Sorry for the lack of interesting posts. Baseball has been controlling my evenings lately. But I have to admit that I find it easier to read and watch the game than just to watch them. Too tense! I can’t take it. So I read a magazine (I have an ever growing pile) and watch at the same time.
Last night I brought home a book I was thinking of reading. It’s a memoir called Paper Daughter by M. Elaine Mar, who was born in Hong Kong, emigrated at the age of 5, and grew up in the back rooms of a Chinese restaurant in Colorado. It sounded really fascintating, so I started reading. And finished it. Of course I had to stay up until 12:30 to do so and am now paying for it with the yawning. She wrote about her experience being very intelligent but unable to express her intelligence at school in America. In Hong Kong, she had already learned to read, add, subtract and mutliply. But even though she knew the answers here, she couldn’t express them until she learned English. But her classmates were not welcoming. In fact, they sound like they were pretty brutal to her, calling her all sorts of names. And she also writes about race a great deal, since she became a member of a minority upon entering America. Plus there is the conflict of her growing up, becoming willful in a country that allows willfulness in contrast to Hong Kong, where the children are obedient and respectful of their elders. Elaine and her parents grow increasingly apart. She ends up at Harvard and according to the back of the book, lives somewhere here in Cambridge. This is a really fascinating account of childhood, one completely different from my own.

The lovely HarperCollins rep sent me a galley of Michael Chabon’s new book The Final Solution: A Story of Detection yesterday. I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay several years ago and found it a completely engrossing read. So I have high hopes for this book. Chabon seems to have many devoted fans too. But this book is only 130 pages long! Kavalier and Clay came out 4 years ago, so he’s had plenty of time to work on a new novel. I know he wrote a children’s book and helped McSweeney’s put together some anthologies. He’s been busy. I probably should not complain I know. Maybe he is working on something bigger? I just thought that his other books seem meatier, you know? I’ll shut up now.

It’s sad when you are reading someone else’s blog and they alert you to a really cool event happening at your own store. (In my defense, the event schedule I get is in this shitty Excel format—difficult to read) Even worse when someone on the other side of the country alerted that blogger. Apparently TEV alerted Maud Newton about the Graham Greene event we are hosting here. Michael Gorra and James Wood will start discussing Greene at 6:30 on Thursday Oct. 28th. I’ve mentioned before, we have a great schedule this Fall. So check it out here. We have stuff with Maria Tatar, Susan Orlean, Stephen Elliott, Stephen Mitchell, Billy Corgan (yes, the Smashing Pumpkins guy), Dubravka Ugresic, Ha Jin, Corey Robin and Cornel West all before the end of October.

Wordsworth now has a sign on their doors saying they are going out of business. They will be having a sale and closing by the end of the month. I think Curious George Goes to Wordsworth will remain open. But Harvard Square is losing a great store. (I take comfort in the fact that the Abercrombie & Fitch which I had to walk by everyday, closed months ago. But a new Citizens Bank is going in there. Now its all ATMs. Its right next to 2 other banks, plus a Fleet right across the street {or whatever they are calling themselves these days. Bank of America? Don’t get me started on them.} And the Pacific Sun closed too. But I miss the square’s quirkiness. Wow, this is a long aside. I should end it. Ending….now.) I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything else about Wordsworth.

If you couldn’t tell by my glowing report of David Mitchell’s visit to Cambridge, I have a bit of a literary crush on him. And today, the Independent has a profile where John Walsh visits him at home. The best part is learning that he writes in a small bare shed.