The Cats of Ulthar, by H. P. Lovecraft

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

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain Part Two

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain

A Preview of Saturday's Dog Stories!

Dog Days of Summer!

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.

Thackeray Celebration!

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!

A Glimpse into the Inner Workings

Requiescat

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

--Usedbuyer2.0

On the Superiority of the Fairer Sex

And, yet another selection from the great Thack.


--Usedbuyer2.0

Thackeray's Dinner

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

The Age of Wisdom, by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Sorrows of Werther, by William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray Comes to Shinbone Alley

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

No Benevolences: Get a Free Copy of Twain's Autobiography!

"We do no benevolences whose first benefit is not for ourselves."

 -- Mark Twain, From the Autobiography

 

We're giving away a copy of a beautiful, brand-new book! 

We are.  We want you to have it, we do.  It's a fabulous book.  He's right, you know, Mark Twain.  We have another motive.  We want you to come to our Mark Twain event.  That's all you have to do to be the winner and get the book we're giving away.  And you'll enjoy yourself, even if you don't win the book, we promise.

Come Tuesday, November 16th, at 7PM, we will be marking the one hundredth anniversary of Mark Twain's death, and celebrating the publication of the first volume of his fully restored Autobiography, with a reading!  Extracts from the Diaries of Adam and Eve will be the main attraction.  Anyone unfamiliar with this little gem, should check it out.  (There are various versions in print, including a handsome and inexpensive Dover paperback.)  Funny, and touching, this is one of Twain's gentler spoofs of matters Biblical and the War Between the Sexes.  I'll be Eve.  Our own Matthew Simmons will be Adam.  And Brad Craft will provide the introduction for the evening, and some thoughts on Twain, and the significance of finally having his Autobiography exactly as he intended it.

Brad's been writing a bit already about the new publication, on his blog.  Check it out.  He's also posted a few pictures from our first rehearsal.  Trust me, a good time will be had by all.  It's a night of Mark Twain!  How great is that?  And remember, you might win a free book! 

To enter to win a copy of Autobiography of Mark Twain, just leave a comment on this blog post. We'll draw the winner at the event, you must be present to win. 

--Pam

The Snow Is Snowing, The Wind Is Blowing, But I Can (NOT) Weather the Storm

Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" will not be making one more venture off the bookshelf this year.  Your humble reader lives in West Seattle and can't get out.  Snow, it seems, does not like me, my tiny car, or Truman Capote.  So the scheduled reading, in Mill Creek, Thursday, December 18th, at 7 PM, won't be happening.

To anyone planning to attend Thursday, I can only offer my sincere apologies and my hope that you might find time, this busy Holiday Season, to read Capote's little masterpiece amongst yourselves.  You don't need me to make the story magical.

Maybe next year, we can try again.  Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas and sincere regrets to all our friends in Mill Creek who might have planned to come out and hear "A Christmas Memory" Thursday night.

Taking Truman Capote on the Road

So, tonight, Thursday, December 11th, at 7PM, I take A Christmas Memory on the road for the first time, to our Bellevue branch.  The question is: will anyone follow?  Never done a reading in Bellevue.  Have no idea if there will be an audience or not.  Hope so.

It's not Capote's little masterpiece I doubt.  And it's not the good people of Bellevue.  The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer newspaper listed the event in last Sunday's entertainment section -- but didn't say that this reading was at the Bellevue store!  So no one may know to go there.  So...

If you haven't heard me read this story before, and if you're at all curious, do please join me. If you don't, whoever you are, I plan to read aloud to any poor soul who happens by; booksellers, babies, random customers.  Imagine the reaction: some perfectly nice customer, looking to pick up a calendar for his grandmother (all our calendars are 20% off, by the way,) or pick up a copy of The Uniform Plumbing Code (we carry that in Bellevue too,) suddenly accosted by a strange little bearded figure, loudly imitating an elderly Southern lady, talking about "fruitcake weather!"  

I have no shame.  I'll do it, if need be.  I'll make some unsuspecting person cry, I can do it with this story, believe me, even if I have to hold said random person down, or follow them down into the parking garage (parking's free at the Bellevue store, by the way.)

Oh dear.

So spare the unsuspecting patrons of the UBS Bellevue, and come hear me read.

Reading for Reading(s) Sake -- Orwell & Dickens

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              As part of my big "Employee Shopping Days" splurge, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought two handsome volumes of reissued George Orwell essays.  Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays and All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays.  In the latter, the very first essay is "Charles Dickens," originally published, in book form anyway, in a collection called Inside the Whale & Other Essays, in 1940.  

The last time I bought a collection of Orwell's essays, just a few years back, it was in an Everyman's Library edition, in one volume, nearly three inches thick!  I still own it, for reference I suppose, but it is a 

ridiculous object; cumbersome, impossible to carry on the bus, heavy on the chest when reading in bed.  (Now there's a good subject for an essay: American-made books and their resemblance to American-made cars, i.e. the SUVs of classic literature.  Another day perhaps.)

Despite already having done one Dickens reading at the store, on his birthday in February, this year, and having done a good deal of research for that, for whatever reason, I never read the Orwell essay on Dickens.  I know I started it, but I never read it.  With the more attractive and  practical volume from Harcourt, Inc., now on my nightstand, and a reading of Dickens' "The Chimes" coming up on December 9th, I have done at last.  I'm ashamed I never did before now.  I can recommend it as one of the best things I've ever read about Dickens.

By 1940, Orwell had already seen the grim effect of orthodoxy on the socialism he uses to critique Dickens' liberalism, and Orwell's critique is no less justified or interesting because of the failure of certain premises still assumed in the essay.  And just when I'd grown impatient with Orwell and his jabs at Dickens for failing, among other things, to write realistically about agricultural workers (!), Orwell starts the fifth section of his essay with the following line:

"By this time anyone who is a lover of Dickens, and who has read as far as this, will probably be angry with me."

Now what is not to like about a critic capable of that line?  Moreover, Orwell goes on to write one of the best appreciations of Dickens' genius I've ever read; cogent, concise, and very cleverly written.

If for no other reason, I will be always grateful to Orwell for providing me with the perfect phrase summarizing the true nature of Dickens personality.   Particularly, though without specific mention of it in the essay, the Dickens of 1844, when he wrote the story that I will be reading at the store: the Great Man was, as Orwell says, "generously angry."  Perfectly said.  Perfectly true.

I hear "The Chimes" at midnight yet again...

Every year at the bookstore, I read Truman Capote's little sentimental masterpiece, "A Christmas Memory" aloud, to celebrate the Holiday Season, as we call it in retail.  Years and years ago, when I was living in San Francisco, I went every year to hear just such a performance at a bookstore there. Now that reading was given by a wonderful retired actor.  Mine, alas, is entirely amateur, if somewhat... practiced, shall we say? by now.  This has become a tradition for me and the bookstore and I confess, I look forward to it every December.  Whatever my shortcomings as a reader, I like to think, as they used to say on the "Society Page" in my little hometown newspaper about any local event other than a funeral, "a good time will be had by all."

This year's reading of "A Christmas Memory" will be Wednesday, December 3rd, at 7PM at the bookstore in Seattle, with encores at Bellevue & Mill Creek 

 (check the Reading Aloud Events Schedule for a reading near you.)  Please do come.

Additionally, on Tuesday, December 9th,  at 7PM, I will be reading Charles' Dickens' 

"The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In."  This will be a first for me.  Back in February, I helped celebrate the Great Man's Birthday with two selections from his novels, both taken from his own adaptations for his celebrated public readings.  Again, I like to think, "a good time was had by all."  (At least, no one complained to the management about the noise.) Emboldened, I added this reading of Dickens' second Christmas Book -- written the year after "A Christmas Carol," -- to my

 schedule.  The exceptionally good people in our Events Department indulged me yet again, bless 'em.

The only problem now is adapting Dickens' reading copy of "The Chimes" for an audience unfamiliar with the story.  Had I simply read the more justly famous "Carol," I need not have spent, as I have, so many long nights typing, scribbling and sweating to communicate something of the true magic and power of this lesser known work to a contemporary audience.  Dickens' didn't have this problem when he did his readings of "The Chimes."  In the first place, he was, by all reports, a truly remarkable actor and his readings of his own work were considered one of the wonders of the Victorian Age.  Oh.  In the second place, Dickens' audience knew his other Christmas Books -- he wrote five all together -- as well as they knew his "Carol."  Certainly, now as then,  everyone knows Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the rest as well as any characters in the history of literature.  But contemporary  audiences

 probably don't know this second story or dear old Toby "Trotty" Veck at all.

Well, you should.

And so, I'm up tonight again, typing, scribbling, etc., in the hope of doing justice to Charles Dickens, Toby, and The Chimes.   I won't, of course, but I'll do my best.

I hope you can come and hear the result.

I will NOT buy another book about Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, or Scrooge... okay, I did.

In the long list of Things I Intend Never to Do Again -- updated almost weekly nowadays -- there are some activities precluded by encroaching middle-age; such as dancing to fast songs, keeping up with current slang, and wearing tight shoes. I could go on, but won't. Other tasks, I've come to admit, are simply beyond me; like reading Joyce, doing algebra, and learning to appreciate the finer points of modern opera. There are tasks I undertook convinced I would do well, and yet failed to master; and here cooking Chinese food at home, baking my own bread and learning Latin come most quickly to mind. I remain resolved, regarding the above.

In perhaps no other subset of my list have I so regularly failed, as under the heading of Books I Will Not Buy. I said I'd never read another

book on Lincoln, and that even if I did, I'd never buy another, and then one of my favorite American historians, William Lee Miller, heretofore reliably not a Lincoln man, published, in 2002, Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography, and I bought it. And I read it. And it was, predictably, fascinating. Since then, I've allowed myself no more than three or four other books on the subject, but still, you see the danger of the slippery slope here, don't you? And with

Lincoln's Bicentennial coming...

And now, I've let myself go again and bought yet another new book on a subject I ought not to need or want to ever read about again: The 

Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, by one Les Standiford.

I do not need to read this story again. I do not need to own another book about Charles Dickens. I do not know Mr. Standiford or his works. But the book was pretty. The introduction, read o

ver lunch, was well written and charming. At $19.95, the book was not outrageously priced. And, for all I knew, this book might have information I might find helpful when writing my introduction for my new Christmas reading this year at the store -- December 9th, at 7PM, tell your friends,-- of one of Dickens's other Christmas Books, The Chimes, so...

Well, damn. I bought it. I read it. I recommend it.

If all you know of the "Carol" is a movie or television version, you really ought to read the novel. It is a perfect book. If you want to read a fascinating story not only of Dickens, but of Christmas and how it came to be Christmas as we imagine it now, then read this new book.

And if, like me, you intend to go on making lists, resolutions and the like, be prepared to acknowledge, as I've had to yet again, just what irresolute, weak, self-indulgent creatures we humans really are. I speak here, of course, primarily, though not exclusively I'm sure, for myself.

God bless us, every one.