christmas Eve, returning home alone from his young son’s funeral who discovers by lantern light in the boy’s cold, dark room his butterfly net and mounting supplies and trays of specimens—and an English biscuit tin containing a large exotic cocoon that was “papery to the touch and seemed made of a brown folded leaf.” He brings the tin back with him to his own, warm study, when suddenly there’s a snap that brings him out of his revery. The cocoon in the biscuit tin had burst open…” and though the ending may seem predictable, it catches you by surprise and takes my breath away with each reading.

Another fascinating quality of Nabokov and his writing is that, like his mother, he was a synaesthete. At a young age, he equated all the letters of the alphabet with distinct colors. In his memoir, Speak, Memory, he tells us that “I see ‘q’ as browner than ‘k’, while ‘s’ is not the light blue of ‘c’, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.” He often gave his protagonists the same synaesthetic senses. There’s a famous line from The Gift, in which the main character, an auditory synaesthete (as was Nabokov’s mother), says, “If I had some paints handy, I would mix burnt-sienna and sepia for you so as to match the color of a ‘ch’ sound.” Nabokov’s wife Vera and their only child Dimitri were also synaesthetic. The colors Dimitri associated with some letters were blends of his parents’ hues, which, he describes, “is as if genes were painting in aquarelle.”

Nabokov’s extraordinary range of gifts, of which he was joyfully grateful, plays out for us in his fiction and in his spectacular memoir that, through the years, I’ve relished more with each reading.

--Nancy

Graduation Gifts for Girls In Between

2011-06-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

This post started out as a guide to gifts for fifth and eighth grade graduates, two graduations I know lots of people think are kind of overkill. I happen to think these graduations are incredibly useful little milestones, because there's a dearth of real coming of age rituals, and graduations make good moments to honor the end/beginning of certain stages of life. It sets time aside to celebrate and contemplate what's just happened and get ready for something new (and often terrifying). But when I put together the list, I accidentally picked a bunch of stuff that's specifically for girls. So I'll make another short list of books for boys this age soon, and I'm sorry for the oversight. Here goes:

Just Between Us: A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal for Girls and Their Moms

by Meredith & Sofie Jacobs

This is one of my favorite gift-y books for preteen girls, and would make a fantastic fifth grade graduation present. Created by a mother and daughter who had great success keeping a joint journal, it's a journal meant to be passed back and forth between a mother and daughter, with prompts, questions, checklists and a lot of blank pages. The authors say their experience with a shared journal was rewarding for various reasons. From Sophie's introduction:

Because of the journal I can talk to my mom about all that awful, awkward puberty stuff and not have to face the embarrassment of saying it to her face.

Another thing about the journal is how well we get to know each other through it. Do you know your mom's favorite dinner? [...] Or who she had a crush on in middle school?

Her mom adds:

I love that we communicate a little differently when we write because we have time to think. My mind often wanders when I write, so I think I share even more than I do when we talk. It's quite possible that she "hears" me better when I write. And, she's braver when she writes.

Anyway, I kind of want to do this with my mom, even though I'm all grown up. Also, even though it has some mom-specific stuff, it'd be just as fun to use with an older sister or aunt or grandma. With a great cover, sweet illustrations and a well-executed format and design, this is an excellent gift.

It's a Money Thing: A Girl's Guide to Managing Money
by The Women's Foundation of California

Another pick for fifth grade grads is a Moonjar, which is a kind of piggy bank made of three separate-but-connected banks: Spend, Save, and Share. It works fine for younger kids, too, but in conjunction with a book about handling money (or a congratulatory raise in allowance) it'd be awesome for an almost-middle-schooler. A great book for tween and teen girls about money is It's A Money Thing, by The Women's Foundation of California. It'd be fine for most 12- to 14-year-olds, so whether you give it to a sophisticated fifth grade grad or an eighth grader, it's a great introduction to financial words and concepts. It's heavy on starting your own business and investing your money to make it grow, but it is a book on money so that seems fitting. It also has some organizing principles (financial journaling pages, charts, a pocket for receipts) that'd be useful to begin keeping track of saving, spending, investing, and giving.

My Little Red Book
by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

Body Drama
by Nancy Amanda Redd

Are you someone's rebel aunt? Come on. Everyone has one, and if you have a niece (or a young cousin or just your friend's kid who you know), it might be time to check yourself out. Are you planning on buying her tickets to concerts in a couple of years, or sneaking her into R-rated movies? Maybe you just occasionally let a curse word slip out around her? Buy her clothing made out of leather? Were you the one who bought her that skull-and-crossbones onesie? Well, then you're the perfect person to get her one of these books. If her mom gives them to her, the shine is off. But they contain a lot of really life-changingly great information, and the just-right cool person giving them to her could mean she actually reads them. My Little Red Book, which is not aimed exclusively at young people and would make a great gift for grownup friends too, would be an amazingly sweet gift for a fifth grade graduate (yes, they will be SOOOO embarrassed, but they'll probably read it cover to cover). It's a collection of first-person accounts of first period stories. You'd be surprised, if you think about how common this experience is, how little we talk about it, especially to gals who are just about to or have just experienced it themselves. Seriously, this book is awesome. The subject index in the back cracks me up: "Caught Between Two Cultures," "Disposal Challenges," "I Was Dying," and "Judy Blume" all have their own list of stories. Ha! PLEASE GET THIS NOW (for everyone).

Body Drama would be better for eighth grade grads (or at least middle schoolers). Written by a Harvard-educated beauty queen, it's full of color photographs illustrating all the body questions and answers a teenager could ask (it was quite educational for grownup ladies in our department). Because of the graphic pictures and the really direct language, it's one you should page through first to make sure you're comfortable giving it as a gift. But man, is it chock full of information, and the photographs of all different kinds of bodies and body issues are the kind of education everyone needs and we rarely get as teens. From "I bathe every day but I still smell" to "I'm a virgin, but I missed my period" to "My piercing isn't healing well," there are a lot of questions it'd be embarrassing to ask a knowledgeable adult and this book answers lots of them. It has step-by-step instructions for how to make the best emergency pad out of toilet paper, for goodness sake (with photographs)! I love this book.

In Their Shoes: Extraordinary Women Describe Their Amazing Careers
by Deborah Reber

Chill: Stress-Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You
by Deborah Reber

Local author Debbie Reber has two books (at least two, she writes a lot for young women and girls, see her website here) that I'd comfortably give as a gift to any teen or tween girl. In Their Shoes is a comprehensive and conversational set of profiles of women who have successful, rewarding careers. Unlike some career books that are just quizzes about your personality, this one works hard to uncover what a day in the life feels like, what the actual work is, so that you can really get a feel for what a job entails instead of just getting a quick explanation somebody looked up online. Some of the women kept diaries of what they did all day, some gave in-depth interviews. All of the profiles include sections on other jobs in that field and what you can do as a teen to prepare for a job like this. It's a feel-good read whether or not one is interested in future careers, since if you read the whole thing, you've just met around fifty happy, smart, successful women.

Chill is just what it sounds like, and if you know any high-strung gals who are looking toward middle or high school with a certain amount of perfectionist dread (or scatterbrained dread) this would be a sweet thing to pair with a gift certificate for something relaxing (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's a manicure or parasailing, everyone's different). Full of varying tips and tricks on managing stress and practicing good self-care, I love this book's focus on the importance of creating healthy boundaries. Lots of people talk to teens about stress—"Gee whiz, young people these days, with all their iTalking and their Spacebooks!"—without offering specific, direct advice and strategies. This one is straight-shooting and helpful.

-Anna, Kids Books

A Look at Maira's Studio

2011-06-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hey look! The Paris Review visits Maira Kalman's studio and chats with her.

"My work is all narrative, and it’s always word based, and speaks, really, to literature. This is my way of writing. I’m very connected to the feeling that I get from reading books, and the information I get from reading books, and the hopefulness I get from reading books—the text and handwriting, word becoming image."

We love her!

--Anna M.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

2011-05-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Around graduation time (and believe it or not, the season is almost upon us) we stock up on Dr. Seuss's classic Oh, the Places You'll Go! It's a pretty popular graduation gift, and while the idea of a picture book as a grad gift is really charming, once you see the same book go out the door a certain number of times, you kind of wonder what alternatives everyone's missing out on. This year our graduation display, instead of being just a huge stack of OtPYG, is a wall full of great gift ideas, and I wanted to share them in case anyone wants to get started shopping early. (If you still want to get Seuss, we are totally fine with that. No snooty bookseller looks, I promise. Just take a second glance at these before you make up your mind.)

Knuffle Bunny Free
by Mo Willems

If you've been following and loving the Knuffle Bunny series, this one could make you feel a little weepy. Parents have gone pretty misty after reading this book in the store, and with good reason. Trixie's spent the last couple books getting separated and reunited with the beloved bunny. But in this one, as Trixie gets older, it may be time to let Knuffle Bunny go altogether. A note to Trixie from her dad at the very end is the real tearjerker.

All the World
by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee

This extra large picture book is a fun read-aloud for three- to five-year-olds, but works really well as a graduation gift because of its beautiful art and its simple poetry about the world around us. Seriously, it gives me goosebumps every time I sit and read it through. Maybe because I have a lot of family memories that look like the ones in the book? It opens at the beach:

Rock, stone, pebble, sand
Body, shoulder, arm, hand
A moat to dig,
a shell to keep
All the world is wide and deep

and closes on the line, "All the world is all of us." It's swoony.

Pouch!

by David Ezra Stein

Stein's illustrative style is the kind of simple, splotchy watercolor that keeps surprising you with its expressiveness (Raschka comes to mind as a similar talent). In Pouch!, a little joey named Joey is wanting to leave his mama kangaroo's pouch, but keeps getting scared by the new creatures he meets out in the world. Every time he sees a new animal, he cries out, "POUCH!" as he hops back to mom in full freak-out mode. Finally, he meets another joey, and before they can each run to their mothers, they realize there's nothing to be afraid of. The second-to-last page says they "hop, hop, hop, hoppity-hopped everywhere!" And if you look closely, you can see a mama kangaroo peeking out from behind a tree, looking on with both pride and a little hint of losing-your-kid-to-the-big-wide-world grief. You can see it in her eyebrows, I think. How does he do that?!

Scaredy Squirrel

by Mélanie Watt

For people who are nervous, shy, scared, or just graduating into a frightening world, Scaredy Squirrel is here for you. He never leaves his tree. His main fears are: "green Martians, killer bees, tarantulas, poison ivy, germs, and sharks" (so we have a lot in common). He even has a first aid kit in case of emergencies. But when he falls out of the tree one day, due to panic from the sudden appearance of a bee, he finds out something fabulous about himself that he never knew.

Other titles that are fun for grads of all ages are: My Book about Me, by Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie; Forever Young, by Bob Dylan and illustrated by Paul Rogers; and President Obama's picture book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, illustrated by Loren Long.

Non-picture book options for older grads are coming this way soon. Keep in touch.

-Anna, Kids Books

Something nasty in the woodshed, you say? Let's go take a look!

2011-05-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

When recommending books to people, I often run into an annoying little problem. You see, it isn't terribly important for me to like characters in novels. Most of the time, I am apathetic towards “likable” characters, and they create a sort of negative space which is filled by the context of their situation. I can think of a few exceptions (to prove I have a heart): basically every character from To Kill a Mockingbird; the kids from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy; the butler Stevens in Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. Writing about good people isn't that interesting, though when done well it really stands out.

While forming my early literary tastes (still forming, still stubborn) I often tried to convince my mom to read the books I was excited about. I raved about them, but only later did I realize how bad my advertising techniques were. She would ask, “But do you like the characters?” And I would have to admit that no, I didn't like them, but that wasn't the point! I loved books because of the philosophy, the imagined worlds, the foreign newness and the unexpected nostalgia. All the books I loved for those reasons also happened to be... somewhat disturbing. So, I have to own the fact that I enjoy creepiness, strangeness and moral ambiguity in my fiction.

Few authors manage to completely withhold value judgments, to write fearlessly about how people live, and those who do also tend to invent characters who echo our darkest selves. There is a spectrum of privacy in novels, which I think is not entirely within an author's control. We can only stand to reveal so much about clandestine things, scary things, humiliating things in real life; when a character is written, authors can reveal a little more by showing what they do in secret. But have you ever been reading a novel and thought, “that's not really what that person would say!” or (especially in YA), “in real life those teenagers would just start having sex right now?” In those moments, I wish I could call out the authors and demand to know what they're so afraid of. Then on the other hand, really honest writers make you cringe, make you turn the page with one eye open, anticipating, dreading what you know is coming next-- because you hate to admit it, but these things have happened before.

Last week I met author Donald Ray Pollock, who wrote the short story collection Knockemstiff, released in 2009. His new book, The Devil All the Time, comes out on July 12th. I loved the book, but I'm now confronted with my old problem: how to recommend something that is-- at least on the surface-- a book about bad people doing bad things? The blurb on the back of the book tries this angle: “...a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers with the religious and gothic overtones of Flannery O'Connor at her most haunting.”
If I had creative control, that would read more like: “A novel that marries the hopeless corruption of P. T. Anderson's There Will be Blood with the poetic depravity of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.”

The writing is great; understated, showing just enough so that your imagination is left to fill in details. The concept of “weaving” storylines and characters gets thrown around a lot, to varying degrees of success and relevance, but Pollock has truly mastered his chronology. He takes his time establishing connections between characters, trusting the reader to piece things together. The whole thing is just intense; although at first I had to stop after every chapter to collect myself, I eventually got so sucked into the story that I read the last 75 pages with feverish momentum.
Maybe there's already a name for this kind of writing, but I'm still trying to define why I like it. I think there's a moment-- sometimes a few pages in, sometimes halfway through-- when I realize that an author is not going to hold back. There's not going to be any omniscient code of ethics, no invisible hand to guide you through the story. You are like a stationary witness in a dream, and finishing the book is like waking up and realizing that the meaning you desire is arbitrary. What a thrilling challenge!
It would be easy for me to choose which friends to recommend this book to. But with strangers, I think it saves time to get right to the point. So, what factors contribute to your enjoyment of a novel?
--Seija

(The title of this blog is a reference to Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, a brilliant book that truly has something for everyone.)

Get Your Dystopian Fix

2011-05-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've been having nightmares for years. Going to sleep is not something that I look forward to like I used to when I was dreaming of hugging dolphins and meeting the Dalai Lama. A large part of this is probably due to the fact that I have been focusing on dystopian fiction for some time now, definitely since I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The Road really spoke to me ... and the storyline, characters, and prose has continued to reverberate in my soul. And while I do recommend it and the following books: I also include a caveat that lets the reader know, in no uncertain terms, that the material included in these fictions may well be fodder for nightmares of your own.

(Good) dystopian fiction that I recommend off the top of my head (meaning that this is not an exhaustive list):

I am Legend by Richard Matheson ... A classic. Really quite different and, in my opinion, better than the movie. This should be included in your Dystopia 101 course materials.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy ... No doubt this is well on its way to becoming a classic. Fans of the genre: if you haven't read this then you need to now! Kudos to C.M.

(pictured at beginning of blogpost)

Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh ... Great title. This book has a contemporary feel to it with characters that you might find traveling with you on your bus route (or in your carpool lane on your commute to work) ... Will McIntosh stretches what is ailing us nowadays, pumps it up a bit, and brings on the dark side of humanity. I am not alone as a fan of this book.

Angels are the Reapers by Alden Bell ... Current staff pick of mine, and recently a nominee for the 2010 Philip K. Dick award. I love Temple, the main character, not only is she a kick-a-- heroine, but she is deeply troubled by what it means to be human.

Enclave by Ann Aguirre ... Highlighted favorably in my last blog.

Drylands by Mary Rosenblum ... Brought in parapsychology before it was all the rage, as in the plethora of paranormal romance that now graces the shelves of scifi/fantasy, and did it well.

And finally, Burn Down the Sky by James Jaros (coming out sometime in the near future and I was unable to find any good cover art for you to look at.) This is twisted like Ms. Atwood's Handmaid Tales, with an even more perverse twang that not everyone will want to grapple with, hence this book comes with an 'R' for restricted (yes, I know this is a movie rating.) I don't want to upset folks with the material, but it was still well-written.

--Jan, aka Nightmare Girl

* Judging a Book by Its Cover *

2011-05-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” ~William Shakespeare

What's in a name? Apparently quite a bit according to Feiwel and Friends, who recently changed the name of Ann Aguirre's first YA book, formerly known as Razorland, to Enclave. The rationale, according to Ms. Aguirre's blog is that Feiwel wants her book (possibly the first in a trilogy) to have a broader appeal, hence they changed the cover art too.

I gladly read Razorland with its cool cover showing a pair of tough, punky, futuristic teens standing strong against all obstacles. Now would I have wanted to read Enclave? With its generic front cover and horror-bent, somewhat subtle claw-hand with nails dripping blood on the back? Hmmmm? I hope so, because Ms. Aguirre's book is a good read and I remain curious about her characters Deuce, Fade, and Tegan even now.

Soooo, I was waiting for Razorland to come out, because I knew that I'd recommend it to those readers like me who like dystopian tales, with kick-a-- characters (“For fans of Hunger Games,” per Publishers Weekly), but it eluded me. And if I hadn't randomly picked up a new copy of Enclave I would never have known what happened.

Still I wonder how Kit Reed feels about her recently released book title being co-opted? Her book came out in paperback to rave reviews (i.e. Connie Willis is a fan of Ms. Reed's writing) last August and it too deals with an edgy set of characters with an unknown future. I can certainly understand a publisher wanting their book to appeal to larger audience, but I wonder about the etiquette in choosing a name or names to use.

I definitely can get past all of this … and I recommend that you do too, so that you can make room to sink into the wild world, one distinctly different from our own now, that Ann Aguirre portrays.

--Jan

When Did I Get Like This?

2011-05-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

I just spent a lengthy vacation in Honolulu, which is, by many orders of magnitude, the largest city in Hawaii. I assumed that it would have at least a few bookstores to roam, and didn't think too hard until I got there about where I would browse for books when I got the urge (not that I needed to, since my suitcase was fully one-third packed with books). In fact, I forgot that I would have the urge to browse for books. I had it in the back of my mind that I'd look for bookstores and/or the nearest library as soon as I got my bearings, just for fun, but I forgot that I would start to feel strange, unmoored, feverish, and claustrophobic if I couldn't find a house-of-books pretty soon. I visited a chain bookstore in the mall to ease the pain, but it wasn't my fix. I found the downtown library, and sat on a shelving stool in the B's of fiction, devouring Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures until my time was up. But I was a visitor and couldn't get a library card (are there visitor library cards? I didn't actually check). I knew I'd need to have books to carry around, and I'd made the terrible decision to bring too many serious and dark books with me to a beautiful place. The mood didn't fit, I needed a refill, I needed to wander some stacks, and I was getting itchy.

I had mistakenly anticipated stumbling upon bookstores accidentally on a regular basis, like I do in San Francisco, but this city required a search. Thank the internet for IndieBound, which you should use if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. IndieBound has a big red button on their website that says "FIND BOOKSTORES and other indies" and when you click on it (or on that link, you're welcome lazies) you can enter your address or zip code, a radius (50 miles, for example) how many results you want, and BAM! out pops a list of independent bookstores near you. I had known about this theoretically, but had never had to use it, and was both heartened and a little worried to see one result for my whole island: Rainbow Books & Records, near the U of H at Manoa. I mapped a bus route and went forth to smell pages (cliche or not, you know we all actually do it).

This is what I found:

A little shop hidden in a strip mall, tall messy shelves painted in rainbow order (the store was too small for me to get red in the frame) with stacks of books in front of and on top of them. There were a couple of scattered stepladders, almost no other customers, and they were playing The Cure. It was heaven. Even though they shelve all their books horizontally (seriously, what?), it was fun to wander through, or rather to spend hours wandering, touching favorite spines and almost giggling with relief at finding those friends sitting, waiting for me to see them, waiting for me to hold them and open them, waiting for me to take them home. I was lucky to have instant text message access to a friend who could recommend the perfect mass market mysteries, and I had to search through pile after pile to find the right ones. The kids section had somehow merged with humor which had bled into graphic novels, so I was finding Pippi Longstocking next to Margaret Cho next to Marjane Satrapi, which I can't say feels entirely wrong. Without meaning to, my eye would catch on local authors— Sherman Alexie, David Guterson, and I almost whispered "Hi" out loud. I found books I was compelled to take down and find certain pages in, reading poems I already know almost by heart. It was more comforting than I'd ever expected.

I know I work in a bookstore, and I know I've always loved reading and books, but I have no idea when I became this sort of a person: I cannot feel comfortable without regular access to a decent bookstore. And even though it makes me feel a little crazy, it also feels sort of like a passport to calm. It's a secret thrill to know when I set foot in the door, no matter what city I'm in, that I'll feel a little bit home.

So mahalo for saving me, Rainbow Books & Records (they don't have their own website, as far as I can tell, so I can't link to them). If you're ever on Oahu and need an indie bookstore fix, they are, like us, located on University (Ave, not Way), which I found very amusing. Aloha!

-Anna, kids books

Demetri Martin In Store Saturday at 6:30!

2011-05-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

So, maybe you've heard of this Demetri Martin fellow? If you have not, go find out using the internet (or phone a friend). I'll wait.

Okay, so Demetri Martin has written a book, and he's coming to the store to promote it this Saturday at 6:30. It's called This is A Book, and like much of his comedy, it is really really funny. Good, right? Funny person writes funny book, yay. But just like Tina Fey's new book, Bossypants (which you should go read immediately if you haven't already), there's something super duper great about this that is not quite contained in all the author's other forms of entertaining-you-with-jokes. This is, I'm quoting the jacket, "prose comedy," a phrase that makes me want to barf but is describing something that it turns out is awesome if done well. The book has sections of prose but also graphs and charts, drawings, and a crossword puzzle where every answer is just the letter A repeated a certain number of times (it made me laugh out loud repeatedly, then marvel at the fact that I was laughing at the same punch line over and over again).

I kind of don't want to excerpt anything here, because I don't want to ruin the funniest parts, but I also want you to get all intrigued and come take a look at this book (see how difficult a book blogger's job is? You should buy me a beer). Below are some things inside of it that made me really incredibly happy (and/or laugh so hard I cried and ruined my eyeliner. Seriously, Mr. Martin, you owe me some eyeliner).

Palindromes for Specific Occasions:

Gently informing a DJ that there is a problem with the sound system:

No music is, um, on.

A comment said to a friend about the size of his old jeans, after he's lost a lot of weight:

Massive Levis, Sam.

A guy explaining to his friend how he feels about operas as he accidentally runs into a beehive:

See, bro, operas are poor--Bees!

Optimist, Pessimist, Contortionist

Take a look at this glass of water.
OPTIMIST: The glass is half full.
PESSIMIST: The glass is half empty.
CONTORTIONIST: I can fit both of my feet in there, no problem.

We found a lump on your neck.
OPTIMIST: It's probably just a cyst.
PESSIMIST: Oh God, I'm going to die.
CONTORTIONIST: That's my toe.

Your luggage has not yet arrived from Phoenix.
OPTIMIST: I'm sure it'll be here soon.
PESSIMIST: It's gone.
CONTORTIONIST: I know. I'm inside it.

Describe yourself in two words.
OPTIMIST: "Hopeful idealist."
PESSIMIST: "Cautious cynic."
CONTORTIONIST: "Fisherman's knot."

Protagonist's Hospital

DR. BARNES: We've got a Caucasian male, gunshot wound to the shoulder. Minor injury.
DR. STONE: Okay.
DR. BARNES: We're treating another Caucasian male who has a gunshot wound in his arm. It's not serious, though. He is actually in excellent physical condition despite having been in a high-speed car chase for hours after being shot.
DR. STONE: Sounds familiar.
DR. BARNES: Yep. Now, in those beds over there we have three Caucasian males, two of whom were shot in the leg, but only in the fleshy part and not near any joints.
DR. STONE: And the third?
DR. BARNES: Knife wound.
DR. STONE: Let me guess...in his shoulder?
DR. BARNES: Right.
DR. STONE: So, these patients are essentially all fine then?
DR. BARNES: Yep. And every single one of them also has an incredibly high tolerance for pain.
DR. STONE: Uh-huh.
DR. BARNES: And, incidentally, they are all remarkably good with quips, even while receiving medical treatment.
DR. STONE: I've seen a lot of that lately.

If this has not made you want to come see him talk, then probably either I've mistyped it or your eyes are broken. Either way, give it the benefit of the doubt and come anyway. He'll just be chilling in our little events space upstairs, you get a priority signing line ticket if you buy the book from us, and the event is free and open to the public. Here. Saturday. 6:30. There, I've said it three times now. See you there!

-Anna, kids books

On Reading Out of Doors

2011-04-30T11:36:00.001-07:00

I have always loved to read outside. It probably has something to do with Anne of Green Gables, or whatever other freckled and bespectacled heroines used to hang out in the nooks of trees reading. As a kid I climbed the big maple in our backyard, toting a book, to find a comfortable Y to nestle in (there wasn't really a comfortable spot, and it ended up being more of a stoic execution of a great-sounding idea) while I looked out over the prairie, the big woods, Prince Edward Island, or whatever place I was reading about at the time. I used to "caddy" for my dad when he golfed with friends, which mostly involved curling up under an out-of-the-way tree reading Nancy Drews while they played a game whose appeal mystified me, but which allowed me the incredible, decadent pleasure of wandering those vast manicured lawns surrounded by bushes and forests, finding the exact perfect greenery to hide under and read (and no, I never got hit by a stray golf ball, don't worry). I still think golf courses should have no-golfing days where they let bookish girls aged approximately 8-12 roam around for a day in prairie dresses, carrying picnic baskets full of books and walking barefoot and lying down getting grass in their hair while they lose themselves in fiction.

As an adult, I still love to read outside. An apartment with a porch or balcony, a folding chair, and a glass of wine are all that's required. When I go out into the world, I'm often unconsciously searching for a lovely place to sit and read, and having recently spent a long vacation doing just that, I've been thinking a lot about the perfect outside reading spot.

The beach is a lot of people's favorite for outdoor reading, but it holds less appeal for me. Obviously sand getting forever stuck right where the pages meet is a problem, as is sunscreen and saltwater and other paper-ruining disasters. But you're not taking your favorite signed hardcovers outside in a crappy tote bag anyway, right? No, the beach is less than perfect simply because it's a bit too pretty to look at, a bit too bright. The scenery is moving and sparkling, waves are crashing or boats are going past, there's a lot of noise from kids doing whatever kids who don't read the whole time do (I wouldn't know). It feels kind of rude to read a novel while a sunset forms in the sky over the water. Nature made this just for you, can't you pay any attention?

Golf courses, as previously mentioned, would be lovely if they were not expensive and also of course, there's the whole "FORE!" problem. Cemeteries are one of my favorite quiet, calm places to spend time, and I would love to sit in a cemetery and read, except...I don't know. It kind of puts some pressure on exactly what you're reading. It feels a little sacrilegious, a little disrespectful, to read a cheesy murder mystery next to someone's actual headstone, doesn't it? I mean, I'd love it if people came and read on my grave (someday! not right now, thanks), but what if they were reading something I hated? It's better than if someone came and played iPhone app games on my grave, or bickered with their spouse, but still. I think my spirit would be offended by a certain kind of book being read six feet above my bones. Eh, there's just a little too much to consider when graveside reading.

Parks are really the only perfect outside reading place for me. Calm, pretty enough but not too pretty, and there are usually trees to sit under (protection from sun with the added possibility of squirrel/bird friends reading over your shoulder like a cartoon). An expansive park with large-canopied trees and benches directly under these trees would be ideal, and that's exactly what I found on my recent trip to Honolulu, in the park near Iolani Palace:

So that when you look up from your pages, or if you're lying down to read, you see this:

See? Perfect.

-Anna, kids books

The World is a Deaf Machine

2011-03-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

That title is a quote from a favorite picture book of mine, Shaun Tan's The Red Tree. It's being reprinted soon (coming in April, as part of a bindup of three Tan-illustrated picture books), and I'm glad to hear it. The Red Tree is really a picture book for grownups, as many are, and it combines Tan's rich paintings with simple, poetic text about how bad a bad day can feel.

It seems like this past winter, a lot of people around me are having a really hard time for various reasons, and I thought about posting terrible, horrible, no good very bad day picture books in solidarity, then realized I've done that post before. So I've decided to do a post about bright, exuberant, celebratory picture books, the kind with irrepressible protagonists that somehow work even though there's not a ton of conflict, or the ones that just warm you up, even if you try hard to stay Eeyore-y. Let's go:

#1: Keisha Ann, from Keisha Ann Can! Lots of picture books, especially ones about school, are about the dark side. Separation anxiety, bad grades, bullying, scary new experiences, etc. And those are great. But other than Keisha Anna Can! I can't think of one that is just a whole book about a totally capable kid celebrating how proud she is of herself. And sometimes I need to read it to myself, to pick up some Can! when I'm all can't.

Who knows all the weekdays?
Who can read the alphabet?
Who can sharpen pencils?
Who can feed the classroom pet?

Who can count how many days
it's been since school began?
Who can pass out paints and brushes?
KEISHA ANN CAN!

Oh my gosh, Keisha Ann, meeeee tooooo!!! Now let's go kick some butt at tetherball just you and me! WOOHOO!!!

#2 Brand new Forsythia & Me, by Vincent X. Kirsch (what does the X stand for? I must know!). Forsythia is the narrator's best friend, and is rambunctious and creative and brilliant. It opens like this: "Forsythia and I are best friends. She does things that amaze me." Aw, man! I want my friends to describe me that way. What a lot in one simple sentence. And who hasn't had someone like that in their life? The next thing we hear is: "Forsythia can decorate the most incredible birthday cakes I have ever seen. This year she flew out of the cake she had made just for me." So we know it's going to be one of those wackadoodle stories that's just over-the-top enough to be worth a picture book. She performs in the circus, they have tea with zoo animals, and throughout the whole book she's wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and sticky-outy braids ('cause that's how she rolls). When she's feeling sick, it's Chester's turn to pull out all the stops to entertain his friend, and when the book heads toward the finish line with Forsythia saying, "Chester, you amaze me!" my little heart gets all squooshy.

#3 is Millie's Marvellous Hat and I cannot believe none of us has blogged about it before. The Kids Department loooooves this book, and so does everyone we sell it to (right, guys? Back me up). Great for two- or three-year-olds on up to early elementary, this'd be a perfect preschool read aloud (and it often is around here). Sometimes I find books about imaginative play kind of weird, like they're almost redundant or something. Kids know how to play make believe, and books are already fiction, so books about make believe often fall flat for me. But not Millie— for one thing, just look at her cheerful little face. Satoshi Kitamura's illustrations are always pretty and interesting, but sometimes too busy or with too many jagged angles for me. This time, the palette is great, the faces and bodies expressive, and the story is a winner. Millie can't afford the beautiful hat in the window of the hat store, so the man sells her a hat (for free) that "is a most marvellous hat, Madam...It can be any size, shape or color you wish. All you have to do is imagine it." So she goes outside, starts imagining her hat into all sorts of great things, and then moves on to imagining everyone else's hat all through the park, until she gets home and gets her parents to imagine their own hats (a penguin hat and a flowery one, if you're curious). I want the cake hat!

#4 would be Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon, by Patty Lovell and David Catrow, but we don't have a copy right now and I don't want to just write about it from memory. She's a great character, though, and just a reminder that if you embrace being weird, it can be empowering. I always need to learn/remember that.

-Anna, Kids Books

Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence

2011-03-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

And wrestle he does, and with such self-effacing candor! When I first ran across this book while shelving in the Lit. Crit. section, I took it to be yet another ‘literary study’ of Lawrence, albeit of an emotional sort as implied by the title and Lawrence’s defiant face staring from its cover. But from the first sentence, you realize that this book is a far cry from the more than a thousand serious literary studies/biographies of one of England’s greatest, and certainly most controversial, modernist writers.

Instead, Dyer takes us inside his own inner struggle just to start working on his ‘Lawrence book’ — an ambition long-cherished and long-procrastinated. It was, after all, Lawrence who originally inspired Dyer, a fellow Englander, to be a writer. And so Out of Sheer Rage is Dyer’s hilariously personal memoir about the prolonged writer’s block that hounds him all the while he globetrots to several Lawrentian ‘hotspots’ in search of the perfect place to settle down and write his book. Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Capri, Greece, the south of France, Oaxaca, and Taos. Dyer’s search provides a grand, though often frustrating, distraction from just settling down somewhere and writing his book.

It seems that Oxford-educated Dyer is ready for an excuse to get out of stuffy England and the ‘Dullford’ (as he calls it) literary scene, though nowhere as fed-up as Lawrence was in 1919 when he went into self-imposed exile and embarked on his “savage pilgrimage.” Because of Lawrence’s outspoken contempt for militarism during WWI and his marriage to a German aristocrat, the British had suspected Lawrence and his wife Frieda of spying, supposedly even signaling to German submarines off the Cornwall coast where they were living, destitute. In late 1917, the couple was driven out of Cornwall at three days’ notice under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA, which actually is the name of one of Lawrence's characters!).

And during all this, Lawrence was being vilified by puritanical British govt. officials who suppressed his 1915 novel The Rainbow on charges of obscenity, though the book was hailed by the likes of Edmund Wilson, E.M. Forster, and Aldous Huxley. The Rainbow is now considered by many to be his finest work.

Indeed, at the time of Lawrence’s death in 1930, his public reputation was largely as a pornographer. You can certainly understand the ‘rage’ that drove him to abandon England. Thus began Lawrence’s ten-year wanderlust, along the way struggling with bouts of pneumonia (the result of his childhood in a sooty Nottinghamshire coal-mining town), a journey that was sometimes exhilarating despite his inner torment. He did manage, however, to do some substantive writing along the way, including Lady Chatterly’s Lover published in Italy in 1928 and his marvelously sensual travel writings. But it all left him exhausted and sick with TB at the age of 45, when he died in France.

And now comes Dyer who takes us and his companion Laura on his own sprawling and frustrating travel adventure in Lawrence’s footsteps, a journey marked with endless comical distractions and mishaps, including a serious moped accident on a Greek island, grievances about every place he visits, and a mounting disillusionment with the whole quest. Not to mention his utter failure to begin his Lawrence book. All the while, we hear his inner ramblings of self-doubt, his stubborn ambivalences about nearly everything, and the sense of wasted energy. He carries none of Lawrence’s fiction along with him for reference, instead (and wisely, as it turns out) only two volumes of the Cambridge Edition of his personal letters (noting especially his ‘grumpier’ ones), and some other casual writings. What we get is a deep and revealing character study of Dyer in despair over his failing search for a deep connection to Lawrence the man, and yet simultaneously perhaps the deepest, most revealing profile of Lawrence at his rarest!

And what’s more, Dyer brings Lawrence back to old admirers like me, who read his Sons and Lovers and short stories and poems in college in the 70s. It wasn’t so long before that, in 1960, when Penguin Books first published the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s lover in Britain—and was subsequently tried and found ‘not guilty’ under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959—that the literary merit of Lawrence’s work came to be recognized. Much to my pleasure, he was read widely in Modern Brit. Lit. courses, right alongside Woolf and Joyce and Huxley. The British movie of Sons and Lovers was released in 1960, followed by Women in Love in 1969, both critically acclaimed. And in 1964 Anaïs Nin’s highly regarded D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (orig. published in 1932) was republished by Swallow Press in Chicago, and is still available today. The Women’s Movement of the 60s and 70s resonated with his overwhelming commitment to presenting strong, complex, and self-directed women characters.

I say it’s time for Lawrence’s work to be revived and newly experienced, by older and younger readers alike. I'm into The Rainbow now, and will follow on to its sequel Women in Love.The force of his expressive power, the sensual and physical fullness of his language, and his daring intuitions about intimate relationships—still leave me breathless.

— Nancy

... Saying "goodbye" to old friends! ...

2011-03-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

I am aghast! A book that I recommended for a scifi staff pick in April of 2009 is already out-of-print!

Here's the story: I have been reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch's 'Retrieval Artist' series since it first came to my attention in … say … 2002. I came to care about Miles Flint, a principled man with a past, and the universe that Ms. Rusch created (that was much more diversely populated than ours seems to be now.) All manner of dicey, painful, and seemingly unresolvable conflicts arise because of the juxtaposition of alien populations and the blundering homo sapiens.

There have now been about six novels in the collection, and I have read them all. But along the way the earlier books started dropping off the in-print wayside. Still, I was holding onto the idea that the new paperback editions would keep on coming ... but alas they have not.

I wouldn't have known about the later part of this story if Nancy, my ebullient coworker at UBS, hadn't brought to my attention that a customer, whom she says enjoys my staff picks (how delightful is that!), was unable to secure a copy of the most recent 'Retrieval Artist' book or even order it through us.

So, for now until maybe the 25th Anniversary publication of this series revives this book or we receive used copies (yes, please, do bring them in to sell to us!), we must bid Miles, the flint man, adieu. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has not stopped writing, nor have I stopped noticing all of her scifi works, but I shall take a moment (here) to sigh.

~~Jan

Through the Looking Glass

2011-03-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

The "memoir" genre is difficult because (by definition) a memoir's plot is dependent upon the self-awareness of its author. If the author is not insightful or honest enough about themselves and their story, memoirs can come across as self-indulgent or underwhelming. I have often come to the end of a memoir and said, "This is the take-away message?"

The more memoirs I have read, the more I have grown to respect authors who possess a perceptive, authentic voice.

In Sh*t My Dad Says , author Justin Halpern gives us a glimpse of his upbringing and life as an adult that feels so real it will make you squirm. There is no fluff or justification. It is an honest portrayal of his father, a very unusual man, that will make you laugh out loud (and secretly cry). Halpern's ability to candidly admit both embarrassing moments of his life and emotional truths will win your heart. You may even recognize some of his father's traits in people from your own life (but this isn't likely). Buy it for your dad!

Several of my co-workers and I have recently been sucked into The Impostor's Daughter, a graphic memoir by Laurie Sandell. I could not put it down. I compare it to the time I opened up Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" at a book store. I read it (while standing) for half an hour and had to buy it because my family was going to leave the Oregon coast without me.

In The Impostor's Daughter, Sandell compares her star struck childhood perceptions of her father to her changing perception of him as she matured. It was powerful viewing Sandell's father from the eyes of an innocent child, and slowly seeing his mysteries unravel. Sandell is open about the choices she has made and why she has made them. She has spent years analyzing her motives and researching her past. In the end, I believe she could have given herself a little more credit. This is not merely the story of why she is justified in writing the story, but the story of how she triumphed in spite of it.

~Jaime

Spoiler Alert! (164 years later)

2011-03-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

This Friday marks the release of yet another Jane Eyre film adaptation. There have been nearly 30 versions made as films or TV miniseries since 1910 (and certainly countless stagings by newly enamored readers in Victorian parlors before that). What other book can boast as many reimaginings? Charles Dickens' Great Expectations may hold second place, with a new film coming out next year to mark his 200^th birthday. But while the adaptations of Dickens' story have taken great liberties with setting—both in time and place—Charlotte Bronte's novel has always inspired much closer retelling.

First, you have to get the casting exactly right. Jane must not, above all, be too pretty. This is more important than the age of the actress playing her. To me, the most successful Janes have been the most unremarkable upon first glance. As viewers, we have to be able to project a bit of our own outrage at the adults who insist on imbuing Jane's already unfortunate childhood with their own emotional and religious terror. Though prettiness is thoroughly punished in this story, we should not miss it. After all, in one of her best moments Jane insists: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

Then, of course, there's Rochester. Oh, Rochester. As one who has never fallen for Mr. Darcy or any other Austen men, I thought I would be immune also to Edward Rochester. But there is something so deliciously cruel in his charisma, especially when stacked against Jane's moral strength, that makes me long for his redemption. His suffering is second only to poor Bertha's (locked in the attic all those years; you wonder if he ever went up for a visit...) and any actor looking to take on this role must be able to juggle anguish, sly humor and a barely-visible heart of gold. I'm partial to how Orson Welles played him in 1943.

My two other most important characters to get right are Helen and St. John. Jane is met with many interpretations of Christian morality throughout the story, and these two have equally pious but otherwise very different personalities. Dear, sweet Helen could easily turn into a big-eyed, saccharine parody of a sickly orphan. But Charlotte Bronte writes her as one of the few rays of hope in Jane's early life at Lowood School, where they both endure the puritanical tyranny of Mr. Brocklehurst. Helen has a quiet intelligence and confidence, credit for which she attributes modestly and entirely to her faith, but Jane, who is more skeptical of “heaven and the universal parent,” loves Helen for her humanity.

St. John Rivers, the repressed missionary whom Jane stays with after fleeing Rochester and his clandestine marriage, is often cast rather two-dimensionally. He should not be portrayed as the villain trying to guilt-trip Jane into giving up her love for Rochester; he is really an uptight but good-intentioned friend whose proposal helps Jane realize that she is far too passionate for missionary work.

Finally, there's Bertha, the infamous Madwoman in the Attic. Granted, her character arc in the novel begins spectrally and ends with an act of suicidal revenge, but the few clues we get from her brother's visit elicit curiosity about her origins. More than any other character, Bertha is rooted in 1847; whatever her “madness” is, there is no treatment; whatever her life could be outside the cold walls of Thornfield is irrelevant because Rochester can't divorce her. Ever since I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (a brilliant, nightmarish exploration of the Caribbean meeting between Bertha and Rochester), I've wanted Bertha to be more sympathetic in the movies.

But this story belongs to Jane, and she will have many readers yet, and many incarnations on the screen.

--Seija

Wood Angel

2011-03-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

Plain Kate by Erin Bow

At first glance this story is bleak. The Heroine, Plain Kate, is orphaned young, left only with talent for carving and her father's tools. She struggles to survive in a world where food is scarce and magic is feared. But through this, with one seemingly disastrous event after another, it turns into a story about love, friendship, family and, maybe most importantly, living with grief.

This is Ms. Bow's first novel. Poetry was her medium before this and I think it shows. Elegant imagery and an understanding of emotion that wrenches your heart are prominent throughout. This is not a light-hearted YA read.

With all that in mind, however, I think Plain Kate is a promising debut for a YA author and, if you're willing to get your heart broken a little bit, a great read.

--Morgaine

(aside note: The title in the UK is 'Wood Angel' which I think is a much better and more descriptive title.)

Black History Month: Picture Book Edition

2011-03-02T17:29:00.000-08:00

It's Black History Month, and in the Kids Department, the display looks beautiful. Local blogger Kitri and the Animals recently blogged about one of the coolest books on our display, Bad News For Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshall, here (have I mentioned I'm a sucker for a super-long subtitle?). A coworker says he has to stop and look through that book almost every time he passes by. Cover art success!

Anyway, even though that display is mostly nonfiction, honoring the History part of Black History Month, there's another thing that Black History Month reminds me: there are just not enough picture books with black protagonists that aren't historical, or biographical, or dealing specifically with the topic of race, or with a focus on sports or music. It's pretty startling, if you start to go and look for a regular old narrative picture book. So I thought I'd highlight some favorite titles that do what narrative picture books do best: capture small moments in a meaningful way, keep the voice and perspective true to the age group, make the text and pictures interact and complement each other well, and work well as a read aloud. They also happen to have black main characters.

Who doesn't remember Ezra Jack Keats's Peter? From The Snowy Day to Peter's Chair to my favorite, Whistle for Willie, these books were published in the '60s and were, for a lot of people, the only African American picture book character in their house/library/school. Whistle for Willie is my favorite of them all because learning to whistle is this sort of meaningless but fun and empowering milestone for kids that grownups mostly forget about. Most kids at a storytime aren't old enough to whistle, so we often all end up trying together, and when Peter finally whistles at the end, there's a lot of triumphant smiles. Keats's stories do a great job of highlighting specific sensory and emotional experiences that stay in the realm of small moments but are really fun to read about. In The Snowy Day, Peter (in his unforgettable red snowsuit) makes lines and footprints in the snow for pages. "Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feet sank into the snow. He walked with his toes pointing out...he walked with his toes pointing in...then he dragged his feet slowly to make tracks."

In Willie, Peter tries whistling but can't. "So instead he began to turn himself around— around and around he whirled... faster and faster...." until Keats's iconic stoplight at the end of the block looks like this:

On his way home, Peter draws a chalk line all down the sidewalk, all the way back to his house. I always love Keats's brick walls and neighborhood scenes:

Once Peter gets home...

"He went into his house and put on his father's old hat to make himself feel more grown-up. He looked into the mirror to practice whistling. Still no whistle!"

Over 40 years later, Keats's books are still some of the most beloved narrative picture books around. And his life story is pretty interesting, too.

Next: The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring.

--Anna, Kids

... A-Foraging we go! ...

2011-02-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

Ever in search of the perfect book, I am a University Book Store forager. I have been thus, on and off, since you don't wanna know when*: wandering the bookstore shelves with the knowledge that some juicy, succulent, sublime morsel--one that will bring a new and purposeful clarity into my life--lies there, just over in the distance.** And I will boldly state that I am not alone.

There are scores of people ---just like me---who call University Book Store their stomping grounds, their mecca, for the search of the 'Holy Grail' of bookstore finds. And today I thought that I would share some of my most recent booty.

Transform Your Life through Handwriting, by Vimala Rodgers. This kit was originally priced at $29.95, now offered at a bargain price of $9.98: Inside you will find guidebook, journal, declaration of intent cards (A-Z), and two cd's. The first card that I picked at random shared this tidbit of wisdom: “There are no “shoulds” in my life; I am at peace.” Now I call that lovely … and I could easily see it as the perfect gift for a young woman on her--say--15th birthday. But this not-so-young woman may give it a go too. Positive reinforcement could well be the great leveler.

Paper Blossoms, by Ray Marshall, $28.00: This stunning book features “five amazing pop-up bouquets” and it “brings floral cheer to any room.” Okay, this item may not be for everyone, but I can assure you that there are more pop-up book collectors than you could ever guess.

The Key to the Kingdom, by Tony Meeusissen, originally priced at $25, but now offered to UBS customers--in extremely limited quantity--at $7.98 from our Bargain Books department: I have not checked the book of verse out yet, but I have perused the lovely art cards (shown above) and have just begun to whet my appetite. And even if you decide that you don't want to use the deck, you could easily paste each individual image to some card stock to make for a one-of-a-kind card to mail via snail mail. (I know that I'd love a gift card like that.)

William & Kate Paper Dolls, by Tom Tierney (the 'dude' in paper dolls), $9.99: Filled with pomp, royal style, and the hazy daydreams of many young girls ... of what it might be like to be queen. Okay, I probably won't purchase this, but you may be a hit if you get it for your nine year old who is already a slave to fashion. There are big to-do's ahead.

Berlitz Basic French, originally $29.95 now $14.98:
How often does the universe give you the big hint that your high school language classes just aren't cutting it ... that you wouldn't necessarily get the best service at a Parisian cafe what with the primitive accent that you've been harboring? (lol) J'adore la belle France! Oui!

And a fairly recent book, in the gardening section, called The New Terrarium, by Tovah Martin (author of some Tasha Tudor books) and photographer Kindra Clineff. $25.00.

... so green, so velvety green, makes me know the spring that is to come ...

... and look! you can add touches like these little geese and fox ... gosh, how cute is that?! ...

... and look at this one: classy with a touch of sassy ...

... finally, this is the one that does it for me ...

You can see that this beautiful book could very well inspire me to actually make a terrarium to showcase in the garden section ... or perhaps give as a gift.

*since 1980.
**And as we are on the midst of our annual clearance sale some of these treasures are now half off.

--Jan

The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring

2011-02-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

Continuing my mini-quest to document spectacular picture books with African American protagonists...

The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring is one of those books I stumbled upon one day, I think on the bargain shelf. It's still in print, and I was thrilled to discover that we actually carried it. It's the kind of book that is totally of its time (published in 1973) but that still shines decades later. Written by Lucille Clifton and illustrated by Brinton Turkle, it's the story of a boy named King Shabazz and his friend Tony Polito, who go through their neighborhood trying to find Spring, which grownups keep assuring them is "just around the corner."

"'Where is it at?' he would holler every time his Mama talked about Spring at home."

"One day after the teacher had been talking about birds that were blue and his Mama had started talking about crops coming up, King Shabazz decided he had just had enough. He put his jacket on and his shades and went by for Tony Polito."

Just like Ezra Jack Keats's books that I talked about last post, this story is set in an urban environment that is a major character in the story. On their walk to find Spring, King Shabazz and Tony Polito go past chain link fences and mailboxes and a bakery. "They passed Weissman's. They stopped for a minute by the side door at Weissman's and smelled the buns." Fire hydrants, street signs, other people walking the sidewalks. "They passed the Church of the Solid Rock with high windows all decorated and pretty." Here's the decision to cross a street they've never crossed before:

"Then they were at the streetlight. Tony stopped and made believe his sneaker was untied to see what King was going to do. King stopped and blew on his shades to clean them and to see what Tony was going to do. They stood there for two light turns and then King Shabazz grinned at Tony Polito, and he grinned back, and the two boys ran across the street."

They finally come to an empty lot with an abandoned car in its middle. (No Spring has yet sprung, thus far.) "Then they heard the noise. It was a little long sound, like smooth things rubbing against rough, and it was coming from the car. It happened again. King looked at Tony and grabbed his hand."

WHAT DO THEY FIND??? I'm totally not telling. You'll have to come by the Kids Info Desk to find out.

--Anna, kids

Nerdfighters in the Store!

2011-02-22T13:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,
Do you like this book? If so, you are probably a NERDFIGHTER! Don't be alarmed— this is a good thing! Go to youtube.com/vlogbrother s (John Green's youtube channel with his brother) to find out more. ♥ Your Neighborhood Nerdfighter

If this picture and note are meaningless to you, let me be the first to tell you: There are people in this world called Nerdfighters. They are made of awesome, and they fight worldsuck. They are also known to leave notes in John Green's books, since he and his brother started the Nerdfighter community via their mindblowingly awesome video blog series Vlogbrothers. See their introductory video (made long after they started to clue new folks in on all the in-jokes) here. I love when we find these notes, and I never take them out. The Green brothers started their video project as just that, a project, and it evolved into a worldwide community that has many permutations, supports various charities in creative ways, and generally reminds me that the internet has the potential to facilitate things that I love (instead of just helping me keep tabs on people who were on my elementary school soccer team and giving me the ability to know virtually any song lyrics that I forget).

And if you are a nerdfighter, two things: first, DFTBA, And second, you should know that we have multiple nerdfighters on staff, if you ever want to talk about nerdfighteria. Just saying. We might even own t-shirts...

-Anna, Kids Books

Links to John's books:
Looking for Alaska
An Abundance of Katherines
Paper Towns
Let it Snow
Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Against the Odds

2011-02-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

Against the Odds
by Marjolijn Hof

Sometimes from the outside small children appear all precious and tender and in need of protection from the terrible corrupting world. They're actually pretty complex and dark little creatures, and books that write authentically from a child's perspective about darkness often freak out adults. We forget how early and how directly kids have to face pain, and how creatively they try to rationalize painful experiences. In kids fiction, the treatment of tragedy can easily fall too far on one side of either overly sensational or too careful. But every once in awhile, (think Bridge to Terabithia, Olive's Ocean, Silent to the Bone, Missing May) a book for young readers about fear, grief, or tragedy can leave even adult readers breathless. Against the Odds is that kind of book, and it's one that will definitely creep some people out. But the way it honors the protagonist's confusing fight to regain some sense of control in her life is spot on, and will resonate with kids who have been or are in the same state of suffering.

Translated from the Dutch and coming in at a tiny 124 pages, this masterfully written middle grade novel is about Kiki and her missing father. It opens like this:

My father was on his way to a war. His suitcase was packed. He just had to say goodbye.
Every now and then he went off to a war. At least once a year. You're heading the wrong way when you go off to a war. It's better to stay as far away from wars as you can. But my father is a doctor, and they need doctors in a war. My father likes to be needed.

Within a few chapters, her father stops calling, and Kiki and her mother are thrown into the uniquely horrible chaos that comes along with uncertainty. Even before her father is officially missing, Kiki is obsessed with death. Her mother tries to calm her down by explaining the concept of "odds," meaning that the odds of her father not coming home are small. But Kiki misinterprets the explanation, thinking that if other bad things happen the odds are even better that the one thing she's really afraid of won't. She gets a pet mouse with the possible intention of killing it or letting it die (although she can't actually bring herself to treat Squeaky with anything but love), then goes back to the pet store and gets a runty, sick mouse, who does perish. She also vividly imagines her farty old dog's demise. These moments are dark and weird and will probably turn off some adult readers. But the eventual conversation she has with her mother about what we think about when we're scared or stressed, and the difference between the things we think or imagine and the things we actually do, is a marvelous thing and totally worth the ick factor. This is a dark book with plenty of humor and a consistently impressive voice, and it deserves as much recognition as the previously mentioned classic sad books.

-Anna, Kids Books

The Garden Show

2011-02-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

Every year we get excited about our participation in the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. It is a week surrounded by green: book covers and spines in all different shades of green, display gardens with elaborate landscaping and unique plants, or a whole hall full of house plants and seeds and bulbs. We gather energy in the months leading up to the show by picking out the newest and best garden books and remembering the old classics that we love to put in people's hands. The energy continues as we set up our booth, putting books on shelves, displaying gift items in pretty places, all around building a mini-University Book Store inside the Washington State Convention Center. But the real fun is when the show starts and crowds of people buzz around our booth, flipping through books and chatting and asking questions and sharing stories.

This year we are particularly hyped up for the show because we love the theme: "Once Upon a Time...Spectacular Gardens with Stories to Tell". The whole show is based off of gardens in literature! Display gardens will be inspired by classics like A Wrinkle in Time, Alice in Wonderland, Rapunzel, and the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. Even seminars will stick to literary themes. I personally can't wait for Colston Burrell's seminar called "Cultivating the Written Word: Books That Changed the Way We Garden." As a gardener and a book lover, I'm eager to hear what's on Colston's list. There will even be a "Sprout Stage" for little ones to get a start on their gardening skills and where you can find a selection of our favorite children garden books.

We hope you'll join us at the Garden Show this year, February 23-27 at the Washington State Convention Center. Come say hi in our booth, at the Sprout Stage or during the Book Signings outside of the seminar rooms.

--Anna, Events

Happy Valentine's Day World!

2011-02-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day!!

--Jan

Authors (and Illustrators) In Love, Kids Book Edition

2011-02-14T12:05:00.000-08:00

Um, have I mentioned how much the Kids Department loves themed displays? Well, the above photo is the sign for the display we've got up on the wall right now, and I'm mighty proud of it. Every year for Valentine's Day we make a display of the requisite heart-covered red and pink books, and every year we want to do something a little different. We also have a young adult fiction display of love stories and not-so-love-stories: breakup/tragedy/unrequited/singleton tales. One year there was a full display for each kind of love story (happy and sad, I mean). But we've always figured there has to be a slightly more unique take.

This year we've finally done it up right! The following pictures are from our first ever display of authors and illustrators of kids books who are also couples. Some of them (Peter Dickinson & Robin McKinley, Helen Oxenbury & John Burningham) totally blew my mind; some are pretty well-known as couples (hey Scott & Justine!). In any event, we hope you enjoy them.

There were actually way more than we originally thought.

Scott and Justine, sittin' in a tree...

Awwwwww.

Like I said, this one blows my mind. Too much talent in one household, come on!

Somebody loves YOU, Mrs. Spinelli! (And it's Mr. Spinelli, of course. And we love both of you.)

Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) & Lisa Brown

Kevin Henkes & Laura Dronzek: Their joint effort, Birds, is one of my favorite picture books of all time.

Arnold Adoff's Black is Brown is Tan is actually a poem about his and Virginia Hamilton's multiracial family (their marriage was illegal in half the country when they married), written and published in the 1970s.
"this is the way it is for us
this is the way we are"
and
"kiss big woman
hug big man
black is brown is tan"
are quotes from the book. Please come take a look at it; it makes me tear up every time.

Also included in the display: the married author/illustrator team behind Curious George (Margret and Hans Rey, who, I am not kidding, escaped Nazi-occupied Paris on bicycles with the manuscript for Curious George tucked away), The Dillons (who have been married for over 50 years!), this year's married Caldecott winners the Steads, collaborative graphic novellers Shannon and Dean Hale, the Pinkwaters, the Pinkneys, Donald Crews and Ann Jonas (and their author daughter Nina Crews), local couple Steven and Carmela D'Amico, Sarah Stewart and David Small (squeal!!!), and one couple who book world gossip says has broken up and who shall remain unnamed. Probably not an exhaustive list, but definitely long enough to remind us all that books are the best way to get a date for Valentine's Day, whether you're reading them or writing them (or illustrating them). So I guess what I'm saying is, come in and see if it works for you.

-Anna, Kids Books

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.*

2011-02-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

I have a somewhat strained relationship with contemporary fiction. This strain is exacerbated by my constant consumption of blurbs; on book covers, online, in magazines, etc. Like any prolonged exposure to advertising media, I have become sensitized to certain words, and just like my friends in graphic design school who DIE when they see comic sans or papyrus (fonts unavailable), I experience a little cringe when these words rear their heads. I think many of these words act as cues that the book in question is being marketed to a specific audience, and with a few exceptions, that audience is women. Maybe I'm obsessing, but it bugs me that reviewers and blurb-writers have this set of go-to words which, through overuse, have lost most of their potency and taken on a simplistic symbolism.

Luminous: Unless you mean that the text literally glows, or that the writing has led you into a new and brilliant realm of intellectual enlightenment, this means nothing to me.

Lyrical: What does this mean? To me, describing something as lyrical means you are compelled to read it aloud, savoring the music of the language.

Sprawling: This is a trendy way to describe a narrative that either has lots of characters, covers lots of geographical distance, has broad chronological scope, or all of the above.

Picaresque: What the dictionary says: pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people.

What this really means: you will not be offended by anything in this book. You will chuckle.

Exquisite: This is a word for table settings and jewelry.

Heartbreaking: OK, I admit I have felt something akin to heartbreak while reading a great novel. But it really takes a lot of skill as a writer to produce characters and a story worthy of this descriptor.

Breathtaking: Just don't use this word.

Evocative: This doesn't work too well unless you tell me what is being evoked.

Lush: A scene in a novel can be lush, but mostly it depends on the setting. I would like to read a lush description of a job interview set in a desert.

Muscular: Do not use the phrase "muscular prose" unless you are quoting the first person who wrote it. Its meaning has been wrung out by weak writers.

Astonishing: I imagine the face of someone who has just been astonished whenever I see this word. It is a particular expression which doesn't appear very often on the faces of adult humans.

An honorary mention goes to at once.

As in: Sprawling and picaresque, the new novel by the astonishingly muscular author of Luminous Lush is at once lyrical and breathtaking, evocative and heartbreaking. An exquisite read.

I know there are some words I've just blocked out. If you can think of more, please share them in the comments.

--Seija

*Emily Dickinson

Picture Book Valentines

2011-02-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

It's February, which means it's time for displays of books covered in hearts, lace, foil, and every shade of pink and red (and sometimes purple, and occasionally, somehow, a pale yellow). It's also Black History Month, and more blogging will be done about that, but for the moment let's take a look at this valentine business.

People often stand on one side of a love/hate line when it comes to Valentine's Day, which I genuinely don't understand. There's something that irks people about either the commerciality of it, or the sort of forced-display-of-affection thing. For other people it's a super important day and you'd better propose via ring-in-food or something, or at least have hand-strewn rose petals all over the apartment. Neither of these stances is at all appealing to me. I think the idea of the holiday is dumb and fun and an excuse to make candy-heart poems in school, get crafty with tissue paper, buy yourself flowers, or just have a really excellent dinner. I have no real emotional investment in the holiday, but like to celebrate it goofily because, well, why not? The best valentine I've gotten in my life (other than my mom's sweet handmade ones) was a big stack of boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. There's something to be said for a present that says, "I know you."

Because of where I work, my favorite valentine to give is a good picture book, because if you're going to shell out $3 on a factory card or $5 on a handmade one, why not push it to $6-$8 and get a 32-page paperback? And if you're actually into gifts, just get a hardcover. They're lovely. Here are my favorite valentines:

I Like You, by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, comes as both a mini hardcover and part of Houghton Mifflin's new "Send a Story" series, where they package little paperbacks in a way that they can be sent directly through the mail. I Like You is illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast with black and white ink sketches that move just right and make me smile. It contains things like this:

...I like you because
If we go away together
And if we are in Grand Central Station
And if I get lost
Then you are the one that is yelling for me

Hey where are you
Here I am

And I like you because
When I am feeling sad
You don't always cheer me up right away

Sometimes it is better to be sad
You can't stand the others being so googly and gaggly every single minute
You want to think about things

It takes time

Well, yes. Exactly.

Leo Lionni's A Color of his Own is a favorite of mine for storytimes as well as giving to grown up friends. A little chameleon feels lonely and different because he changes colors wherever he goes, while all the other animals have a color of their own. He tries to find a solution by staying in one place, but the leaf he's on changes colors and falls. When he meets another chameleon, older and wiser, he asks, "Won't we ever have a color of our own?" and the other fellow says sadly, no, but "why don't we stay together? We will still change color wherever we go, but you and I will always be alike."

And so they remained side by side. They were green together, and purple, and yellow, and red with white polka dots. And they lived happily ever after.

Awwww. Lionni's paintings are always top shelf, but giving a chameleon such an expressive smile is one of those picture book feats that really deserves some praise.

Tiny books make great valentines, and Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library is probably the best collection of tiny books ever. One a day for the few days before the 14th, perhaps? I've written about these before. The sturdy little box contains Sendak's Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup with Rice, One Was Johnny, and the inimitable Pierre, all in tiny hardcover. Wanna be the best valentiner ever? Get 'em in french.

Not romantic, not about love, but a little charmer we've loved all winter is The Quiet Book, by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Renata Liwska. Here are some kinds of quiet that there are:

Jelly side down quiet

Car ride at night quiet

Swimming underwater quiet

Last one to get picked up from school quiet

Top of the roller coaster quiet

Best friends don't need to talk quiet

Right before you yell "SURPRISE!" quiet

And there are more, of course. The illustrations are exactly right, that's all I can say. You really need to take a minute to sit with it, to look at each moment and find all the little details that are going to win your heart. It's a bit of a valentine because of the way the friends throughout the story spend quality quiet time together, throwing stones and reading books and hiding behind furniture. And it's on the small side for a picture book, so it feels just right in your hands as a little token of affection.

-Anna, Kids Books

Martin Luther King, Jr.

2011-02-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

This year my Martin Luther King Day post did not come together in time to go up here, which is my fault (January is a big deal in the Kids Department because of the ALA awards, which we will blog about later). What I was trying to do was give some examples of kids books that speak to his legacy as opposed to just another list of King biographies. The man was working for something a lot more complex than just specific civil rights legislation, and I sometimes wish his holiday wasn't spent mostly talking about the man himself. Since it's February now and Black History Month, it seems this post is worth putting up here anyway. If exploring King's legacy isn't a fitting way to honor the month, I don't know what would be. I think kids are best served by studying historical figures in context (as opposed to a bulleted list of biographical information), and the following resources are a great place to start.

If you want something about Dr. King, pick up KING for Kids and let him speak for himself. It's an audio CD that pieces together a couple of hours worth of speeches and sermons by Dr. King, meant to give kids and families a clear, concise introduction to the man's way with language and his core beliefs (not just his most famous quotes). For a contemplative car trip or a rainy afternoon, this sounds like a dream for a family of social justice-minded folks.

For something about the civil rights movement, try Elizabeth Partridge's Marching For Freedom: Walk Together Children, and Don't You Grow Weary. If you're looking for a book to breathe fresh air into the topic, this is a spectacular choice. Focusing mostly on the first half of 1965 in Selma, this tells in clear language, much of it quotations from interviews, the individual stories of (mostly pretty young) people who were involved in the marches and protests at the time. The book grabbed me from sentence one: "The first time Joanne Blackmon was arrested, she was just ten years old." And the facing set of four photographs are captioned: "Samuel Newall stands alone in front of the Dallas County Courthouse with his protest sign, July 8, 1964. Deputies arrested him." Two pictures show him standing, warily but proudly, with his sign. One picture shows a wall of khaki-wearing deputies ambling up the sidewalk as he watches them. The last one shows them surrounding him and taking his sign. He looks about ten years old. The book works so well both because of these great photographs, and because of its tight focus on a few individuals, following them through events as they unfold so you get an incredibly up-close view.

Another fresh civil rights nonfiction title you can grab is something I've recommended here before: Claudet te Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (now out in paperback). Did you know Claudette sat down in the front of a bus almost a year before Rosa did? She just didn't get as much political support, seemingly because her story was a little too complex to make for a poster child. If you want to read about an inspiring young activist who you've probably never heard of before, here you go. (Whet your appetite for her story with this New York Times p iece on the book and Ms. Colvin.)

This is a nonfiction book I love but never put on display, because the cover features a photograph of two men who have been lynched, and it's just not quite face-out appropriate in the kids section. It would be pretty upsetting to come upon next to the stickers and coloring books. But that doesn't mean it's not deserving of a lot attention. The title is Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America, and this is the kind of kids' nonfiction that I love for taking a weirdly specific-yet-general concept or topic and then laying out a lot of great information in a relatively short page count. This mostly covers specific historical instances of intolerance, ranging from Mary Dyer, who was hung for being a Quaker in Boston in 1660, to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, to the 1984 murder of Charlie Howard, a 23-year-old gay man in Bangor, Maine. With black and white photographs throughout, it's chilling in just the way a study of American intolerance should be.

And to move forward with hope, and put King's words into practice, there are two books from one of my favorite children's publishers, Free Spirit press: The Kids Guide to Social Action: How to Solve the Social Problems You Choose and Turn Creative Thinking Into Positive Action and the similar-sounding but different The Kids Guide to Service Projects: Over 50 0 Service Ideas for Kids Who Want to Make a Difference (sorry, y'all, I love a good long subtitle). Perfect for a family, classroom, girl scout troop, or whatever, these are the kinds of how-to books that I find a lot more interesting than how to build a birdhouse or make your own paper clock (no offense, how-to books! I just like activism more than crafts. It's not your fault, really). Headings contained in The Kid's Guide to Social Action: "How a Bill Becomes a Law," "Five Ways to Fundraise," "How to Write a News Release," "Parading, Picketing and Protesting: When All Else Fails." Inside The Kid's Guide to Service Projects: "Help Get Out the Vote," "Adopt a Grandfriend," "Help People Who Are Out of Work," "Grow a School Garden," Try Tutoring."

Now get to work, young ones. You're the future, remember?

-Anna, Kids Books

It's All About Causality

2011-02-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

There's a schedule change coming my way at the end of this month, and it's shaking up the shape of my world. I'll have evenings free, which translates to a need of things to do in the evening. I've literally never had a job that's left me with free time before 7PM. This felt like a problem until I looked at our February author events, and was reminded how awesome, varied, and (often) free our events are.

Since I like to assume that my tastes are universal, or maybe just need to make myself accessible to stalkers, I'm going to tell you about the events I'm most jazzed about. And mind you, this is the jazziest I've felt about events. While there is a steady stream of awesomeness coming down the pipeline, sometimes we have a perfect storm situation. Interests dovetail, authors rock the house with Appalachian buffets, and people admit interesting or awkward things (depending on your perspective) during their face time with the author(s). This February is just such a month.

Going in the order of release dates, which actually matches up with their chronological order, we have an event with Jamie Ford at the Bellevue Regional Library on February 3rd. The event with be an installment of the library's Meet the Author series, where he will read a passage from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, his debut novel, in addition to discussing the work that went into it. For anyone who has already read the book, which, if sales are a fair indicator, would be a lot of you, I don't need to explain why this event is well worth the potential trek over to the Eastside. For the rest of you, Jamie Ford is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet. He is a soft-spoken, down to Earth, and insightful individual that everyone should go see at a reading or literary event of some kind at least once.

The following week, we have Jane McGonigal showing up at our U-District store to discuss Reality is Broken. My love of video games is well-noted, and as you can read in my little questionnaire profile thingy, I love video games as a delivery mechanism for stories. However, another interest is in the way video games alter our thinking. While there is quite a bit that's been written about video games as an industry, this is the first book I've come across to really touch on what I'd call big picture issues in the fields of psychology or neuroscience. It's interesting to think about the way playing video games can shape our consciousness and the way we interpret and respond to our reality. In her book, you'll find scientific evidence supporting the notion that games are good for us. If you'd like to know more about how games can make us happier, more creative, and more resilient, this isn't one to miss.

Last, but certainly not least, we have an in-store event on February 17th with local author Jonathan Evison! I'm very unabashed about my fanboy-ism here, so I don't mind telling you that I totally hero-worship Evison. Which isn't to say that I've built a small altar with pictures, offerings, or burning candles. Instead, it means he's an acquaintance that I've come to admire and respect to the point of thinking he's one of the best people ever. And that's a thought substantiated by my analytical mind. You're unlikely to meet anyone more encouraging, genuine, or charismatic than him.

All of that aside, West of Here is an absolutely outstanding addition to his body of work. In this novel he shows what a truly amazing talent he is by adopting a style that will come as a shock to those who loved/read All About Lulu. It starts off with prose that feels much more in line with the early pioneers of the novel, with a story of life in an untamed land that would make Jack London jealous. Mind you, I don't say that lightly.

Part of me wants to keep this ball rolling, but there's probably enough here for you to consider. However, a short list of the events of March looks like another perfect storm month is en route. Among others, we've got T.C. Boyle (!!!), Adam Corolla, Michael Showalter, Suze Orman (my mom will be front and center), and Michio Kaku.

--Griffin

Busy whittling ...

2011-02-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

The Reapers are the Angels, by Alden Bell, is not only a staff pick of mine, but it was recently given one of the ten spots open for the Alex Award this year.* And not only that, it has just made it onto the current Philip K. Dick Award list of nominees. These are all good reasons to give this book a go. Temple, the main character, is tortured by what it means to be a good person in a world overrun by zombies. And while you may be saying to yourself that if you've read one zombie book, then you've read them all: I assure you that you have yet to become acquainted with Temple, and she will steal your heart.

I seem to be whittling my way through the current list of nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award, having just read the second in that series, The Song of Scarabaeus, by Sara Creasy. Another enjoyable read: this one personalizing environmental politics through Edie's unique view of the worlds being crafted through wet-techs like her. She's kidnapped and unwillingly paired up with a serf named Finn and don'tcha know it that the sparks fly … all in good taste, that is.

Next on my list is The State of Decay, by James Knapp. I do like to give female scifi writers the benefit of my first glance, but I feel like following this particular path for now, it is taking me to interesting places. Please join me, I'd be glad of the company. Your first assignment is to give Reapers a chance. Seija, a co-worker of mine did, and she (ask her yourself) joined me in toasting the good story in this past yuletide.

--Jan

*The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The winning titles are selected from the previous year's publishing. The Alex Awards were first given annually beginning in 1998 and became an official ALA award in 2002. Link to this page using its short URL, www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/alex.

Till human voices wake us...

2011-01-28T14:50:00.000-08:00

What's the difference between reading a book and listening to a book? If you've listened to a book, can you say you've read it? Or do you have to say, “Oh yeah, I've listened to that.” The words themselves don't change, but your consumption of them is different.

I've been listening to audiobooks ever since I can remember, when they came on cassette tapes in giant cases from the library, or sat atop their accompanying books, encased in plastic, hanging from racks in bookstores (remember those?). My favorites were Roald Dahl books, especially Matilda (read by Jean Marsh) and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (read by the author), but I also had a tape of traditional Scandinavian folk tales which were sometimes too creepy but did the trick in a pinch. After my parents stopped reading to me every night, I would put on a tape and drift off. I dreaded the jarring sound of the big black play button snapping up at the end of the cassette, and learned to anticipate it and stop the tape just in time. Listening to stories by myself, over and over again became a habit long before I began to appreciate music or movies or TV. Remember the list of books that Matilda reads (at age 4) when she first starts going to the library?

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Good Companion by J.B. Priestly
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Animal Farm by George Orwell

I will always love how Jean Marsh read that list; as though she was repeating the names of her own children. (Trivia tangent: Jean Marsh played Mombi in Return to Oz, one of my first film obsessions.)

Now I've always got an audiobook in my regular reading rotation. The last one I finished, Room by Emma Donoghue, was read by four people, including an uncanny imitator of a five year-old boy. That's my recommendation for a strangely riveting listening experience. I still haven't finished Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, because every chapter is like its own wonderful short story, and I can't stand to hear it end. My roommate came home one day to find me listening to Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Fortunately, nothing shocks her. I finished a lot of chores while listening to Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy, and was enthralled by Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders. My first encounter with Neil Gaiman happened last year, while listening to his Graveyard Book, which he narrates beautifully. And did you know that Sissy Spacek reads To Kill a Mockingbird? It took me a while to recover from hearing her read, “You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep.”

The thing about audiobooks is this: either you're hooked or you're not. My addiction seems to be particularly advanced. If I know I'm going to be taking a long drive, I start to worry about finding the right audiobook for the trip. Podcasts sometimes satisfy, if there aren't too many dishes to do or clothes to fold, but what happens when Ira Glass or Dan Savage or Jonathan Goldstein start wrapping things up too soon? Despair. I don't advise this level of dependence, but why not mix it up a bit? For the next book on your must-read list, give your eyes a break. The pleasures of being read to are not lost. Now who has my next audiobook recommendation!?!!?

--Seija

In Praise of Illustrators

2011-01-27T13:45:00.000-08:00

We just got a bag full of beautiful F&Gs. These are advance copies of picture books, so called because they are "folded & gathered" instead of bound (but I always think it sounds like a curse, like "Effin' geez!"). I was all set to do a post about my favorites, except they're not coming out until May or June, and it seems cruel to get y'all excited about books you can't lay hands or eyes on until practically summer. So I decided I'd just let you know who will have great picture books coming out in 2011, and in doing so run through their other books that we love so much. It seems like practically all my favorite illustrators will have new picture books this spring.

1. Sophie Blackall, who in my opinion can do no wrong, will be teaming up with author April Stevens for an awesome book about a baby learning to talk. Blackall's illustrations are pretty much my favorite kind of thing: straddling a line somewhere between pretty and weird, so it never gets too cute or too ugly. She's responsible for the illustrations in Ruby's Wish, a favorite of mine, and the brand new---auugh! hold the phone! I am actually interrupting myself for real, not as a funny literary device, because while I was searching for that new book's title, I just found Sophie Blackall's website Missed Connections, where she illustrates missed connection ads from newspapers. Now I don't want to finish this post, because I just want to go scroll quietly down her website FOREVER. (And oh lord she has an Etsy shop where you can buy prints of them! I mean, never mind. Don't click that. I want all of them for myself).

2. Okay, I'm forcing myself to move on. And I'll do it by going to someone I love almost as much as Ms. Blackall: Yumi Heo. She does these bright, goofy illustrations that I just love, and she'll be illustrating a picture book by one of our favorite authors around here, Lenore Look. Look has the magical power, bestowed only on a select few, of writing really authentic kids' voices. Her kids sound like kids when they talk and narrate, and they sound like real, whole beings, not just one-note quirk factories or silly aw-kids-are-sooo-funny cutie pies. This collaboration is making all of us at the Kids Desk very, very happy. In the meantime, check out Look & Heo's Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding.

3. An illustrator who we're all pretty dang attached to is Chris Raschka, of Yo? Yes! fame, whose watercolors are swoopy and wiggly and expressive, and whose text is usually superb, although this upcoming picture book will be wordless. If you want to see a bookseller get all dreamy-eyed, just ask my boss about Raschka. It's really endearing to see someone get so swoony for an artist.

4. Did anyone see Planting the Trees of Kenya, Claire Nivola's book about Wangari Maathai? If it made you want to spend a lot of time looking at pictures of Kenya's rolling green hills and bony cows and expansive sky, you'll have somewhere else to turn now. A picture book set in Kenya by Kelly Cunnane and Jude Daly is coming out, and it made me go look up everything else Daly has illustrated. Turns out she's married to Niki Daly, a fellow kids book illustrator and author. See her illustrations in Way Up and Over Everything, where everyone is skinny-limbed and graceful and the trees look like they're wearing hats. Looooooove.

Um, I don't want to stop, but I actually have to. We have to close up shop around here and I have non-digital duties to attend to. If I had more time I'd go on longer about Giselle Potter's new one (she the illustrator of the lovely The Boy Who Loved Words) or nonfiction superstar Meghan McCarthy's new picture book. She's been featured on here at least once before, with Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum. Suffice it to say, just when I think all the rad picture books in the world have been written, there are more on the horizon. So hold your breath for the new crop of picture books, or better yet, start falling in love with these artists now, so you can be as excited as we are come spring and summer. Yippee!

--Anna, Kids

Something Norwegian This Way Comes!

2011-01-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

I feel like I often start posts with something along the lines of "have you heard about this?" This time, I'm just going to say that I love graphic novelist Jason, and local publisher Fantagraphics (for doing the Lord's work and publishing his books here in the States).

While perusing the staff recommendations of a bookstore some years ago, my friend K. and I came across something that looked promising recommended by someone we'd come to trust implicitly. That something promising was Low Moon, graphic short stories written and illustrated by Jason (it's a pen name, by the by).

What immediately struck me (dare I say, both of us) was the simple, clean lines of his work. Every single line not only had a reason to be there, but it felt absolutely essential. While he occasionally makes use of color, he traditionally uses a pallet of simply black and white. His style is really, in every way, something of a shock to the system for me. I'm used to highly detailed works where artists are flexing a bit, really trying to show you what they're capable of. With his minimalist style, Jason impresses in a more understated way, but in a way that sticks with you. His anthropomorphic creations express so much with so little. Even in their failure to emote, they pull feeling(s) from you, the audience.

Appropriately, his art style isn't the only thing about Jason that makes him so distinct. His stories and the way that he chooses to tell them manage to somehow surpass the inherent beauty of his illustrations, which, in case you're skimming, is no small feat. With titles like I Killed Adolf Hitler and Werewolves of Montpellier, the former of which includes a spoiler in the title while the lattermost involves something of a werewolf battle royale in France, you can tell he's going in some fantastic directions. Even so, he manages to build worlds with rules and logic that you just understand. Aliens, Elvis impersonators, cavemen, zombies, pterodactyls, and pop culture references all fit perfectly into Jason's worlds. While at a glance the art could be seen as simple, the stories are anything but. You'll find highly nuanced short stories, collections of silly comic strips, and ultimately highly rewarding literary experiences awaiting you in his oeuvre.

As an aside, it should be noted that Jason will 'learn ya' things you wouldn't expect to learn. For example, did you know Dolly Parton originally wrote "I will always love you," a song that has been attached to Whitney Houston since The Bodyguard? This is something I gleaned from Why Are You Doing This? If you're a fan of this brand of random knowledge gain, I'd also recommend checking out the author's blog (with a name like Cats Without Dogs, how could it be bad?).

It should also be noted that much of Jason's work is brilliantly wordless. I can't stress how much I love, admire, and respect illustrators talented enough to pull off such an undertaking. As a fun little project, you should totally write a story, then convert it into a series of illustrations. While you do that, I'll be stroking this computer monitor, which is canvassed with pages from Jason's forthcoming short story anthology, Athos in America.

Oh! And to anyone who thinks they're too literary for an artist such as Jason: climb down from that horse! It's just so high. You might like The Left Bank Gang, as it features Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and Joyce as graphic novelists. They also pull off a serious robbery. Some of them die. Gertrude Stein's there, too.

--Griffin

Don't Miss This Stop!

2011-01-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

“End of the line.”

“I said, 'end of the line!'”

I finally realized that I was being addressed, looked up, and it sunk in. I'd missed my bus stop. I had missed it by a lot.

That scenario has played out only a couple of times in my career as a bookseller at University Book Store: once when I was reading the YA novel Hunger Games; another time when I was rereading the sexy vampire novel Sunshine (for the third or so time); and now. I shook my head---in humor and disbelief---and then answered the question that the driver had put to me.

“What are you reading?”

“It's called the Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, and it's the start of a series called the Kingkiller Chronicles.” And, I thought, even though the main character's name is almost unpronounceable (Kvothe), it is well worth checking out.

Pat, Mr. Rothfuss, is scheduled to appear for a book signing event at University Book Store on March 1^st, which coincides with the unveiling of his second book, The Wise Man's Fear. And I put this to you dear reader: the challenge to read his first book before that so that you can take part in this great occasion. It is bound to be an evening to remember.

--Jan

Biblio-loneliness

2011-01-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

I am far away from Seattle at the moment: Palm Springs, CA to be specific. And while the Pacific Northwest is bracing for snow showers followed by rain, the Coachella Valley's forecast is for clear skies, sun, and daytime highs in the 70s. And still, I feel a bit homesick. This has little to do with the great people surrounding me at the moment, and everything to do with the fact that there is no bookstore within easy reach.

I have plenty of reading material, or at least enough to get me through my stay--three volumes of the great Sean O'Faolain's short stories, which include some of my favorite stories ever, "Midsummer Night's Madness" and "The Heat of the Sun." But there is something about the confines of a bookstore that brings me solace when I am away from home. Seattle is blessed with a preponderance of bookshops. I could recount hundreds, if not thousands, of times I sought comfort in their walls from some travail of life. Searching for, if not always finding, a book that would console whatever was troubling me at the moment--the ever thrilling promise of new discovery. And if not something new, then maybe revisiting an old favorite, even if I could find it on my own bookshelf at home. Somehow, reading such a passage in public, in the open, made it feel more vibrant, more immediate.

My heart leaps whenever I read Virginia Woolf's climactic passage from To The Lighthouse, where James lands the boat, and his father says triumphantly: "Well Done!'" Or, in Persuasion, the letter Captain Wentworth sends Anne, love rarely rendered more passionately:

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

Five years ago, I was in Clermont-Ferrand, France to attend its Festival of short films. It was cold, snow piled into grey slushy drifts throughout the city, the sidewalks barely passable. But across from the main film venue was a bookstore. It didn't matter that nearly every volume in the store was in French (there was a small English language section), I spent most of the time between screenings there, trying to stay warm, and exploring the strange, almost otherworldly, books. I don't speak French, but I got a kick out of picking up a copy of Mark Twain or Don DeLillo, and seeing that it was translated from "Americain." Not English, American. Or French translations of H.P. Lovecraft's work, wherein the author bio on back begins, "Reclus, malade, misanthrope et éminemment matérialiste," which translates to "Recluse, invalid, misanthrope, and imminent materialist." Only in France would such a description sell books.

Last year in Palm Springs, there was a small bookshop that specialized in Latino-themed books, t-shirts, and souvenirs, but also had an eclectic, yet very interesting selection of English titles, both new and used. Isabel Allende shared shelf space with Irvine Welsh ... I mean literally, the same shelf. James Joyce, Mervyn Peake, and John Grisham were sandwiched in-between.

It has since relocated, to where I don't know. The only books I've found are at the grocery store next to the magazines, mostly mystery series and romances, neither are quite my cup of tea. In another week, I'll be back in Seattle, where I can just march down the stairs from my desk and be comforted by thousands of books, if I so desire. But till then, my biblio-loneliness persists.

-Dan, Events

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* Judging a Book by Its Cover *