Author Archives: bookdwarf

Time, She Does Fly

How can February almost be over? I’m not ready for March—it involves lions and lambs. Usually it rains here for about 4 weeks straight. Can’t wait. I’ve been reading Flying by Eric Kraft for the past week or so. It’s slow going as I have to stop to think about what he’s really trying to say after each short section. Plus I’m in the middle of the Summer buying season—7 appointments this week. What was I thinking?

Everyone should run out now and buy Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women. It’s that good. Read the Washington Post’s review. I liked it so much I asked for it to be the Signed First Edition Club pick for March.

Speaking of my store, one cool thing we started today was using green delivery. Now customers can get their books same or next day depending on where they live delivered via bicycle. How cool is that?

The Fire Alarm Post

They’ve installed a completely new and fancier fire alarm system in the building here in Harvard Square. Sounds great, except they’re testing it over the next few days. I’m sitting here with earplugs trying to work, but since I never know when the alarm is going to sound, I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I spent most of the weekend trying to catch up on magazines: Harper’s, New Yorker, Cook’s Illustrated, The Atlantic. I’m almost there. I’m savoring The Book of Night Women by Marlon James. Apparently Maud likes it too.Not that I need her validation to read a book, but she’s got such good taste in books, I like to know what she likes. Speaking of Maud, you should read her piece on her father over at Granta.

This morning at the Tools of Change conference, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed the Kindle 2.0, with the help of shill author Stephen King. The whole thing was live blogged by about a million people, but I Wired magazine has a thorough version. On a side note, is live blogged hyphenated? Anyway, the 2.0 version has a lot of new bells and whistles, some sort of text to speech thing, not to mention being smaller and lighter. It’ll even change your kitty litter! Kidding. I’m still not sure how all this is going to affect traditional book sales. Seems like it should all be open source somehow, not a closed loop format. Condalmo has a similar, if not the more elegantly expressed opinion. Is the Kindle the Betamax of e-readers?

Utah, Here I Come! or Three Things

First of all, I’m heading to Salt Lake City, Utah for the fourth Winter Institute bright and early tomorrow morning. The ABA (American Booksellers Association) began this conference four years ago as a chance for booksellers to meet each other and to learn without the chaos of Book Expo. I’m pretty excited to be going, even if I have to get up at 4:30am for my flight. The most important question of course is what books will I bring with me to read? Here’s what I’m bringing:

I’m torn right now because I’m in the middle of Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler (see sidebar) and really enjoying it. Her work is so dark! And I have to complain about the cover, which makes it look like a romance novel. The reawakening of the human race by an alien race after humans annihilated themselves is not exactly a romance.

Second, I disagree with Michiko Kakutani’s review of T.C. Boyle’s new book The Women in the Times today. She calls it dreary, a “small, cheesy paint-by-numbers soap opera”. I can’t say that I liked all of the characters in the book (yes, I know they’re based on real people but they’re still characters in a novel) but I didn’t find it either of those things. Also, why is she reviewing it now? It’s got a strict on sale date of February 10th! That’s very annoying for booksellers who have to field all the requests from customers for a book they can’t sell yet.

And finally, John Updike?! What? I’m shocked. I wasn’t aware that he had lung cancer. I don’t know what to say.

Hello 2009, Nice to Meet You.

I’m writing my first post in a very long time. It’s going to be a short one as I’m mostly linking to another blog post here, one that does a really nice job summarizing some exciting books coming this year. Max at the Millions always does a fantastic job at this sort of thing. I’m looking forward particularly to Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, and Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs. I read T.C. Boyle’s new novel The Women back in December—it’s fantastic, better than Talk, Talk. On a side note, he’ll be appearing at my store on February 11th.

Two books I’ll mention quickly. First, one of the best books I read in 2008, I didn’t read until mid-December; Philip Hensher’s Northern Clemency was the perfect ending (or nearly ending) to my 2008 reading list. The book chronicles two English families over the course of several decades beginning in 1974. There’s no straight plot, you just follow their lives. I quite enjoyed reading it. Right now, I’m in the middle of Laila Lalami’s The Secret Son. I loved Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and so far her new novel has not disappointed me. 2009 has begun with a good start!

Alive and Well

I haven’t been posting lately because I’m experiencing a sort of writer’s block. With each book I read, I sit in front of the computer but no words come out to describe how I feel about it. Perhaps it’s winter’s arrival. I’m assuming it’s just a phase.

I’m off to Atlanta tomorrow for Thanksgiving. When I get back, we’ll be well into the holiday season. I hope lots of people come looking for books! It’s one of the few chances I get to handsell on the floor. I’m planning on bringing a bunch of books to my parents. Maybe readng in a new environment will spark the critical juices again. Has anyone read The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher? I’m going to bring that one with me as well as Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. I’m not sure what to bring for a third. Happy reading everyone!

Guest Review from Mr. Bookdwarf

Diary of an Exercise Addict by Peach Friedman
It’s impossible for me to guess why some events will tip people over into despair and self-destruction and not faze others at all. Peach Friedman, a woman I’ve known since childhood, never struck me as the sort to fall apart. She was tough and smart and beautiful and then, well, it all went south.

She was graduating from college, breaking up with a boyfriend, and watching her parents’ marriage nearly fall apart, and that series of unfortunate events triggered something. Eating less. Working out more. Eating far, far, far less. Today, she’s lucky to be alive. Lucky that her disorder started when she was old enough to understand what was going on, lucky that her parents were able to assemble a team of doctors to help her, lucky that they were able to support her financially when she was too sick and too sad to work. And we’re lucky that she’s a good enough writer to tell us what happened and how it felt, and how she came back from it.

It was definitely a little weird reading a memoir of someone I know. I kept expecting to show up in it somewhere, and possibly in an unflattering light. I’m not mentioned, although when she changed the names of the people in the book, she used my name for one of them. Which is fine, because there’s plenty of unflattering to go around without me there. She does a great job describing her parents’ rocky marriage, her brother’s sleazy girlfriends, and her own sleazy boyfriends: The guy who got my name tried to pick her up in the gym by commenting that she worked out so often she probably didn’t even menstruate any more. But mostly, it’s an unflinching look at herself, at how she tried to avoid emotional risk and gain a sense of control through obsessive calorie control and compulsive exercise. If anyone is portrayed harshly in this book, it’s the author herself.

Besides, I love that kind of stuff. I love cringe-inducing, can’t-look-away detail. I love TMI. Why else would you read a memoir if not to find out the dirt? “Diary” definitely provides on that count, chronicling relapses and overuse injuries, bad sex and embarrassing fantasies, lanugo, and of course the terrible constipation she suffered as her body learned to deal with eating again.

I’m not really the target market for this book, but it illustrates in such vivid detail the process of physical and emotional deterioration and recovery that I think it makes a compelling read for anyone.

–Aaron Weber

My Taste in Books Validated!

Andrea Walker at the Book Bench noted the cover for Serena by Ron Rash. This is an excellent book, one which inspired me to write a staff recommendation:

If the intense cover alone doesn’t draw you to this book, perhaps knowing that this novel features one of the greatest female protagonists I’ve ever come across will. It’s 1929, and George Pemberton returns to the North Carolina mountains with his new wife Serena where they plan on creating a timber empire. She’s no meek flower. She rides horses like men and even trains an eagle to kill the rattlers that plague the crews. Letting nothing get in their way, they ride roughshod over everyone who crossed paths with them including partners, sheriffs, and Pemberton’s former mistress. With echoes of Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, this story of ambition and greed and revenge has haunted my dreams for weeks.

Come Meet Joshua Glenn!

I’ve long admired Joshua Glenn who wrote for the Ideas section of the Globe. His new book looks fantastic. He’s reading at the Harvard Advocate on Thursday. Details are below:
WHAT: Release party to celebrate The Idler’s Glossary by Joshua Glenn.

WHO: Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based author, editor, and former Globe columnist and blogger. Introduction by the philosopher Mark Kingwell; design and illustrations by the cartoonist Seth.

WHEN: Thursday October 23. 5 pm to 8 pm. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

WHERE: The offices of The Harvard Advocate, 21 South Street, in Harvard Square.

WHY: This little book is a great stocking-stuffer!

What to Read Next?

A plethora of interesting new books showed up on my desk today. What should I read after Olympos (about three quarters of the way through now)?

  • The Forever War by Dexter Filkins: Everyone I’ve spoken with who has read Filkin’s book has nothing but high praise. I’ve avoided reading most books about the Iraq war but this one seems like a must read.
  • Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain by John Barlow: The author lives in Galicia and decides to drive around eating hog. Sounds like a winner to me. I’ve never read Barlow before but this is published by FSG so it has to be good, right?
  • The Fires of Vesuvius by Mary Beard: I love her. She’s what I wish I could have become if I had stuck with my degree. She writes exciting prose, not the typical dry scholarly stuff that I had grown used to in school. This book explores Pompeii–what it was like before the volcano.
  • Under Pressure: Cooking with Sous Vide by Thomas Keller: Yes, I’m the kind of cooking nerd who likes to read cookbooks. Will I ever tackle sous vide? Probably not, but at least I’ll know how.
  • The Journey by H.G. Adler: I need to read more literature in translation and what better way to start than with with this lost masterpiece of Holocaust literature?
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons: Should I take a break from science fiction or continue on the Simmons path. I also have a galley of his upcoming book Drood, which explores the last years of Dickens.

I love my job.