(Jackson Street) Books on 7th is around the corner and on the internet tubes. We strive to be your full-service new and used bookstore, emphasizing good literature, progressive politics, and, of course, books about baseball. Opened in Hoquiam October 1, 2010
I heard yesterday that Garth Stein would be on KUOW's Weekday with a couple other authors to discuss The Future of Indie Bookstores. We decided to stream the radio at Lacamas Reading Hall and invite folks over for discussion. Here's the MP3 and the book discussion starts at 24 minutes and Garth gives a shout out to virtual Jackson Street Books at 48m. You can't see it in the picture, but w00ts filled the air!
University Bookstore is celebrating 110 years by asking 110 authors to write 110 word essays. You can see a sneak peek pdf at their website and attend the party on Sunday to get a copy of the book with the purchase of a contributor's book.
My favorite is from Maria Dahvana Headley, one of Garth's co-panelists today
Pulp Romance
He saw her across a crowded shelf.
Her deckle-edge was seductively deep, her endpapers velvety. She was a first edition, probably autographed. Any man would want to write his name in a book like her.
She noticed him perusing her pages, and blushed. He had a hard spine, and a crisp dust jacket. His eyes were capitalized, and in an obscure font designed in Amsterdam in 1768. She caught herself glancing at his flyleaf, and looked away, mortified.
They were in the YA section, and she was acting like a common galley.
"Can I have your ISBN?" he whispered. He could nearly see her addendum.
This wonderful volume was under my tree this year, and I recommend it as much more accessible than tearing out and saving the pages in stacks of newspaper on the table. The articles have all been in the NYT, by seasonal subject. Appetizers, Salads, Picnics, and Headstarts on the Holidays. I know I have those sheets around here somewhere! Trust me, the book is easier to find.
I will share my favorite recipe from his column: Creamed Corn. Really? Teh kid complains when I cook this... that I don't make enough of it. It's super easy and if you toss your Ginger root into the freezer you can easily grate it for a fast stir fry improv following this. Use different veg, or meats (it's great with stirfried Beef stew bits or tofus), and the marinade sauce works on any stirfry.
INGREDIENTS
1 pound boneless chicken (breasts or thighs), in 1/2-inch chunks 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1 tablespoon sherry, rice wine, sake or white wine 2 tablespoons peanut oil or another neutral oil, like corn or grape seed 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 tablespoon minced ginger 1 small chili, seeds and stems removed, minced (or dried red chili flakes to taste) 1 15-ounce can creamed corn 1 cup corn kernels (fresh, frozen or canned) Chopped cilantro leaves for garnish PREPARATION
1. In a small bowl, mix the chicken with the soy sauce, the sesame oil and the wine. Put the peanut oil into a deep skillet or wok, preferably nonstick, and turn heat to high. Drain chicken. When oil is hot, add chicken to skillet, and cook, undisturbed, until bottom browns, about 2 minutes. Stir once or twice, and cook 2 minutes longer. Turn the heat down to medium-low. 2. Add the garlic, the ginger and the chili to the skillet, and stir; 15 seconds later, add the creamed corn and the corn kernels. Cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through, 3 or 4 minutes. Garnish, and serve over white rice. YIELD 4 servings
Bon Apetit!
I would also like to thank Miss Poppy for once again filling my stocking with Jeebus-y goodness!
It's no secret that I love the writing of Denis Johnson. I reported on Tree of Smoke, the National Book Award winner here. It is the long, ambitious story of American involvement in Southeast Asia as done by a sort of post-modern Graham Greene. Not nearly as long, and not quite as ambitious, nevertheless, Denis Johnson's new novel Nobody Move (Farrar Straus Giroux $23.00) is a finely written caper novel that has its own fascinating passages.
Originally serialized in Playboy magazine, the plot is fairly straight forward. Jimmy Luntz has just finished participating in a barbershop singing contest when he is picked up by a shady character called Gambol. It seems Jimmy has many gambling debts, and Gambol's boss, Juarez, has a taste for eating late-payers testicles. Luntz is able to escape from his captor and hooks up with a woman, Anita Desilvera, who has her own set of problems. The chase ensues and there is plenty of guaranteed mayhem, as Gambol, Juarez and "The Tall Man" pursue Jimmy.
The dialogue is smart and quick. Here's Luntz talking to a young woman at a mini-mart:
"Are you walking?" Luntz said, "I guess I'll hitchhike" "You better clean up first." "Yeah, where's the washroom?" She shook her head. "The whole back of your pants is like you been rolling in dirt. You better find some deep water." "Where's the river? "Right over there a half mile." "Is it cold?" "It's cold. But it wont kill you".
I should mention the jacket art, which is reminiscent of Chip Kidd. Susan Mitchell's jacket design of bullet holes with board illustrations by Philip Earl Pascuzzo are a great update of paperback pulp art from the forties and fifties.
When Hollywood comes calling, I'm sure democommie will be up for the part of Luntz.I have a special offer for orders placed here: enter the code FOG (stands for Friends Of the General) in the ask the bookseller a question tab, and I'll include a free Advance Reading Copy of something delightful.
Second Life truly is an amazing place that has reinforced my belief it is indeed a Small World. I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple authors I know in Real Life, and one of them, Ray Vukcevich, has been most gracious in helping set up an author salon for Lacamas Reading Hall. I met Ray back in the day at Seattle Mystery, when we had the signing for his delightful novel The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces.
What is interstitial art? It is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be constrained by category labels.
Cecil Soup (Cecil Castellucci) will discuss her story The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory. Mason Leitner (F. Brett Cox)brings us Nylon Seam and its accompaniment music. Capricorn Brewster (Carlos Hernandez)has the delightfully titled The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria. Sardonicus Optera (Will Ludwigsen)has Remembrance is Something Like a House. Ookami Moonwall (Ray Vukcevich)rounds out the evening with The Two of Me.
Each copy of Interfictions 2 ordered through our store will receive a special signed bookplate, that I will send later. The bookplates are being mailed from one author to the next and I will drop them in the mail as soon as they are available.
Seattle Tammy and I are relaxing this week for the holidays with good company, fine liquor, and many great things to eat. We have also been watching Cosmos with Carl Sagan on the new-fangled Youtubes. What a great show it was, too. We thought we would share the following segment where Sagan talks of books and libraries. His thirst for and his delight in knowledge is clearly evident and contagious. We need more people like him. We are thankful for good readers and good friends. May you find wonderful books in the coming year.
16 year old Cameron just wants to get out of high school, with as little effort as possible. When he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, even that is out. Once regarded as a loser, now his classmates are eager to show their love and support at a Student Rally. As he lies in the hospital visitors drop by and give him advice, pray for his soul and play video games.
Dulcie has stopped by with a challenge, follow the feather clues to find Dr. X who may have a cure, and close the wormhole in the space-time continuim to save the world, and bring back the greatest Inuit rock band of all time, The Copenhagen Interpretation. Dulcie is a cute, pixie faced punk with the softest of wings. Or is she another hallucination?
Cameron talks fellow schoolmate Gonzo, a hypochondriac dwarf, into accompanying him on the trip and they are off to Disney World! Along the way they'll pick up a Garden Gnome who is actually the embodiment of the Norse god Balder and really resents being hauled around the world posing for vacation pictures. There's a detour to Party House!, YA TV's annual spring break televised humiliation fest to rescue Balder, who has been kidnapped by frat boys who want to pose with him in front of, what else, tourist attractions.
This wild ride has everything! Mad Cow disease, String Theory, Hallucinations, Road Trips, the Haldron Collider, the Higgs Field, Snow Globes, Jazz and Don Quixote. It asks the eternal question: "Why does micro-wave popcorn taste so good?" It's not going to end well for Cameron, but Libba is honest with her readers and finishes the book on a hopeful, lovely theme. I do recommend this for a mature teen reader, simply for the honesty with which the real life topics are addressed, but as a parent I can tell you there is nothing here a 15 yo doesn't already know about.
If you can't trust an author in a cow suit, who can you trust?
Another cool thing I found while researching this book is the blog LargeHeartedBoy, which asks authors for the playlist they listen to while writing.
As a bookseller, I would be remiss not to point you at the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award. On a shortlist of 10, singer Nick Cave was picked for his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, about a sex-obsessed door-to-door salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," said Anna Frame at his publisher Canongate.
Read these if you dare: Paul Theroux for A Dead Hand
The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu (Princeton Press $16.95) This delightful volume uses the historical figures of Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet and V.I. Lenin to look at the split between radical art and ideological revolution in 1916. Zurich had become a haven for artists and other refugees. Hugo Ball rented the Meirei restauraunt to host a Kuntstlerkneipe (cabaret) named Voltaire. Decorated with paintings by Arthur Segal, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kadinsky, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Arturo Giametti, and Otto van Rees. The entertainment included Tristan Tzara reciting and shouting poetry, the chanteuse Emmy Hemmings, and a Russian balalaika band. As the evening wore on, the skits and improvisations became more raucus egged on by the drunken audience, to culminate in Tzara reciting nonsense French and un-rolling a roll of toilet paper with the word "merde" printed on it.
The Swiss cafe culture was a vibrant microcosm of the Bohemian life during these years with Einstein, Joyce, Hans Arp, Carl Jung and Freud.
Codrescu's use of posthuman shows they we have become so integrated with our technologies, we no longer are able to survive the natural world without them. This slim volume is your guide to this new world.
"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisible, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to live a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada."
I love listening to Mr. Codrescu on NPR, and here's an interview this past spring discussing The Posthuman Dada Guide. You can order the book from us and begin your Dada life.
