Oh hey! Look what's on it's way...

That's right. It's almost time for the Storytime at Left Bank Books Easter Egg Hunt.

Saturday, March 30th at 10:30am, in case you are wondering.

This year with Storytime - because when the audience speaks, I listen. Even when I have no idea what they are saying.

New in the Stores: Decomposition Books

Okay, so I'm crazy happy about these Decomposition Books. Partly because of the retro-remembrance of the name, and partly because - are you joking? These are fantastic.

All of the journals are made from 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, they all have fantastic covers and lots and lots of pages. Lots of pages - even the pocket sized journals are no slouches. Because, I'm sorry, but I hate that - Big Gorgeous Cover, Tiny Number of Pages.

I think I may love the Topographical Map cover the best. It has graph paper pages. It's the kind of journal that can make any jaunt around town into an adventure worth tracking. And there's that protractor and compass nostalgia again.

Traveling in one spot

Finished Population: 485 just now. Even read the extra stuff at the end where Michael Perry talks about himself in the third person but you can totally tell that it’s him writing it because who else would care about not being able to polka or have the nerve to write ‘bad hair trifecta’ about anybody else’s person in the biography at the end of their own damn book. And then the excerpts from books that I now must read and am really kind of down that I haven’t before as he was in the storenot all that long ago and maybe I could have fangirl’d over him a bit. And I like fangirl-ing a bit.

Thing is, I read this book because I picked for my reading group this month. The one where we read travel-writing. And while we will go back to the ladies driving cars places theme for April (which is a theme that I’m so totally into that I almost think we oughta just go ahead and read all of those that we can find because I love being a lady driving a car places and I love reading about ladies driving cars places. (I grew up in a family that traveled a lot in cars, well, usually one car, but sometimes there were funerals and we would go and then there were lots of cars cuz no one puts the cemetery in the town – that’s just lazy hygiene. There are trips that I’ve taken that lasted 7 days that are more meaningful than entire months of chaotic living without one wheeled trip anywhere.) Car travel makes sense to me; I understand the speed. If I could get to and maintain that speed without fossil fuels I would feel better. And trains – I love the train. It is even better than driving because of no pulling off the road to open the doors and pee in private (note: if you can’t pee in a field you are missing out on a fundamental human experience, and I recommend that you fix that missing element in your life. Because it is elemental and if it is not there then it is definitely absent.) and I’m hoping that the next time I spend the night on a train I am not groggy from too much travel and also not motion sick in the morning. I’d really like to be as awesome at train travel as I am at car travel. I wonder how many books there are that are ladies driving cars places. But not stupid ones about coming to terms with road sweat and dust complexion and air conditioning cotton mouth and all the newbie stuff. There’s gotta be more out there than by Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Edith Wharton. Well, if there’s not, those books are good for some re-reading. All of my travel-writing is built in notes about mileage and gas and what food was eaten and there are leaves and brochures and unlabeled photographs. It is hardly the stuff of legend, only the stuff that makes me who I am.) this month we read Michael Perry’s book about not traveling anywhere and I have to admit that I’m hoping my reading group will be understanding.

It’s not like he doesn’t travel anywhere, it’s just that it’s almost all in service of being on the volunteer fire department and having a pretty strong stomach is a good thing for this book. Which is wonderful. I have mentioned that, haven’t I? It is wonderful. It is funny and unflinching and kind of not aw-shucks and kind of exactly aw-shucks and the balance he finds is just right for talking about actively living in a small town.

Thing is, City is where I belong. There are two ex-Mr. Jonesey’s who can attest to this. Small town living is not for me. I love to be in the Sandhills of Nebraska on top of a bluff with the wind full in my face whipping the shape of my heart back into itself, but do not think to find me living there. Respect there is, and that keeps me to my own and my own are alleys and trash trucks and subways and bustle and gratings and everything that goes with them. And respect is what Perry has for his family and his friends and his fellow fire fighters and the world in which they all live and that comes through like a cold clear sky.

The writing is controlled and impossible, his language is like a patchwork quilt of phrases and idiom and rhythm. The man is a poet and it shows.

I have been reading kind of a lot of late, you may have noticed, and I know that everything comes back to Les Miserables, and I’m okay with that, but here is a thing that I find every single time I dip into that book and that hums through Perry’s book as well – there is a difference between alone and isolated, and it is in the narrow space of that difference that the track of a life is seen.

Alone is not without love or pain or joy or laughter or tears. Isolated is without everything. It is right to be alone in a place, and equally right to be connected to everyone in it. Solitude is no crime against community or living, but self-imprisonment can very well be. Toward the end of the book, Perry recounts a conversation he had with a neighbor. The conversation takes about 8 lines on the page, probably about 2 minutes in real time (depending on the speed of speech) and when it’s over, he tells us that he never spoke to the man again.

Not isolated. Just alone.

Also, I totally cried.

Preparing for awesome novelists

Do you remember those assignments in school that began with "Compare and contrast Thing 7 with Thing Orange and explain how their similarities and differences can lead to a better understanding of Cheese", yeah, those?

Okay, so I love those questions. Not the point.

Point is that while I read Truth Like the Sun, I kept thinking about A Good American and how I could approach the event with both of these authors on Thursday. Fortunately, the writing in both is too good to allow me to do that.

A Good American is the first novel from Alex George, currently of Columbia, Missouri. It follows a family, specifically the first three generations of a family, from their lyrical mis-beginnings in Germany to mostly present day Missouri. Music carries the line as surely as chromosomes and the tug of their home of Beatrice, MO (fictional, though familiar). It is a story that is not sticky sweet for all of its small town pathos. Almost every family has this story, the story of becoming. So many Americans share a kind of story that is given something more challenging in the choices George makes as a storyteller. How to face racism, how to be responsible to family, how to be a family, how to be an American - not easy questions, and many that get lost in the telling of most family histories. Not here. Music is a character of its own in this novel in a way that is daily and unconfined to any social class. I advise Kleenex, as I wept on more than one occasion and felt the more human for it. Bravo, Mr. George, that almost never happens.

Truth Like the Sun, by Jim Lynch of Seattle, is set in Seattle and follows the rise, pause and fall of Roger Morgan the fictional mastermind behind the Space Needle and the World's Fair of 1962. the novel has two time lines one in 1962 and one in 2001, and for all the confusion and displacement that could create, there is none. It is an uncomplicated story about a complicated life. More specifically, the character of Roger Morgan ends up defined more by the events and people around him than by much of what he himself determined. While the narrative reads like a mystery or very exciting research project, it is in the learning of two very different personalities, Roger Morgan and Helen Gulanos, the journalist assigned to the digging, that the heart of the story lies. There are difficult questions of ethics and personal motivation that find almost no resolution, which is refreshing.

I look forward to Thursday evening, when I'll have the chance (and so will you) to ask both of these extremely skilled authors about their work, and perhaps will have found something that feels right about how their novels relate to each other, if they do at all...

Also, gotta say it: really good titles :-)

Books I'm just jazzed about

Last weekend I got to go to Kansas City with fellow Left Bankers and about 600 of my brand new friends for Winter Institute, where we shared all sorts of things about book sales, sidelines, banned books, event planning, you name it. Also - lots of new books. Lots of them. I brought back many. Several of them are signed for other people, but my shelves are getting crazy full. Anyway, I thought there is no point in keeping all of that to myself, so I'm sharing.

Here are my picks, culled from the rep's picks and our author visits and all of that kind of thing.

WhatMakes A Baby by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smith, releasing May 2013 from Triangle Square, an imprint of Seven Stories. This children’s book about what makes a baby is simply great. It is a fantastic read-with for children 3 and up. The explanations of what it takes to make and grow and deliver a baby are entirely without judgment or cultural expectation. This is a book for any family to share. Fantastic illustrations very clearly contribute to the text and bring a smile to readers young and old.

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell, releasing in June 2013 from Soho Press. It is a drum beat that is nothing like a heartbeat holding up the background of the world that is this novel. The atmosphere is filled with few characters in isolation from each other, even as they share intimate space and are connected by story and stories and home and desire and revulsion and blood. Bell uses familiar language and imagery to craft this dreamlike world and the entirely unexpected story that takes place therein. A young couple finds their childlessness unbearable. Each of them responds: the husband is haunted by one of the miscarried infants he names the fingerling; the wife finds a child in the forest and claims it as her own and names it the foundling. The wife sings stars down from the sky and her own moon back into it. There is a sentient bear in the forest and a giant squid in the lake. These are the players. Once they are in play, that is when the novel finds its strongest rhythm; when the most unexpected and weird things can happen. When the familiar turns everything on its head. I recommend this especially for fans of Galway Kinnell, Jose Saramago, and Jorge Luis Borges.

TheSummer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson from Arthur Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic. Future Brazil: a world of technology large and small and largest and smallest. 400 years after the nuclear attacks have shredded most of the planet leaving survivors in pockets: the string of Tokyos; Salvador with its constant warfare; North America where only the most hopeless or stalwart can survive; Palmares Três – a paradise of government and culture. June Costa is 16 in Palmares Três, an artist on the cusp of learning her strength and testing the limits of her world and her mother. She and her best friend, Gil, fall in love with Enki – the Summer King – a king modeled on the oldest ways, one who will sacrifice his life for the perpetuation of the peace of Palmares Três. Together, these three will negotiate love, justice, courage and treachery as they create and destroy and create again in a world defined as new struggling with the oldest problems that society can present. This novel is utterly magnetic, alive, colorful and constantly in motion. Nothing is solved, everything is questioned. I loved it. I am thrilled to add it to my library, and think it would appeal to any fan of sci-fi and social sci-fi.

TimmyFailure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis, released February 2013 by Candlewick Press. I am completely biased in favor of this book. Like unreasonably. Timmy Failure is an every-shmo, and because he is 8 and his best friend is a polar bear named Total, his shmo-ness is less cringe-inducing and more laugh out loud funny. Timmy runs a detective agency. Total is his partner. Together they form Total Failure, Inc. It is a name up to which they live with almost uncanny consistency. Timmy’s mother really doesn’t deserve such a blindingly clever boy for a son. Really, she doesn’t. But she’s got him, and one of these days, I’m pretty sure she will give up trying to get him to understand how lucky he is that she’s as tolerant as she is. Timmy has an archenemy, and a penchant for borrowing his mother’s Segway that, when combined, only spell doom for the future of Total Failure, Inc. What can we say? Mistakes Were Made. This book should appeal to all children between the ages of 8 and 12, professors at university, librarians, and anyone who works under middle management. Because we’ve all heard it. And we’ve all heard it from someone like Timmy Failure.

TheGolem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, releasing May of 2013 from HarperCollins. Do not pick this book up if you are looking to leave the house in five minutes. It will require a ridiculous amount of energy to put it down and go. And then you will not be able to focus fully on your task until you have the time to sit down and finish it. I know this. From personal experience. The Golem and the Jinni are entirely original friends. She is a creature of earth and violence, he is an almost omnipotent being trapped in a bottle and then in human form. They are alone – without the guidance or mastery of creator or warden – and they find each other in turn of the century New York City. Outsiders in a city built on the stories of outsiders. I adored it. The fullness of their back stories and the landscapes that created them are almost overwhelming. Ms Wecker has pulled off something extraordinary: she has told the tale of a friendship without giving in to sentimentality or anything unbelievable. You do not wonder at their relationship, nor does it need to be anything but what it is. I am entirely impressed. It is fable, it is historical urban fantasy (is this a thing? It should be a thing. I think it’s a thing). Recommended for fans of TheNight Circus, StarWars and Pibgorn.

And now that I've begun to parse all of this, it's time for the next round of reading groups and impossibly wonderful books. Whew.

Pockets for hearts and diamonds

Today's Storytime was all about pockets and envelopes and glue sticks. Truth.

Since we read Corduroy last week, I thought it would be nice to follow his story after Lisa took him home. A Pocket for Corduroy is the story of the little bear's adventures in a laundromat as he searches for something to make himself a pocket. He searches piles of towels and almost ends up in the dryer when he decides to investigate someone's wet laundry. Oh, no! Fortunately, Lisa is a very concerned sort of friend and when she finds him and gets him out of his predicament, she finds a way to solve his pocket-need.

Valentine's Day gives Splat the Cat a good reason to let his feelings show to Kitten. Rob Scotton's sweet and kind of clueless feline spends the day with a rumbly tummy - he is so nervous whenever Kitten is near and nothing that she does makes any sense to him at all! Fortunately, all is explained in one of the sweetest moments I've ever read. Park bench included. I was happy this time to have Seymour's bicycle pointed out, as well. Mice on bikes! Love, Splat is not always the easiest book for all ages, but there are lots of cats and they make funny faces and anytime you can get all the kids saying 'meow' - it's a good day!

And then, because I am a nerd for folded and glue-sticked paper - especially if it shimmers - we made Valentines. The glue sticks were a big hit. Bigger than the shimmery diamonds and the glittery hearts. I think even bigger than the double-sided tape.

Who knew?

Next week we welcome Amanda Doyle with her book To the Top. I wonder if she knows about the glue stick thing. Hm.

How we celebrate Valentine's Day...

... with the unexpected.
Of course.
C'mon - it's Left Bank Books - this is how we do things.

The Day, the day of flowers and chocolates and monsters and snuggling penguins is almost upon us!

Monsters? you ask.
Penguins? you posit.

Why, yes. Yes indeed. I asked the staff what books to display this year for Valentine's Day and I gave them a theme:

I'd like to consider love in the long term: love after the happily ever after; friendships that last a lifetime; compassionate acts that resonate over time. We live in a world that is constantly bombarded with the effects of hatred and isolation and fear. I'm thinking it's a good time to explore love as an act of living, instead of an incident of chocolates

And what did I get? Monsters. Love after 50. Overly affectionate tigers. Marjane Satrapi. C.S. Lewis.

I am not even joking.

Exploring unexpected love at our Downtown Store

I am delighted.

Every selection here reflects something connected to love as it happens in real time in the world around us. Heartbreak and aging and hopefulness; courage and food and laughter; wrinkles and sagging and bad decisions. Above and around and below all of this is something more resilient: the power of love to motivate and connect us to each other and the outside world. 

Also, and this is what makes me crazy happy, there is a lot of laughter in this list. I encourage you to explore it and hope that you find something you weren't expecting to see this Valentine's Day.

If this incarnation of the holiday isn't yours to celebrate, then Io, Lupercalia! to you and yours.