I’ve managed to read a bit in the past weeks. The new Lorrie Moore The Gate at the Stairs managed to take my mind of the pain for a while in the hospital as did Binnie Kirshenbaum’s The Scenic Route. I should probably go back and re-read portions though as the morphine made it difficult to concentrate completely. Since I’ve been out, magazines, books, and television have been my friends. Luckily I don’t lack for a supply of books or for people to bring them to me. I’m hoping to get back to the blog this week with some actual book related postings as my energy levels are finally returning day by day. Thanks for sticking with me!

I also wanted to thank everyone for the kind thoughts and tweets. I expect to be back to normal in a few more days.

I’m off tomorrow to New York for Book Expo. I’ll be meeting publicists, authors, and of course, other booksellers. It’s always exciting and I’m hoping to post while I’m there. I’ll also be on a panel called Social Media and the Independent Bookseller with several other great folks. That’s on Thursday at 2:30. Come check it out if you’re attending the day of education!

Can you spot the problem?

I’m on record as not being a fan of Amazon. I’m the killjoy always whining about supporting local businesses and the evils of the chains and Amazon. I’m not going to apologize for this. I’m not signing up for this either not just because I don’t post as often as others. I feel like I would be selling out if I signed up for the Kindle service as an independent bookseller. I understand the value of getting folks to read your blogs on e-readers, but I can’t support the Kindle, a gadget made by the company who is putting my people out of business. So there.

{Update} Check out Kat Meyer’s lengthier post about bloggers and the Kindle. She spells out some of the reasons against signing up.

There’s a cornucopia of post-apocalyptic fiction out there:

• Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
• Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake
• Richard Matheson’s I am Legend
• James Kunstler’s World Made by Hand
• P.D. James’ The Children of Men
• Philp K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North

That’s just a handful. Can you give me some others?
P.S. Check out the trailer to The Road, due out October 16th.

I liked Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi so much that I picked up a copy of Yoga for People who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It. It’s an odd but enjoyable book, hard to classify in a genre. There are some brilliant observations and wonderful sentences. Here is his description of a new friend who had the balcony opposite his:

Nick was from California and I wasted no time in letting him know that I was the author of several books, none of which was available from the English bookshop on Via del Moro. He was teaching English in Rome—but he was also working on a short story, possibly a series of short stories, linked in some way that was of no interest to me or anyone else.

Great stuff.

In Socialism is Great Zhang tells what it’s like to work at a missile factory in a job given to her by her mother. She hates her job and struggles under China’s stifling state system. At the time China was undergoing a transformation of its own, opening up its borders and making reforms. Each chapter is sort of a vignette. She details how people tattle on one another to gain favor with those higher up and how the younger generation discovers music and literature as a gateway. The whole thing makes me so glad we’re not communist or at least their version of Communism. All the piddling rules—hair must be a certain length, the standard outfits, etc–make me cringe. And how they expected people to believe the party line. It seems like such a stupid system, just nonsensical. I know it’s more complicated than this, but the whole things just makes me want to roll my eyes. Zhang works hard taking extra classes and learning languages to get out of her cookie cutter life. I’m not finished with the book but I like how she goes against the grain. She rebels against the status quo as much as possible. I’ll see how it all turns out in these last pages.

Meanwhile I’ve started Wolf Totem because I wanted to read a Chinese bestseller. Supposedly it broke all sales records and earned “the distinction of being the second most read book after Mao’s little red book“. Set during the Great Leap Forward in 1960s China, it depicts the dying culture of the Mongols through the eyes of a Beijing intellectual who has traveled to live among a small nomadic group. It took about 20 pages for me to get into it, but the descriptions of life in Inner Mongolia grabbed me.

It’s rare to find an author that makes you want to read their entire body of work. It hasn’t happened to me since reading Rupert Thomson’s Divided Kingdom a few years ago. Sometimes a book pulls you in so strongly that you can’t put it down, but how often does it make you wonder how the author crafted it and how does their writing evolve over time? Has this ever happened to you? What authors have you absolutely had to read all of their works?