Random Thoughts for a New Decade AND The Monster of Florence!

Random thoughts for a new decade...

• In the next year no ten year-old will have spent a second in the 20th Century. The United States has been at war your entire life if you are 17 years old.

• The Stanford women’s basketball coach is quoted this week: “This was a real important game for our team. I’m really proud of how everyone prepared. Everyone really knew what we needed them to do.”

She could have added “And they really came out and really did it.”

• Let’s say you are one of those people thoroughly tired of constant power outages. Let’s say you go out and purchase a home generator. I was one of those people. Once we had our generator installed we stopped having occasion to use it. It always seems to work that way.

Same goes for umbrellas, firewood, and flashlight batteries. You’ll only need these if you don’t have them. This is really how the world really works. Really!

• In the past year various speakers modified the word “unique” and this must stop in 2011. Unique is one of a kind. You can be Number One. You can’t be Very Number One.

• Take literally. If the box is literally full of writhing snakes you mean one of two things: The box is full of snakes, in which case you don’t have to add the word literally; or you mean it was AS IF the box was full of writhing snakes, in which case you do not mean literally full of snakes. Got it? The mind boggles at this point in time.

• Once again we remind you that “at this point in time” is irritatingly overstated. “At this time” is enough. This reminder brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

• Now, those newscasters who use the adverb “now” to emphasize how “live” they are must cease this in the New Year. Now I’ll hold my breath until now goes away. Really.

• On NPR this morning I heard a reporter say that defeated Senate candidate Christine O’Donnel “was refuting FBI claims” she misused campaign funds. No she didn’t. To refute is to prove something false or erroneous. She didn’t refute the claims; she denied them.

• While you are wondering at that, wonder at this: The Feds are being urged to allow increased shooting of sea lions from land or boat near Bonneville Dam in Washington. I say save the salmon: eat the rich (with a nod to P.J. O’Rourke’s book of the same name). That will also save fish.

Turning to literature, I have a book to recommend for fans of serial killer literature, tales set in Italy, and mysteries without resolution. “The Monster of Florence, A True Story” was written by two journalists, one Italian and one American, who themselves eventually came under suspicion for involvement in a series of gruesome murders.

Douglas Preston (the American) and Mario Spezi (the Italian) call their book a “true story” I’d imagine because it is impossible to know where the story is true, and where it’s fiction. The authors detail decades of investigative reporting. They uncover self-serving bureaucratic nonsense. They assess questionable evidence derived from mishandled police investigations. Both writers are fairly sure who is the Monster of Florence, but can’t finally prove anything. The police are not interested in their conclusions, and in fact have accused Spezi of being the murderer himself, and Preston of interfering in the ongoing investigation, such as it is.

Spezi spent months in prison. Preston has been effectively banned from returning to Italy by threat of arrest. He explains in an interview, “having seen the arbitrary exercise of judicial power in Italy firsthand, I’m not inclined to take the risk of going back.”

That’s Italy for you: a really, really, interesting place to fail to solve a bloody bunch of unsolved murders.


NOTES:

Slate discusses “literally”

There’s literally a blog on literally, not recently updated but fun.

“The Monster of Florence, A True Story” by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. Grand Central Publishing paperback $14.95. ISBN 9780446581271.

Interview with Douglas Preston.

Preston's home pages...Author website.

Bill Bryson has written a lot of books. He is funny and informative, in recent years more informative than funny, and that’s OK.

Seven years ago he seemed to cap off a lifetime of non-fiction works with “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” basically science from your airplane window; at least that’s where the thought first came to him. What ARE those white things we call clouds?

He had covered a lot already – England, the English tongue, the Continent, America in general and the Appalachian Trail in particular, Australia, autobiography, you name it. Then he did it again – another huge and not short history of some aspects of, well, private life. Bryson’s latest book, “At Home.”

Home, for the Brysons, is a Victorian-era “former Church of England rectory in a village of tranquil anonymity in Norfolk, in the easternmost part of England.”

We read our way through The Hall, The Kitchen, The Scullery and Larder, The Fuse Box (entire chapter on Fuse Box), Drawing Room, Dining Room, down to Cellar, out to Garden, into Plum Room, up The Stairs to Bedroom, Bathroom, Dressing Room, Nursery and finally, the Attic, where the book both begins and ends.

“I had occasion to go up into the attic to look for the source of a slow but mysterious drip,” Bryson writes. “When I did finally flop into the dusty gloom and clambered to my feet, I was surprised to find a secret door, not visible from anywhere outside the house, in an external wall.”

Bryson tries to understand the attic door and everything else in the house. “Houses aren't refuges from history,” he says. “They are where history ends up.”

“‘Have you ever noticed,’ Brian (a local archaeologist) said as we stepped into the church-yard (next door) how country churches nearly always seem to be sinking into the ground? Well, it isn’t because the church is sinking... It’s because the churchyard has risen. How many people do you suppose are buried here?’”

The answer, arrived at after a bit of calculation and estimation, was twenty thousand burials in that one churchyard. No wonder the church appeared to be “in a slight depression, like a weight placed on a cushion.”

You will learn about the Palace of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, immediately known to all as the Crystal Palace in London. Bryson describes the civil servant who conceived of it, and the deaf Duke who impulsively hired his gardener to design and build it. Add in glass making and glass taxes. We’re still in Chapter One.

Bryson’s own manse is “a more modest edifice... designed by one Edward Tull of Aylsham, an architect fascinatingly devoid of conventional talent (as we shall see) for a young clergyman of good breeding named Thomas John Gordon Marsham.”

With this book and a couple glasses of wine you can bore nearby loved ones with amusing stories: Origins of the mousetrap; dangers of nineteenth century paints; invention of cast-iron bathtubs: Hey Joselyn! What? Did you know that “porcelain enamel is in fact neither porcelain nor enamel, but (in essence) a type of glass”? The wool spinning problem. Child labor. Reverend Marsham’s relationship with his housekeeper, Miss Worm. I could go on; Bryson does.

After 450 densely packed pages Bryson returns to the attic (“It turned out to be a slipped tile that was allowing rain through.”). From a table-top sized secret landing outside he reflects, “One of the things not visible from our rooftop is how much energy and other inputs we require now to provide us with the ease and convenience that we have all come to expect in our lives. It’s a lot – a shocking amount. Of the total energy produced on Earth since the Industrial Revolution began, half has been consumed in just the last twenty years. Disproportionately, it was consumed by us in the rich world; we are an exceedingly privileged fraction.”

He ends “At Home” with this thought: “The greatest possible irony would be if in our endless quest to fill our lives with comfort and happiness we created a world that had neither. But that of course would be another book.”


NOTES:

Here’s how they figured out the number of burials: “A country parish like this has an average of 250 people in it, which translates into roughly a thousand adult deaths per century, plus a few thousand more poor souls that didn’t make it to maturity. Multiply that by the number of centuries that the church has been there and you can see that what you have here is not eighty or a hundred burials, but probably something more on the order of, say, twenty thousand... That’s a lot of mass, needless to say. It’s why the ground has risen three feet.”

“At Home, A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson. Doubleday hard cover $28.95. ISBN 9780767919388.

Wikipedia on Bryson

Bryson on Bryson and another Bryson on Bryson

Bryson quotes...

Random House maintains a home page for Bill Bryson.

Probably the most authentic home page for the author.

The Human Library.... and Afghanistan

Visit the library, rent a human... what a concept! It’s not often I come across an idea that actually appears to be new... yet, as usual, this idea is not new at all. The first recorded instance of a so-called Human Library took place about ten years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The idea is we all have stories to share. What better place to meet and spin tales than your local library or bookstore?

In Copenhagen, the idea was to “break down prejudice by bringing people of different backgrounds together for (person-to-person) conversation.” Other venues in other places have copied this concept and expanded it.

Most recently I read about a Human Library in the online news aggregator Slate, which reported that “libraries in Toronto are trying to shake things up a bit. They've stocked their shelves with something new: people.”

In Toronto, librarian Anne Marie Aikens said her event this past November drew more than 200 people who “rented” for a half-hour each a police officer, a comedian, a sex-worker-turned-club-owner, a model and survivor of cancer, homelessness and poverty, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and a 19 year-old man with cerebral palsy.

Aikens told a local reporter, “With the Human Library it’s a one-on-one experience and that kind of storytelling... does harken back to centuries and centuries ago when a story was the only way to learn. It's an old technology.”

She added, “A good portion of users heard about it from social media. In the least personal, most mediated way, they found a way to have a very personal experience.”

Funny she should say that, because as soon as I heard about the Human Library I went over to Facebook and searched for Human Libraries. I found them in Norfolk, England; Wroclaw, Poland; Terni, Italy; Tucson, Arizona; and Lismore, Australia.

Let’s try this in Mendocino! Put a name tag and bar code on my chest, and remember to return me to the loan desk when you’re finished conversing.

* * * * *

On another subject altogether: This is the week our government talks publicly about plans for the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Which brings to mind a book I just finished, “The Afghan Campaign” by historian and novelist Steven Pressfield.

It turns out that the Macedonian general Alexander, “The Great” to history, spent three years trying to pacify the same stony soil we currently are fighting over. He didn’t succeed, either, and in the end left “fully a fifth of his army... to keep the country from reverting to insurgency,” according to an historical note at the beginning of the novel.

Alexander extricated himself by making an alliance with a powerful warlord and taking as wife the warlord’s daughter. Alexander’s forts stretched over the land, but despite victories, Alexander never permanently subdued the region. He was forced to fight a tribal, guerrilla war against insurgents who would not join in traditional battles. The brutal and mysterious terrain, as always, favored local inhabitants.

“The Afghan Campaign” tells this story through the adventures of several of Alexander’s soldiers, and in the process we learn about the people of what is now Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. The tale is chillingly similar to what the US is trying to do now, and what Britain, the Soviet Union, and others failed to do.

If you’d like a ground level view of how tribal life and warfare really works, look no farther than “The Afghan Campaign.” It’s set more than 2,300 years ago, but it’s fresh as a wound, and no more comfortable.



NOTES:

The Toronto news story...

For more details about the Human Library http://humanlibrary.org/

The Slate magazine...

“The Afghan Campaign” by Steven Pressfield. Broadway Books paperback $14.95. ISBN  0767922387.

Meet the author and his blogs...

Another note on EBooks...

From an article in Bookselling This Week ...

Some bookstores are hosting digital petting zoos to introduce e-book options. Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books in Mendocino, California, combined a petting zoo with a holiday party. “We had a computer set up and were showing customers how to buy e-books from our website,” said owner Christie Olson Day. “We also had preloaded books on an iPad, iPod Touch, Sony Reader, and laptop.”

Olson Day’s aim was to demonstrate to customers not only how to buy e-books, but also how e-books can serve the needs specific to their neighborhood. “We’re out in the boonies and don’t have reliable wireless. So we highlighted that you can read Google eBooks offline. That’s really important to people here.”

Olson Day said that customers “like the idea that we’re in the e-book game and they’re rooting for us, but not many are falling in love with reading digitally.” More evidence, she said, “that print and e-books have a long future coexisting together.”

However, she believes that during the flood of publicity surrounding the launch of Google eBooks one important message was lost or confused. “Customers have heard the fact that Google eBooks are good for the indies, but they’ve missed the fact that the need to buy them from us,” Olson Day said. “You’ve got to figure that for every one person who bothered to ask how this is good for us, there are still one hundred out there who don’t get it. So we’re publicizing that if they want to support their independent bookstore they need to buy their e-books from our site.”

Democracy comes to Ebooks -- at last!

Big changes for independent booksellers this week as Google turned on their Ebooks service and made it available to all booksellers, in all formats except Amazon’s proprietary Kindle book reader.

The implications of this are truly huge – in one swoop the face of bookselling changed forever. And mostly for the good, as far as I can see.

What this means to you is that if you’ve ever wanted to read an entire book on any electronic device at all – your laptop, smartphone, Nook, Sony E Reader, IPad, name it, you now have access to more than 400,000 books for purchase from more than 4,000 publisher, plus another two million titles – yes, two million – in the public domain, these last at no cost to you whatsoever.

Of course, ink on paper is not going away. Don’t fret. It’s just one more way to read.

If you’d like to take a look for yourself, google “google books” or more specifically direct your browser here  and look around. On the first page you will see a variety of full-color book jackets and links to all the rest. Readers can access electronic books directly from Google, or use the talents and suggestions of a favorite bookstore and order the same books from them.

All of these Google Ebooks are available from any device connected to the Internet. Browse, choose, pay if required, download, and begin reading. Since your book resides in the “cloud,” not on any particular computer, you can break off and continue reading on the same or any other available computer or phone.

For example, you might download to your computer a copy of “The Best Spiritual Writing 2010" edited by Pico Iyer and Philip Zalesky. Maybe at home you have time to read the introduction and the first essay. Later in the day, at lunchtime, you resume reading for a half hour – to do that you log in on whatever computer is in front of you. Later that evening you want to read again, this time on your wife’s new IPad. Log in and that book and any others you’ve download will be waiting for you. Google remembers what page you were reading. Preferences for type size and line spacing are preserved. As time goes on you begin to appreciate Google’s free and unlimited storage space.

You can read offline on most devices, except your home computer. Google’s working on that, too.

From what I have heard and seen, independent booksellers are excited to offer Ebooks to readers who previously had to search elsewhere for them.

Many readers, of course, are cautious. One wrote, “I'm not a huge fan of Ebooks. Few reasons, one of them is I just don't read enough, I couldn't justify the cost of buying a dedicated device. Also, I'm one of those people who still buys CDs, because I like to have the physical copy on my shelf.”

Another reader said, “Ebooks that can't be given away to a grandchild 50 years from now are not a deal. That is my largest issue with them. I shouldn't have to ‘hack’ an e-book format to use it ‘like a book’ in 5 or 50 years.”

Another said, “If it's a book I figure I'll only read once, I typically go for a hard copy that I can then give to someone else.”

On the Lifehacker site someone named CV posted: “Physical books are conversation starters. E-book readers? Not so much. I will strike up conversations with total strangers if I see them holding a book that's intriguing. It's similar at home (mine or someone else's). You can look at someone's bookcase and figure out a lot about a person...

“I have one shelf full of travel guidebooks to places I have been. Sure, the electronic versions are great while you're out on the street (looking at a smartphone or iPod doesn't tip anyone that you're a tourist), however, there's a satisfaction of occasionally glancing at that shelf which triggers memories of those trips. Those are things you can't replace with electronic books.”

CV concluded with this thought: “I would love to have electronic copies of all of my cookbooks. That would come in handy for searching.”

Of course, right now there are some gotchas, glitches, and shortcomings. But it’s a start, and kudos to Google for helping democratize the emerging universe of electronic books.


NOTES:

All this is very new, and there are shortcomings. For example, what should a reader do when the price of an Ebook on the Google site differs from the price on a favorite bookseller’s site? Or worse, when an Ebook featured on Google is nowhere to be found inside a bookseller site? This last happened to me just now, and it’s frustrating. But I trust these kinds of things will be fixed soon.

If you’d like Google’s help figuring all this out...

Here are links to some of the early crop of articles on Google’s new service:

Mashable...    Bloomberg...  Christian Science Monitor...

Fast Company...   Literary Agent Andy Ross...   Bookselling This Week...

YouTube videos:
(Independent Bookstore McClean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Minnesota) and Ink, Pulp & Caffeine...

Lifehacker...  

New York Times: “The Google e-bookstore is an outgrowth of the Google books project, an effort that began in 2004 to scan all 130 million books in the world, by Google's estimate. Scott Dougall, Google's director for product management, said the company had scanned about 15 million books so far.”

Home Again

Vacation is when I have time to read, especially when vacation takes place on the slow-moving isles of Aloha. Tony, you say, you are retired and all, so what are you talking about, “vacation”?

Since the late 14th century English has used the word “vacation” to mean “freedom or release from some activity or occupation.” This kind of freedom is difficult to maintain, I’ve found. Leave the back door unlocked and Life walks in with jobs of work that no one gets paid to do. Get the groceries, clean the garage, fill the driveway potholes –  “do the do” as Joselyn says.

I prefer to visualize the underlying Latin word “vacare” which translates to “be empty, free, or at leisure.” That I can do. As long as I don’t join another non-profit Board.

When in the state of “vacare” I have uninterrupted time to read big books for big pleasure. On this “vacare-ation” I spent quality time with several such, all worthy of your precious time.

I started with “Night Soldiers” by Alan Furst, then moved on to Steven Pressfield’s “The Afghan Campaign,” and finished with the new Bill Bryson brick, “At Home: A Short History of Private Life.”

“Night Soldiers” was a great place to begin. It took me away from the sighing waves and basking green sea turtles to a more difficult world, a world about to suffer World War. When I arrived at the final pages I sighed with an audible “wow” of pleasure, relief, excitement, satisfaction; wishing, of course, that the book could have gone on much longer than 456 pages.

Furst calls “Night Soldiers” “a panoramic spy novel” probably because it covers many pre-war years and a vast swath of territory, from Siberia to Brooklyn. The first sentence:

“In Bulgaria, in 1934, on a muddy street in the river town of Vidin, Khristo Stoianev saw his brother kicked to death by fascist militia.”

The ensuing story takes Khristo from his village on the Danube to Moscow, where he is trained by the Soviets to be a spy and a soldier. He fights in revolutionary Spain, is captured in France, finds perilous freedom in Paris, and finally arrives in America. We share consciousness with Khristo as he gradually figures out his place in the world.

Early in the book a Soviet recruiter befriends Khristo: “He was quiet for a time. Somewhere out on the river, in the distance, was the sound of a foghorn. When he spoke again, his voice was sad and quiet. ‘...Do not waste your time with grief. It is a great flaw in our character, our Slavic nature, to do that. We are afflicted with a darkness of the soul and fall in love with our pain... Here, in this town, it will go on. You will not survive it. They murdered your brother; they must now presume you to be their mortal enemy, very troubling to keep an eye on...”

“Night Soldiers”, first published in 1988, may be the best of the uniformly excellent Alan Furst novels. It’s not as singularly focused as some of his others. This book goes to more places, with more characters and more adventures, than most of his other books. There is time here to consider the old Ottoman empire and postwar America, too.

If Alan Furst sounds interesting, you could well start with “Night Soldiers.” It’s the first of Furst’s spy/intrigue/historical novels, setting up the qualities of time, tone and place for the dozen or so that have so far followed. Happily for readers, some of the characters introduced here reappear in later books.

As for Bill Bryson and Steven Pressfield... well, I’m back from vacation, or vacare, and I’ll get around to these guys in future essays.

NOTES:

The Online Etymology Dictionary

Alan Furst’s “near history” novels:

Night Soldiers (1988) Random House paperback $15. ISBN 9780375760006.
Dark Star (1991)
The Polish Officer (1995)
The World at Night (1996)
Red Gold (1999)
Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
Blood of Victory (2003)
Dark Voyage (2004)
The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
Spies of the Balkans (2010)

Sailing on the Sea of Books

When I was a bookseller, buying new books for an independent bookstore, I could imagine the world of publishing – all of it, from the largest corporate media sites to the smallest presses – as an impossibly vast ocean I had to somehow navigate. It was my job not only to discover the most interesting ships sailing those waters, but on behalf of potential readers it was my work to filter out the trash and plastic bits to end up with a bucket or two of new books – books worth the hard-earned money of potential readers.

There are way too many new books published for any one person ever to read, or to hear about in the first place. The reader must cultivate exquisite taste or waste precious dollars on the wrong books.

No part of this filtering process is easy. It’s not easy for writers, who must ponder their readers as well as their own navels. It is not easy for publishers, who stake fortunes on the net sales of a short list of new titles. It is not easy for book reviewers, who must decide what to review. It is not easy for booksellers who cannot waste a single square foot on books no one will purchase. And it certainly is not easy for you, readers of all ages, who are the ultimate judges of what gets read and what discarded.

Then there is the question of what happens to books once they’ve had their run on best-seller lists, their initial spurt of publicity and promotion. Do they continue to sell out of the small print at the back of publisher catalogs, or do they fall to bottom feeders on the floor of this ocean of books, where for 99 cents you might take a chance on a book published ten years ago and long forgotten?

I’m thinking about all this because publisher Globe Pequot is reenergizing one of those somewhat forgotten books and republishing it this month as a movie tie-in.

The film is titled “The Way Back.” It comes out in January with director Peter Weir, based on a book of similar name, the 1956 memoir titled “The Long Walk” by Slavomir Rawicz.

“The Long Walk” was first published in England in 1956. It’s a thrilling story of escape which may or may not actually be true. With the help of a ghost writer Rawicz recounted a grueling 6500 kilometer trek from the wartime gulags of Soviet Siberia across Asia to rescue in India in 1941.

“The Long Walk” in its day sold a half-million copies worldwide, in more than twenty languages. When I came across it some years ago I reviewed it here, and still recall the powerful ending. Six starving escapees, after an unbelievably difficult eleven months hiding and walking, stumble into accidental rescue by a wartime Gurkha patrol high on the Indian side of the  Himalayas.

The odds against any book ever reaching your lap or your Kindle or your Ipad, Nook, computer screen, CD player, bookstore or library are enormous.

The ones that get through most often tie-in with movies, with big cultural turning points such as elections or wars. The ones that get through are more likely to be written by established authors, or new celebrities. These potentially successful books may concern hot button issues, or controversial theories. They may purport to change your life if you simply do this. Or do that.

Maybe it has always been this way. When books were written for monks and aristocrats few regular people had any chance to see such rare objects, let alone consult one. Now that books exist in every possible form at every price point, do the best rise to the surface? How does a book find you? How do you discover the one odd book you will love? How do you do that two times in a row?

There will never be one simple answer to these questions, fast as times are changing. All useful questions to ponder, I think.


NOTES:

“The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom” by Slavomir Rawicz. Lyons Press/Globe Pequot paperback $14.95. ISBN 1599219751. Also available in hard cover, electronic and audio versions. This edition will soon have a movie tie-in cover.

In 2004 a group of adventurers retraced “The Long Walk,” documenting changes to environment and society in the past 60 years, and bringing along medical supplies for remote communities. Some of their story is on their web site.

Wikipedia collects a lot of information about “The Long Walk” and its author(s)...

YouTube trailer for the film “The Way Back”

RopeofSilicon has more information and the international trailer.

My book review from April, 1998.

What We Say When We Have Nothing Much to Say

Tomorrow I’m due at Mendocino High School to (quote) “talk about the process you go through to develop your pieces.”

You caught me at a good time, I’ll say, because it’s a good day to write. It’s raining outside, the Giants’ game hasn’t started, and the computer’s working again.

Blank screen, nothing particular to say. It’s a universal problem for writers. In my case, I have to be interesting for five minutes and about 600 words.

When I’m truly at a loss, I look at the online news, where the GoogleNet tirelessly searches on my behalf for the word “books,” wherever it may be found.

I get news of library BOOK sales in small towns. In Zurich, “Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB on Thursday posted a 25 percent drop in third quarter net profit although order BOOKS grew strongly.” The Omaha Fire Department BOOKS are inadequate. GM is moving to clean up the BOOKS before its highly anticipated public stock offering.

It’s depressing how many journalists or headline writers use the term “one for the BOOKS” when describing a Music Hall of Fame induction, dissension in the world of social networking, or the hundreds of people who showed up for one entry level librarian’s assistant job opening in Tacoma, Washington. That, too, was “one for the BOOKS.”

At this stage, kids, I peek at the bottom margin. Hey, we’re 80% of the way to the bottom of the page. Things are looking up, and that’s certainly one for the BOOKS.

When I’m in this nothing-to-write-about mood, something small will get me started. When the mood strikes I can rant for two full pages and often do. Note to aspiring writers: Rants write faster than almost anything else. Book reviews take time. Research takes lots of time. Coming up with one new thought? You don’t want to know how long that takes.

The odd thing is, people respond. I’m startled when something that didn’t take long to write elicits praise. All I did was open the door and watch what straggled through. You enjoyed standing there with me? Fantastic.

Looking over past scripts, I can spot the ones that began with nothing. They started with a news item, or a couple of news items. Something someone said touched me off. I passed on some stuff someone else had the wit to write first (always with attribution, of course).

Once in a while writer’s despair drives me to delve into personal history. It’s interesting to describe what life was like before some of you were born, before Ronald Reagan, before Bush One for that matter. Back when movies were shown in palaces, tomb-like fastnesses where your sneakers stuck to yesterday’s candy. Back when radios were furniture. When it was a big thing to have mom take you by the hand and walk you to the local library. One’s own story is inexhaustible, and sometimes it interests others, too.

There. I’ve filled two pages with today’s version of nothing much to say.

Then there was the story in the current Publishers Weekly about two guys who have developed “A New Model for Fiction” through their start-up publishing company Electric Literature.

“For hundreds of years,” one of them writes, “the best way to transmit complex information was to cut down a tree, pulp it, stain symbols onto the flattened pulp, bind it together, and distribute it. Industries grew to support that process...

“Text, on the other hand, only becomes more useful with technology. After all, digital text is easily searchable, linkable, and shareable... Memoir can include home movies, photo albums, and perfect copies of diaries and letters.”

I feel a rant coming on. Except we’ve already got five minutes in the can, and, well, there’s always next week.


NOTES:

Wow – 727 words an hour? Sorry I went over the speed limit, occifer.

Electric Literature was launched in 2009 by Scott Lindenbaum and Andy Hunter.

All Pledge Drive All the Time

When this edition of Words on Books first hits the airwaves, on Sunday morning, sandwiched between Oak & Thorn and This American Life, you will have experienced nine days of our Fall Pledge Drive.

We’ve been barking at you, pleading, joking, and otherwise encouraging you to make a move on your wallet and give us a call. At this point maybe it’s time to step back and consider why we go through this exercise two or more times a year.

KZYX runs on a model first successfully used by the listener-supported Pacifica Foundation in the years following World War II. It worked then, and it works now.

Pacifica’s goals have always been “to encourage and provide outlets for the creative skills and energies of the community,” “to contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors” and “to promote the full distribution of public information.”

It’s startling to many listeners to discover a radio station that is owned, administered and paid for by the listeners themselves. That is what Pacifica does, and that’s what we do here. It’s true democracy in action, and that always has been our goal – to free at least one radio frequency from the almighty advertising dollar by depending instead on the free will donations of people who find freedom of the airwaves important in their lives, and important for their community.

KZYX has a different history from Pacifica – we’re much younger, for one thing. This station began to take shape more than 20 years ago when community radio enthusiast Sean Donovan arrived here to beat the Mendocino bushes for the earliest supporters of Mendocino Public Radio.

Pacifica began in 1946 when Lewis Hill, a conscientious objector, and his like-minded friends founded that educational, non-profit organization. Three years later they went live and Berkeley station KPFA hit the air. That single station, not without many difficulties, grew and the idea spread. Right now, there are about 100 stations affiliated with Pacifica, and many more that broadcast Pacifica-based productions including such great ones as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now.

Excellent as Pacifica is, we do things differently here. On our web site you can find this: “We are a hybrid of sorts... we are not just community radio (radio that encourages volunteer programmers and focuses almost singularly on locally relevant news and information) nor are we just public radio (professionally produced commercial free radio). Instead we are a combination of the two: we feature some of the finest Public Radio programs available and we have over 100 local volunteer programmers.”

That unusual combination – Pacifica style and National Public Radio style – sets this station apart from most others; certainly apart from Jefferson Public Radio to the north, which steers away from controversy, offers no local news and minimal local programming. To top that off, they repeat many shows rather than use available hours for additional programming.

In light of commercial radio, and unsatisfactory Public Radio, we have managed to create something here that is precious, and like many precious things, something fragile, too. We don’t depend on grants, although government money helps. We pay the bills the same way you pay yours – by digging deep, asking for help when we really need it, and economizing everywhere.

The physical plant is a joke – in the sense that pros from larger stations can’t help but chuckle when they contemplate how we work with aging equipment, tangled wires and a distinct lack of sleek offices to impress — who?

Yet you know we make it work. We succeed because you give a damn about radio in general, and this station in particular.

Finally, let me tell you a true story. I have a friend who doesn’t listen to us much any more because the radio in her car broke several months ago and she can’t afford to replace it.

She told me this week she is giving KZYX a donation to help us carry on. I don’t know how to characterize that kind of generosity, but I sure know how to appreciate it.

As the Fall Pledge Drive comes to a conclusion, and afterward, it’s a very good time for you to add something to what you’ve already given. If you haven’t joined and pledged yet, this is your moment. Let us hear from you.


NOTES:
The Pacifica mission statement.

troth [trawth, trohth] -noun 1. faithfulness, fidelity, or loyalty: by my troth. 2. truth or verity: in troth. 3. one's word or promise, esp. in engaging oneself to marry.

Plugging Friends

Today we are NOT going to discuss Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s new book of essays “The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist,” based on the author’s 2009 Charles Eliot Norton lectures. We are not going to discuss this book because this reviewer, like the proverbial book worm, is in the middle of it, chewing through close-packed ideas, a few pages at a time; contemplating, not for the first time, what it means to read novels and to write them.

“The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist” will interest serious writers, and anyone who reads full-length fiction. Pamuk derives his title from a famous essay by the 18th century philosopher Friedrich Schiller, where the terms “naive” and “sentimental” were used to describe opposing points of perception.

But today we are NOT going to discuss the work of Orhan Pamuk. We are instead going to plug our friends – not shoot them, pleasurable as that might be, but plug them as in give these writers some well-deserved mentions.

First there is the inestimable British writer John Biggins, who with “The Surgeon’s Apprentice” has shifted his attention from historical novels set during the First World War to “The twenty-fifth day of December in the year of Our Lord sixteen hundred and ten: the Feast of our Blessed Saviour’s Nativity.” “The Surgeon’s Apprentice” is available in electronic form from the author, and printed on-demand, if you demand it. I’ve read the first few chapters, and “The Surgeon’s Apprentice is first rate: as amusing and intriguing as his previous novels starring Otto Prohaska, lieutenant in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Submarine Service (yes, this once actually existed).

Then there is “El Sereno” by local poet and author Jay Frankston. This is a full length, well-researched novel set in Spain. With “an authentic background of strife, epidemic, civil war and dictatorship” “El Sereno” tells the story of those dedicated and somehow mysterious men “who walked the streets at night in the old sections of all the major cities of Spain.”

Then there is “In the Last Days of the Empire: Watching the Sixties Go By on Greenwich Village Time, A Bartender’s Tale” by Sam P. Edwards. For anyone seeking a vision that absolutely reeks authenticity, especially if you lived through the 1960s in the United States, this book brings alive the era through poetic visions and stories. It reads like this: “to invitation-only volleyball games on campus/with academic poets/punctuating their aspirations with deft spiking of ambiguity/while ‘On the Road’ put ambition in perspective/ at least of the ordinary kind, teaching me to savor the experience of back alleys without pretence...” The book also is available as an audio production with jazz music from the era and selected famous voices from those times.

Then there is Boonville writer Bruce Patterson, author of “Walking Tractor & Other Country Tales” a memoir of farming and logging in the Anderson Valley. This month he returns with the sequel, “Turned Round in my Boots, a Memoir.” Both books are published by California’s highly esteemed Heyday Books.

Then there is the new young adult novel “Steinbeck’s Ghost” by Lewis Buzbee. I met Lewis some years ago when he would arrive in Mendocino to flog the latest titles from Chronicle Books. Lewis was writing on the side and published his first novel, “Fliegelman’s Desire,” while still a sales representative. A few years later he wrote “The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop” which featured a precious few pages set in Mendocino’s Gallery Bookshop.

Buzbee’s most recent novel is “Steinbeck’s Ghost,” written for young adults. “What will Travis do,” the cover asks, “when characters from books start appearing in his real life?”

I don’t know what Travis will do, but I have the opposite dilemma – not characters from books, but books from a great number of characters. The mailbox is bulging and it’s all a bit overwhelming, but also I am grateful to all these heroic wretches tapping out new sentences on old computers. I admire all of you, and hope I’ve helped find you a few new readers for your remarkable books.


NOTES:

“The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist” by Orhan Pamuk. Harvard University Press hard cover $22.95. ISBN 9780674050761.

“The Surgeon’s Apprentice” by John Biggins published by John Biggins Fiction. Paperback $23.99 ISBN 9780956542328. Ordering information on John’s website.

“El Sereno” by Jay Frankston. Whole Loaf Publications paperback $19.99. ISBN  9781450050715.

“In the Last Days of the Empire: Watching the Sixties Go By on Greenwich Village Time, A Bartender’s Tale” by Sam P. Edwards. Eureka Productions paperback $14.94 ISBN 9780557485680. Also available as a download through Lulu.

“Turned Round in my Boots, a Memoir” by Bruce Patterson. Heyday Books paperback $18.95. ISBN  9781597141444. More information on “Walking Tractor” and “Turned Round in my Boots.”

“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop” by Lewis Buzbee. Graywolf Press paperback (out of print but available online) ISBN 9781555975104.

“Steinbeck’s Ghost” by Lewis Buzbee. Square Fish (Macmillan) paperback $7.99. ISBN 9780312602116. “It’s been two months since Travis’s family moved from their shabby old house to a development so new that it seems totally unreal. There’s one place, though, where Travis can still connect with his old life: the Salinas Library...”

Joe Louis

That’s quite a book, I said to my wife Joselyn as I finished “Joe Louis” by Randy Roberts. Not a great book, I corrected myself, but a great story.

Joe Louis reigned, and that is the right word, as heavyweight boxing champion of the world from 1937 to 1949. Roberts writes, “He had come up from desperate poverty, made millions of dollars, walked down the avenues of America like a god, and heard his name praised from New York to California. Joe Louis, the champion of the world. He had been the most written about and talked about athlete in America, maybe anyone in America. There could be no encore, not even a second act, to his life in the ring.”

Yet Joe Louis lived another thirty-two years, dying in 1981 of a heart attack the morning after watching Larry Holmes outpoint Trevor Berbick at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Saying little, protected from scrutiny both by the press and his own handlers, Louis became a symbol like no other for people of color. One black editorialist said early in Louis’ career, “What he is doing as a fighter will do more to show up the fallacy of ‘inherent inferiority’ of Negroes than could be done by all the anthropologists in the nation – so far as the ears and eyes of the white masses are concerned. One flash of his mighty brown arm is a better argument than a book... He will be felt where no sermon ever would be heard.”

White sportswriters in the 1930's painted Louis in the grossest racial stereotypes. The black press saw him as a symbol of the fight against oppression, and as an oppressed man himself, despite the success and the money.

The story of great black fighter Jack Johnson still resounded when Joe Louis began his run of victories. Jack Johnson kayoed all comers, “great white hopes” included. He flaunted his white girlfriends and wealth. “In victory, Johnson had probed the live nerve of American racism,” Roberts says. A unanimous white establishment then disbarred, discredited and discouraged Johnson and his supporters.

When it came to Joe Louis, from the start his handlers carefully crafted a largely silent, heroic figure, the very image of a bold fighter who said little and never* lost, a piece of clay Americans could shape into whatever statue they needed.

Louis’s career was chronicled exhaustively in the press, and Rogers relies mostly on press reports to create his story. Perhaps the author was unable or unwilling to interview people who knew the champion. The result is a book crammed with incident but set oddly at a distance from Joe Louis himself, the largely unknown person behind the persona.

Even as told from ringside rather than inside, Roberts has a magnificent story to tell, one deserving to be pondered and contemplated. Why was Joe Louis so important to so many people? How did he survive the virtually unanimous racism and become at last a hero to all Americans?

Roberts suggests the answer: “More than any man, any force, of the generation, Louis confirmed full black equality – even, some asserted superiority. In the ring he did not ask for respect or equality; with his fists he demanded and received it... Louis exerted a powerful appeal, symbolically expressing African Americans’ struggle for equality and deep-seated yearning for a settlement of past injustices...”

Jackie Robinson, setting out to be the first black player in white professional baseball, said “I’ll try to do as good a job as Joe Louis has done...”

Joe Louis defended his title more than 25 times, 22 by knockout. “No heavyweight (had) defended his title more often. Louis had defended it seven times more than the previous eight champions combined.”

At the funeral, held in a ring at the Sports Pavilion of Caesars Palace, the Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “We are honoring a giant who saved us in a troubled time... With Joe Louis we had made it from the guttermost to the uttermost; from the slave ship to the championship. Usually the champion rides on the shoulders of the nation and its people, but in this case, the nation rode on the shoulders of the hero, Joe.”




NOTES:

“The reverend Jesse Louis Jackson (named Jessie for Jessie Owens and Louis for Joe Louis) continued: God sent Joe from the black race to represent the human race. He was the answer to the sincere prayers of the disinherited and dispossessed. Joe made everybody somebody... Joe, we love your name... We all feel bigger today because Joe came this way. He was in the slum, but the slum was not in him. Ghetto boy to man, Alabama sharecropper to champion. Let’s give Joe a big hand clap. This is a celebration. Let’s hear it for the champ. Let’s hear it for the champ! Joe, we love your name. Let’s give the champ a big hand.”

From the book: “In a fitting irony,Joe Louis’ carefully manicured, noncontroversial image became the centerpiece for the loudest cry for racial justice and set the tone for the later civil rights movement.”

“Joe Louis” by Randy Roberts. Yale University Press hard cover $30. ISBN 9780300122220. Published October, 2010.

Google “images for Joe Louis” to see Google’s very large collection of images of Joe Louis; or try this address.

Wikipedia’s Joe Louis entry.

* During his heyday, Louis lost to German Max Schmeling by knockout (1936) in the 12th round; in the return match Louis KO’d Schmeling (to the great chagrin of Nazi Germany) in 2:04 of the first round (1938). Overall, Joe Louis lost three professional fights: Schmeling (1936); Ezzard Charles (1950) and Rocky Marciano (1951). Louis “retired” and relinquished his title in 1949. The Charles fight was for the title he had given up; the Marciano fight was the last of nine non-title fights of which Louis won all but the last. His final record: 65 Wins (51 knockouts, 13 decisions, 1 disqualification); 3 Losses (2 knockouts, 1 decision).

Italy's Last Stand

A friendly sales person gave me a pre-publication copy of “Palmento, A Sicilian Wine Odyssey” by Robert Camuto, knowing I roll over for anything Italian.

Taking careful note of new vocabulary, following the author’s travels on a map of Sicily, I joined the journey. Caution: If you’ve read one too many Words on Books on Italy, stop here.

OK. Now that we are alone:

“Palmento” is not only an account of wineries visited and wines tasted. It’s also a tale of people, the widely various individuals the author encountered on that storied island.

At table with a winemaking family Camuto says, “I noticed that Rosa Aura was studying me. There was discussion in Italian about me – who was I and where was I from? After all, I lived in France, claimed to be American, and had a Sicilian name? I explained, in Italian, that I was born on Sicily’s westernmost island.

“‘Pantelleria?’ Bruno said.

“No. Manhattan.”

The wine story Camuto tells begins in ancient centuries with Greek and Phoenician settlers. It moves forward through Roman times, years under Arab rule (they grew grapes, too), feudal times, and modern Italy. In recent centuries young Sicilians often left their island for better lives elsewhere. Vines withered, farms decayed, and few locals prospered. It has only been in the past 25 years or so that abandoned ‘palmenti’ or old-fashioned hand-press wineries, have been restored by people ambitious to make something new and wonderful from the high volcanic soils of Mt. Etna and the grape growing weather found almost everywhere in Sicily.

Camuto’s adventures take him through places such as Palermo and Corleone where he encounters stories of the Mafia and those courageous souls who resist the Mafia.

Camuto meets Sicilians whose ancestors worked the land; others he meets arrived more recently. He encounters biodynamic and natural growers, others who insist on solely native grapes and yeasts. A number of winemakers import refrigeration, stainless steel tanks and additives in search of an internationally palatable result. No matter the philosophy, some wines are great, some not so much, as it is in all wine regions. The scene is evolving quickly.

Not all these Sicilian winemakers are male. In the chapter Due Donne, or Two Women, and in fact throughout the book Camuto meets interesting, independent women. Some have degrees or mainland experience in winemaking. One works the vines and creates the wines; another directs an enterprise. Each succeeds despite prejudice and resistance. Each in her own way is amazing.

“I didn’t do it for the money. I’m not making money,” (one) says. “I did it because I loved the land... it was the land speaking.”

Arianna Occhipinti, 26, who farms a contrada called Fossa del Lupo (Wolf’s Ditch) does not struggle with the media, the market, or faraway customers, Camuto notes. “Her difficulties have been with farmers in her neighborhood.”

One of her workers “said to (her) in a Sicilian dialect, ‘Listen, my son went north to work and he is a man. And you who are female, what do you want to do, stay here and work in the countryside of Sicily? Go north and you will have some hope!’”

Arianna stayed, with her family. She grows solid grapes and good wines, and her Sicily is changing once again.

So much for the wine. Then, there’s the food... Oops, no more time. Read this book! “Palmento, A Sicilian Wine Odyssey” by Robert Camuto.


NOTES:

“Palmento, A Sicilian Wine Odyssey” by Robert V. Camuto. University of Nebraska Press hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9780803228139. Published September, 2010.

The highly tasty and “official” book trailer for “Palmento” is on YouTube:  Camuto reads from his book at a book signing.

Camuto writes, "Yet it seemed to be only a matteer of time before -- like much of the rest of Italy -- it would lose something. I thought of the bridge that would connect Sicily to the Italian boot and the continent and an endless supply of fashion outlets, fast food, and doubt.

"Sicily, I thought, is Italy's last stand. In Sicily's heart, I thought, she must know this."

The conversation continues...

Last week we started a conversation with Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. We continue that chat now.

I asked Christie “How's your level of confidence, and what are your expectations, generally speaking, going forward, for the independent bookselling industry?”

She replied, “Regarding the future of independent bookselling, I think the only sensible answer is, ‘I don't know.’ Anyone who says anything else is just pretending. I don't mind taking some guesses, though, and of course I'm professionally obligated to place my bets and take my chances.

“I'm betting that there will be thriving indie bookstores 20 years from now.  How many? I'm not sure. But I'm doing my best to make sure Mendocino ends up with one of them. Indies have prevailed against big-box bookstores in the print-book business. (I know, it might be a little premature to declare a definitive victory, but I'm pretty confident on this.) I think we might just be able to pull off the same David-versus-Goliath miracle in e-book land if we can stay in the fight long enough.

“The American Booksellers Association is, right now, working out an agreement that will make a huge selection of e-books available through your local bookseller. The challenge will be to raise awareness of the fact that you don't have to go to a giant corporation to get your e-books. We haven't done a good job of this so far. Most of our customers have no idea that e-books have been available on our website for two years now, and the selection is going to get exponentially better this winter.

“I'm encouraged by the fact that people keep opening bookstores, and local governments actively recruit them. I'm encouraged when I see people realizing that locally owned businesses are the backbone of our communities. I'm encouraged by movements like the 3/50 Project (Pick 3 stores. Spend $50. Save your local economy.) I'm encouraged by the fact that there are still absolutely awesome indie record stores out there, even in the age of iPods.

“I get discouraged by readers' expectations that e-books should cost almost nothing. I wish people understood that most of the cost of a book comes from production of the content, not the object. I think the biggest danger to the culture of reading, right now, comes from the pricing pressure exerted by amazon on publishers. There's never been good money in writing, publishing or bookselling; folks did it because it was good work, and with luck and hard work you could scrape by, financially. If the price of a book is $10, it doesn't matter whether it's printed or digital; professional publishing will be dead in the water. And if you've ever read an unedited manuscript, you know that's a great, great loss.

“About the only thing that makes me really angry in the business is the predatory, dishonest, destructive tactics used by our big-business competitors, particularly Wal-Mart and Amazon. They're villains, pure and
simple. They're bad for our communities and our culture, and before the changes wrought by the Reagan administration they would both have been broken up under our anti-trust laws.

I asked,  “Is it still easy to find people who want to work in a bookstore, despite the well-known drawbacks such as modest compensation? Is it true everyone must have a PhD to be considered?

Christie said, “It's encouraging that so many fantastic people do still want to work in bookstores. No, you don't need a PhD ... you don't even have to know a whole lot about books before you start. You do, however, have to WANT to know a whole lot. And you have to love, really love, people. We have some of the most talented, creative, committed people you can possibly imagine. They care SO MUCH about this work.

“Best part of the job? I never, ever, wonder if what I'm doing is worthwhile. Thanks for asking!”


NOTES:

Christie recommends “Barry Lynn's excellent book, ‘Cornered: the New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction,’ about consolidation in retail and the government's re-interpretation of antitrust laws under Reagan.”

“Cornered” by Barry Lynn. John Wiley & Sons hard cover $26.95. ISBN  0470186380. Paperback $16.95, to be published by Wiley on January 18, 2011 ISBN 0470928565.

Here’s a bit I had to leave out of the script above for lack of time:

“Recently we had a really remarkable experience with a local student who worked for us over the summer. Celeste Fox-Kump was our first-ever Youth Summer Intern, working in the store between her 7th and 8th grade years.  She went through an introductory program, learning a bit about many different aspects of the business. She was so capable, enthusiastic, hard-working, smart, and YOUNG, her presence brought a burst of energy to the whole operation.

“With any luck my own kids will qualify for the same program when they get
to middle school. The only thing I can say about balancing work and family life is that families need a homemaker. Obviously I don't think that the mother always needs to fill that role, but it IS important and necessary work.  So any family in which both parents work demanding full-time jobs is going to face a challenge. You have to either hire a homemaker or share that third job between you, which can lead to some spectacular disagreements. (Not in our house, of course. I'm speaking in generalities.) In our case, it's nice that the kids can share in both our jobs. Collin has his dad as a teacher this year, and both kids spend plenty of time at the bookshop.”

Taking a Bookseller's Temperature, Part One

It’s time to get out the old thermometer – the oral thermometer, please – and take the temperature of at least one local bookstore. This week I talked with my friend Christie Olson Day, who became the owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino when she bought it from me, four years ago.

Gallery Bookshop has a long and proud history. From about 1962 and for many years after it was run by Betty Goodman, a former children’s librarian with a love of literature. She named the store “Gallery” Bookshop because it was half a gallery, half an art supplies store, and half a high quality bookstore with emphasis on art books of interest to students and teachers at the Mendocino Art Center.

When I came along in 1980 Betty was ill and ready to sell the store to someone interested in preserving it. I managed not to fail in the first few years as I learned the business. Later, we grew and prospered. We opened Bookwinkle’s, a children’s bookstore, later expanding to the corner of Main and Kasten streets and incorporating everything into one big bookstore.

By 2006 I had enjoyed my own long run – after 26 years the store was doing fine, but I needed time to do new things for the rest of my life. Almost magically, Christie Olson Day, who had worked in the store for nine years, through the birth of two children, sent me an uncannily  perceptive email.

“Tony, if you ever think of selling the bookstore, can we talk?”

That was in March, 2006. By September that year we had signed papers and Christie was the new owner. She’s doing great things with Gallery Bookshop. It’s full of energy and great books.

I thought it might be time we talked together for publication. The rest of this Words on Books is Christie’s responses to my questions. It continues next week..

First question for Christie: “How are you doing as the owner? How's your work, all aspects. Joy? Sorrow? Boredom? Challenge? Intensity? Learning things?”

And she answered: “Boredom?  Boredom?  Hahahahhahahhahah. Never. I always said that going to work in the bookstore was one of those rare dreams that actually lived up to -- exceeded, in fact -- all my expectations. As in: ‘Working in a bookstore seems like it would be great.’  And then ... IT WAS. The work was so compelling that I wanted to buy the store. And lo! Just as interesting. Much, much more difficult, of course, and it's just getting
harder.

I asked, “How's your level of confidence, and what are your expectations, generally speaking, going forward, for the independent bookselling industry?”

Christie said, “It's getting harder for just about every local business, and particularly retail, and particularly retail bookselling. Where to start?  The recession has been incredibly challenging for Mendocino businesses. We just have to keep doing more, and doing it better, to keep our customers.

“I mean, Shakespeare on the Mac(Callum) House lawn? I love it, it's fabulous, but inns don't have to do these things in boom years. For us and other bookstores, it means more & better events, more outreach, new public relations projects, building a more extensive online business, and anything else we can think of to keep our communities engaged. Customer service has also become a high-wire act.

“For bookstores (and other businesses with intense big-business competition like pharmacies, florists, hardware stores) there's an awareness that one tiny mistake is all it takes to lose a customer to that big box store or giant online operation.

We’ll stop here for lack of time. Next week Christie talks about the future of independent bookselling, family life, e-books, readers’ expectations, and a lot more.


NOTES:

Visit the bookstore...

They have written a short history of the store.

Ban, Burn or Read?

Two observations today interrupted my already wandering trains of thought. (Can trains wander, I wonder?)

A school boy walked down a local sidewalk holding a book in front of him. It was a school text, and he was totally absorbed in reading it.

Later an oversized, overweight guy wearing a Blackwater t-shirt climbed into his Hummer and drove off in a cloud of burnt premium.

I really liked the first image: Young boy reads book. I really hated the second one: Guy in military-style vehicle displays logo of corrupt mercenary organization.

I jumped to moral conclusions without a conscious thought, and you might have done the same. Most of us mortals live in a world pre-colored for us by experience and assumptions.

These depressing thoughts bring me to the issues of book banning and book burning, both of which were clearly in evidence this week. Preacher Jones in Gainesville, Florida, called off his planned incineration of copies of the Quran.

And as of this writing, Defense Department officials were in negotiations to purchase and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of “Operation Dark Heart,” written by Anthony Shaffer, former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. The D of D wants to ban the book, basically burn it, because, according to an internal memo, publication “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security.”

Too bad about that, military guys. “Operation Dark Heart” already has been distributed to reviewers and finished copies have been purchased by reporters and others. The book will become famous now that it’s been targeted.

Just the very thought of government suppression inevitably will make any available copies hideously expensive on EBay and similar sites. People will seek out this book who otherwise would have ignored it.

Most attempts at destruction of the printed word end up like that. Preacher Jones said he planned to burn a holy book, and even that was enough to create worldwide anguish and anger.

In light of this it is hard to credit a photograph on the news at the moment. It’s a picture of Preacher Jones shaking hands with imam Muhammad Musri, who is president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida in Orlando. Clearly reconciliation, even forgiveness, can be achieved at the very moment of confrontation. If these two embraced and forgave, anyone can.

According to history books we Westerners crusaded all over the early Muslims, then fought them to a standstill at the gates of Vienna while inventing the  croissant-shaped pastry which, when served with butter and jam, is one of the best results of a war ever.

Later we invented America and pledged ourselves to freedom of speech and religion. A US mosque is constitutional in any location, even New York city.

It’s easier to read books than burn them, and a lot healthier for everyone.


NOTES:

“Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan and The Path to Victory” by Anthony Shaffer. Thomas Dunne Books hard cover $25.99. ISBN 978-0312612177.

Scott Shane of the NY Times: Military Seeks to Buy 10,000 Copies of Book of Secrets
published September 9, 2010.

Scalding Hot Coffee and Comfortable Cups of Tea

Reader Jane Martinez from Brooklyn writes, “I would like to point out how enjoyable are the Brunetti mysteries by Donna Leon. I picked up on them because I will be going to Venice and the Veneto for the month of September. I always like to read some fiction set in the area in which I will be traveling... (Leon) (develops) her main characters, many of whom return in subsequent tales, but I am fascinated by the Brunetti family itself.

“I cannot decide whether or not I like to have a series,” she continues. “On one hand it is entertaining to get to know the characters and wait eagerly for more of their adventures (for example, the “Outlander” series by Diana Gabaldon). On the other hand I get too involved in reading all the books that I have missed and do little but read until I am caught up.”

“I do little but read until I am caught up.” Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Jane, I know the feeling. I once spent an entire summer on the family couch reading every Freddy the Pig story I could find in the West Portal branch library in San Francisco. I have been thanking the late Walter R. Brooks ever since for showing me how much fun total immersion can be.

Then there are the novels of Patrick O’Brien. I came to these seafaring tales long after other friends had praised them for years. Once started I could not stop, and the high quality of these books never falters. O’Brien never hits a wrong note. The series begins with “Master & Commander,” which introduces the enduring characters Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and ends with number twenty, “Blue at the Mizzen,” and that might have been it, but in fact there was a wee bit more: When O’Brien died ten years ago, three chapters which would have begun the 21st novel were found neatly arranged on his desk. The manuscript plus a sketch for a deadly duel was posthumously published as “The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey.”

When an author is capable, the characters rich and interesting, there is every reason to continue enjoying everything that author cares to produce. There may be disappointments along the way; no running back scores a touchdown every time; but when authors get on a winning streak we follow in awe, eternal fans.

Over here I have a knee-high stack of novels by the British/American author Bernard Cornwell. That stack recalls a heck of a lot of entertaining reading. Cornwell tends to group his books into small series set in, say, medieval Europe, or the Napoleonic Wars. Several novels – yes, another series – take place during the American Civil War, others concern King Arthur. Very few of Cornwell’s books are one-offs – he tried a modern setting with “Scoundrel,” bringing in the IRA, CIA, British intelligence, gunrunning, and a bit of marine surveying. It is so easy to turn his pages.

When I want to get lost, to dive in to some books and stay underwater for a while, I want a reliable series – Wilbur Smith comes to mind; so does Isaac Asimov, Robert B. Parker, John Mortimer, Conan Doyle, and so many more. I take these authors with me on airplanes, trade them with other fanatics, read them repeatedly. They keep me up at night and wait for me when I have ten minutes to spare.

This week I enjoyed a truly excellent novel, “Fame,” by German author Daniel Kehlman. His nine connected short stories add up to a beguiling novel, funny and poignant. Kehlman has one other novel to his name, “Measuring the World,” which has won prizes and been translated into more than forty languages.

Readers like (and the literary world requires) scalding hot coffee from challengers like Kehlman, but readers also have an appetite for comfortable cups of tea from writers who entertain with a recurring cast of characters. It’s a reality show, a soap opera, a set of  sequels; it may be the same book written twenty different ways; we make it our own, and we love it.



NOTES:

Too many books and authors mentioned here to identify them all with prices, publisher and ISBN. Everything mentioned above is in print and readily available. Go get hooked!

I apologize for not mentioning YOUR favorite authors and series. Leave a comment and let us all know...

Kwei Quartey and John Le Carre

OMG as we like to write on the Intergoogle. Omigawd, it has been hot around here for what – two days? Now we have the cooling fog, the ocean breezes, and we laugh at the people melting in their huts in the real California, located just a few miles inland from here.

This week I was immersed in a murder mystery set in Ghana. “An absolute gem,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Move over Alexander McCall Smith,” shouts Kirkus Reviews.

“Wife of the Gods” is new in paperback by first-time author Kwei Quartey. I do not know this author personally, but somehow he managed to send me an autographed copy inscribed “To Anthony Miksak, Wishing all that’s good.” How could I not read his book?

And I enjoyed it very much. The publisher promotes it for “fans of ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ but then every new International Cozy is compared to McCall Smith’s novels set in Botswana, starring Precious Ramotswe. Precious by now has starred in a dozen books, solving many crimes and misdemeanors and improving the quality of life in her country.

Kwei Quartey has created an intriguing lead character, Detective Inspector Darko Dawson of the Criminal Investigations Department.

A beautiful young woman has been murdered in the local forest between the towns of Ketanu and Bedome. There are suspects, too many of them. We have rumors and indications, leads and wrong leads, witchcraft and faith healing, traditional practices, family secrets. Secrets that come back to slap you in the face if your name is Darko Dawson.

“Wife of the Gods” is one English translation of the age-old practice of Trokosi, and this practice is central to the story. Young girls are given by their families as wives to a local fetish healer. Once in his compound they never leave. According to the author, “The Ghanian government and NGOs... decry the practice... Traditionalists are in favor of the tradition and deny that slavery is involved.”

Also last week I ripped through another espionage thriller by the pseudonymous John Le Carre, titled “A Most Wanted Man.” It’s interesting to compare these two adventures, one a debut, the other maybe the 22nd in a revered pantheon of successful novels.

John Le Carre, David Cornwell on his British tax returns, explores his well-known urban territory – government sponsored spy craft, international espionage, faltering bureaucrats, do-good charities, a conflicted private banker, several individuals each with at least a spark of heroism. In “A Most Wanted Man” everything revolves around one mysterious Muslim boy, a refugee named Issa.

Issa has Chechen roots; he has been tortured in Russia. He can hardly speak, yet somehow he has sufficient moxie and enough cash to bribe his way to Hamburg, Germany, in search of his father’s inheritance. When he gains it, he gives it away. Various government agencies hunt and hound    him. Issa is a potential threat because his situation is so amorphous. Is he connected to terrorists, or simply a boy in search of his patrimony? No one, friend or enemy, succeeds in fully understanding him, and in a Le Carre novel that is a most dangerous situation.

The astonishing, surprising, ending reminded me of the slamming denouement of Le Carre’s novel “Absolute Friends.” Le Carre admires the power of anti-terrorism forces and abhors the assumptions that underlie their actions.

The lands in which these two authors place their novels  – forest paths or city streets – could not be more diverse. Yet the underlying landscape is very much the same. Few characters see things clearly and fewer still have the power to set things right. Everyone is flawed. No situation is free of secrets and doubts.

It is likely we will have many more mysteries from Kwei Quartey. His next, due in 2011, is titled “Children of the Street.” African culture and its contradictions will provide endless adventures.

Kwei Quartey was raised in Ghana. He trained as a doctor and settled in California. His biography notes that “when he was eight years old, Kwei began to write short novels that he bound by hand with colorfully illustrated cardboard covers.”

I doubt David Cornwell ever did that, but how would I know?

NOTES:

“Wife of the Gods” by Kwei Quartey. Random House paperback $15. ISBN 9780812979367.

“A Most Wanted Man” by John Le Carre. Pocket Books paperback $9.99. ISBN 9781416596097.

John Le Carre has a website.

Alexander McCall Smith has one too. And African music. 

Kwei Quartey can be found here along with scarey music.

Pondering E-Ink

Scenes from a brief vacation...

A young woman is deep into her Kindle, peering into its gray e-Ink screen while perched on a deck overlooking some of the most spectacular mountains in Canada’s Banff National Park. We’re chatting with a family nearby. “I still prefer ‘real’ books,” the main reader in the family declares. Her husband calls over to the Kindle person to ask if she likes her toy. “I love it, really love it!” she says.

I stand there holding a digital camera. A few years ago I would have had film  in it. Stuck between book and book machine. Which side am I on? Do there have to be sides? Can’t we all get along?

I admit it would be easy to carry Canada guidebooks in electronic form. Pro: Much less weight. Con: No color photos. Same with novels we brought along to read in between staring at beautiful lakes and receding glaciers.

I love electronic things, but I also like to touch the pages I’m reading, bend the spine, use an old receipt for a bookmark, write my name in it, give it away. I like those things about paper books a lot, but I remember how I once turned to my Random House Unabridged Dictionary every day, and now it’s simply a piece of dusty furniture on a lovely rotating wooden stand, cluttering my office.

On the way home to Mendocino we stopped for a visit at Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco. This cozy store is owned by Neal Sofman, an acquaintance from bookselling days.

When I first entered the biz, Neal Sofman was a big deal. With his partners he had a hand in bookstores in Cupertino, Larkspur, and San Francisco.

Four years ago Neal was forced by local conditions and partners wanting out to give up his last bookstore, A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books on Opera Plaza in San Francisco. He came out of the sale with enough money to open another bookstore in the city, this time in a great part of town and minus the messy partnerships.

He told a reporter at the time “I love the new neighborhood -- people keep sticking their heads in the door asking, 'When are you opening?' It's a mixture of old and young people, families, little children, teenagers. There are a number of restaurants right on our block. We have 300 square feet in the back of the store that we'll use for book clubs, workshops, and community activities.”

Neal’s dream is alive. On our brief visit we were gratified by everything we saw – the location, the selection, the intelligent woman working the counter, the many browsers, including a family with children.

Following the maxim “never leave a bookstore without a book” I picked up the last copy of “Helmet for My Pillow, From Parris Island to the Pacific,” a war memoir by Robert Leckie, first published in 1957. Leckie enlisted into the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor, and fought in the Pacific through a number of horrific and eventually famous battles. He lived to become a prolific writer on US military history.

Leckie’s book was one of the main sources for the recent TV miniseries “The Pacific.”

As we walked down the street to our car we passed an empty storefront, windows whitewashed, a big FOR LEASE sign in the window. It had been a Waldenbooks outlet. Remember Waldenbooks?

Waldenbooks was an early bookstore chain, later absorbed by Borders. Along with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com these behemoths at one time intended to take over the book business and drive out the independents.

Such things did happen, to a degree. Times got tough for many bookstores, and many disappeared. But now we are on the downslope of that decades-long wave. Many small bookstores survive and prosper. Barnes & Noble is for sale, their sales dinged by the rapid advance of electronic books and e-readers.

Who knows? Maybe the chain stores can’t stand stiff competition. Below-the -radar outfits like Bookshop West Portal thrive in neighborhoods everywhere. That story definitely is not over yet.


NOTES:

Bookshop West Portal, Your Neighborhood Bookstore

From their current bookmark:

“Books are keys to
     wisdom’s treasure;
Books are gates to
      lands of pleasure;
Books are paths
      that upward lead;
Books are friends.
      Come, let us read.

      Emilie Poulsson

Books, Books, Books...

I’ve picked up and put down a surprising number of books this summer.

Some I read all the way through and enjoyed, but so far they haven’t made it into this show. Others trailed off at various places... the book was disappointing, not what I wanted at the moment. Or simply not engaging enough to compete with all the other books clamoring for attention.

I had high hopes for the latest Alan Furst novel, “Spies of the Balkans.” Furst has supplied many hours of intensely enjoyable reading in his previous works, all set in Europe in the years before World War II.

“Spies of the Balkans” resembles these, but it’s as if Furst took this one off, as the great composer Beethoven was known to do. Someone once pointed out that Beethoven’s even-numbered symphonies tend to be less fraught and majestic than the odd-numbered ones.

In this latest Furst, set in Salonika, Greece in 1940, Costa Zannis, policeman in charge of “special” cases too delicate for ordinary police treatment, gets involved with a woman helping Jews escape from Berlin. This leads to fear and suspense, good vs. evil, and the usual assembly of flawed characters.

It adds up to... well, an interesting book. But I’ve come to expect more from Alan Furst – novels crafted so intriguingly well they equal the best of the genre, from John LeCarre to Graham Greene.

“The Cello Suites, J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, & the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece” will interest a broad range of music lovers. Eric Siblin has done original research on the history of these Suites for Solo Cello, and discovered a world known previously mostly to scholars. If this book is for you, you’ll know it the moment you spot the beautiful cello embossed on a black jacket.

I tried, I really tried, to get through “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” a novel set in coastal Japan, 1799, as seen through the adventurous eyes of a Dutch trader. It’s well written, dense. Fans of highly literate historical novels will spend many happy hours diving into this nearly 500-page book, even if I didn’t.

“Seaside Dream Home Besieged” is the combative personal story of how a new home on a bluff near the town of Elk in Mendocino county came finally to be constructed. Author Ted Berlincourt and his wife Margie fought six years through county and state agencies and stiff local opposition for the right to build. It’s a necessarily one-sided view of a struggle that years later still has people not talking to each other. Those who opposed the construction have yet to write their side of the story as convincingly. In the meantime, “Seaside Dream Home Besieged” is compelling documentation of convoluted coastal politics.

That leaves a tasty pile of books I can’t wait to dive into. Jonathan Franzen, author of “The Corrections” will publish his novel “Freedom” in September. Then there’s another large one, “The Passage” by Justin Cronin, which appears to be just the kind of thriller I’m looking for this summer.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen,” edited by Susannah Carson, is the perfect accompaniment to “Pride & Prejudice” which I’m currently reading at the rate of one short email a week, provided by Daily Lit dot com.

Right now I am reading “The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge” by Patricia Duncker. Others awaiting their turn include “In the Shadow of the Cypress” by Thomas Steinbeck,“A Life Worth Breathing, A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing” by Max Strom, and “The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing” by Tarquin Hall.

Not to mention some used books I picked up recently: Michael Chabon’s “The Final Solution,” “HarperCollins College Outline: Music Theory” and “Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy” given to me in person by English writer and friend, Jan Needle.

Need I say more? It’s time to read a book!



NOTES:

“Spies of the Balkans” by Alan Furst. Random House hard cover $26. ISBN 9781400066032.

“The Cello Suites” by Eric Siblin. Atlantic Monthly Press hard cover $24. ISBN 9780802119292.

“The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” by David Mitchell. Random House hard cover $26. ISBN 9781400065455.

“Seaside Dream Home Besieged” by T. G. Berlincourt. Trafford Publishing paperback $19.99.
ISBN 9781426904783.

“Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus & Giroux hard cover $28. ISBN 9780374158460. Publication date September, 2010.

“The Passage” by Justin Cronin. Ballantine Books hard cover $27. ISBN 9782345504968.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen” edited by Susannah Carson. Random House hard cover $25. ISBN 9781400068050.

Daily Lit   “Minutes a day of great reading in your inbox-100% free!”

“In the Shadow of the Cypress, A Novel” by Thomas Steinbeck. Simon & Schuster hard cover $25. ISBN 9781439168257.

“The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge” by Patricia Duncker. Bloomsbury USA paperback $15. ISBN 9781608192038.

“A Life Worth Breathing, A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing” by Max Strom. Skyhorse Publishing hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9781602399808.

“The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing” by Tarquin Hall. Simon & Schuster hard cover $24. ISBN 9781416583691.

“Wagstaff the Wind-up Boy” by Jan Needle, illustrated by Roy Bently. Back to Front paperback $12.99. ISBN  9781904529415.

One of the best sources to search used book titles and purchase them is ADDall  (“Book Search and Price Comparison – Be smart: don't buy any book without comparing the price.”   You also can also use them to search for new books.

The used books mentioned above were purchased at Eureka Books in Old Town, Eureka, California.   “...one of the last classic antiquarian bookstores on the West Coast, offering books and ephemera in all fields and price ranges.”

Laughing at Fate

Spend just a few precious moments with the daily newspaper and suddenly it becomes clear. We’re doomed.

Page One starts out OK: It’s opening day at the fair. But then we have Growing fears US may face deflation, Study sees mass migration to the US. No wonder people skip the morning paper in favor of Facebook.

British Petroleum has exiled their CEO to Siberia. McCartney plays the White House. The Austrian Governor of Cally-Fornia issues a budget warning. San Diego bans offshore boozing on personal flotation devices. No more Floatopias.

This morning I received an emotional letter from Lafayette Books in the East Bay. Owner Dave Simpson wrote, “Dear Friends, It's Monday and I'm in the bookstore, it being the last Monday we'll exist in the traditional ‘brick-and-mortar’ sense. We're very excited about our new life on BIG BLUE, but for many of us – staff, friends, family, and customers alike – it's a time of extraordinary poignancy.”

Rent was raised, sales fell past break-even and Simpson was forced to shrink his excellent store to fit inside a renovated bookmobile. A sadly familiar story in recent years, except for the bookmobile.

Simpson writes “Since 1963, the Lafayette Book Store has been a center of literary activity and a community center where people come to browse books, ask for recommendations, meet their neighbors, and cultivate relationships with our charming, intelligent staff... with the closing of the brick-and-mortar I worry that the talisman will be lost and the community that's gathered around the bookstore will dissolve.”

Simpson adds, “Together we can prevent this from happening! ... the VERY best way to keep this sense of community is to join us on Facebook.  We have a Lafayette Book Store page and also The Bay Area Bookmobile page.”

Really? When your local bookstore goes down, you save the situation by friending it on FaceBook?

“We'll be active there with our schedule of appearances, announcements of author signings and events, and as always, our book recommendations (and you can offer your own!). Come join the conversation!”

Dave, I feel for you and for the community you’ve served so well. I’m happy I can still find you online and in your new bus. That’s all good, but tell me how is Facebook any kind of substitute for what we’re losing here?

Pretty much every US bookstore is already on Facebook, whether they are “real” or just an address. Those real life readers, the brick and mortar ones who supported you with their time, dollars, and love. Now... well, maybe they’ll friend you on Facebook.

I have trouble imagining that as any kind of good news.

In June the small town of Willits in Mendocino County lost its favorite bookstore, Leaves of Grass. Their web site forlornly announces they’re open Monday through Saturday 10-6, Sundays 12 - 5. But the phone is disconnected, the books are gone, and owner Rani Saijo has moved on.

Back in May she wrote, “Changing times have made it impossible for us to keep going. Thank you to all our friends & supporters for these wonderful years!”

However, we do have a birth to celebrate. This summer KZYX’s own Loretta and WDan Houck opened a bookstore in Boonville, named Laughing Dog Books. “Come! Sit! Read!” Congratulations!

I’m sick of bookstore obituaries. Let’s cut it out, people. Support your local independent bookstore today, and tomorrow, and again next month, too. I still prefer to find my bad news in the daily newspaper, where most of it isn’t so personally painful.


NOTES:

Lafayette Book Store, 3569 Mt Diablo Blvd Ste E (next to Postino Restaurant)
925-284-1233   mail@lafayettebookstore.com  

Laughing Dog Books

LDB on Facebook