Department of Book Reports: Odds & Ends

One of the pleasures of re-opening a brick and mortar store is that customers bring us some of their books to trade-in. The customers, of course, get some credit and can add to their own libraries inexpensively, and we, the booksellers, get to replenish our inventory and get reminded of some good books and discover books that have flown under our radar since our storefront hiatus.

Among the books we have recently received includes David James Duncan's fine family saga, The Brothers K. Duncan, the author of the acclaimed The River Why, tells the story of these brothers, brought up on a farm, by a father who had hoped to have a baseball career, but was thwarted in his youth. Set during the fifties and sixties, the book has many fine moments and when I read it a few years ago, I couldn't put it down.

Stephanie Kallos is the author of the perennial book club favorite, Broken for You, and her new novel, published in 2009, Sing Them Home, absolutely slipped by us. Another family saga, set in Nebraska, she tell the story of the Jones siblings whose young lives are irrevocably changed by the strange disappearance of their mother during a tornado in 1978. They are brought back together by the sudden passing of their distant father decades later, leading to self-discovery and insight.

SeattleTammy is enjoying Lincoln Child's Deep Storm, which was published a couple of years ago. Child is probably best known for his collaborations with Douglas Preston, and are well-written thrillers. Deep Storm is about a scientist investigating the mental illnesses suffered by a crew that seems to have discovered links to the ancient world of Atlantis.

Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is the highly regarded inquiry into what happened on August 29th, 2005. At great length, Brinkley delves into the devastation and the human cost of the tragedy. He conducted many, many interviews with the survivors, providing a history written at the human level.

Finally, we have seen a copy of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things come into the store. Originally published in 1997 and winner of the Booker Prize. the book is yet another family portrait, focusing on the lives of two fraternal twins, raised in Kerala, India. The events of the novel take place between 1969 and 1993, and describe and limn the lives of these two as well as the lives they touch. Roy, herself, has become a great human rights activist. To date this is her only novel.

So, what are you reading? And what do you hope Santa will bring you to read this year?
And DemoCommie, we are still awaiting the advance copy of your cookbook.

If you're in the neighborhood today, stop by for a gingersnap.






These books are available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

Department of Book Reports: Four Color Fear

I'm delighted to have Four Color Fear, by John Benson (Fantagraphics, $29.95) on our new release table now. This is a delightful collection of Entertaining Comics most gruesome and twisted tales. Fantagraphics has a flip-thru preview that gives a feeling for the content on youtube. 42 complete comic books are reprinted in all their lurid colors.

Those wonderful, terrible horror comics of the 1950s are still so embedded in our popular culture that it’s hard to realize that those who actually remember reading them when they came out are now in their late sixties or early seventies. That these old comics still seem contemporary is largely due to the Entertaining Comics (EC) titles Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear, which have been made into several feature films and a popular HBO series, and have been in print continuously for over forty years in a variety of formats (they’ve even been adapted in text form for younger readers). Horror masters Stephen King and George Romero have readily acknowledged an indebtedness to EC comics, which alone would be enough to prove their relevance to current entertainment tastes, but many others have also been influenced, directly or indirectly.

Undeniably, EC created a whole new style of horror. Rather than relying on traditional supernatural elements, EC typically focused on events that could actually happen, such as someone being boiled in oil or hacked to pieces. Realistic situations would build to “trick” endings that might be better described as ingenious rather than truly imaginative. When there was a fantastic element, it was often in the form of traditional vampires and werewolves entering a modern real-world setting. A vital EC element was its three “GhouLunatics,” the hosts whose sardonic and often humorous patter was integral to the horrific proceedings, but EC’s most important component was publisher Bill Gaines, who co-plotted most of the stories, loved the material he published, and encouraged his artists to do their best. Gaines brought a rare consistency to EC, though that consistency came at the expense of an increasingly narrow range as the series progressed.
.......
Rather than being grouped by artist, publisher, subject matter or chronologically, these stories have been arranged “aesthetically” to provide maximum variety and change of pace when the book is read straight through. So, relax, curl up in a cozy chair, set aside a block of time, and imagine yourself as a kid in the 1950s, reading these stories slowly to savor every chilling moment.

From the introduction by the author.

Four Color Fear is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

Department of Book Reports: Holiday Books

Today is Small Business Saturday. American Express will give a $25 credit to your account for shopping small box this weekend. The stores you shop at don't even need to accept AmEx, which is a good thing since most small businesses can't afford to honor their cards. The 3/50 org has more good reasons for you to shop local.

Of course, I recommend you shop at a bookstore. You can find your local bookstore at indybound, or for those of you in the Northwest, we now have Northwest Booklover'sthanks to the PNBA for this site. PNBA also brings us the Holiday Catalog (simple pdf), and here are a few of my favorites:
Something Fishy This Way Comes by Ray Troll (Sasquatch Boooks, $19.95) This best of Ray Troll's art will be sure to get chuckles from fishermen or lovers of bad puns.
Hiking Washington's History by Judy Bentley (University of Washington Press, $18.95) will give you more background than you'll get from the historical marker at trailshead or highway pull-outs. UW Press has sample chapters to peruse.
One of my favorite novels this year is now in paperback, The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter (HarperCollins, $14.99)


A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness--and a Trove of Letters--Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression by Ted Gup (Penguin Press, $25.95) This one really tugs at the heart, Ted Gup found a cache of letters in his grandfather's possessions that told the story of an anonymous donor who offered $5 to 150 people during the height of the depression. Check out this dedicated issue of Shelf Awareness, for pictures and an author interview.

And finally we come to the time of November you've all been looking forward to: this year's shortlist of titles nominated to The Bad Sex Award are covered in the Guardian. The winner will be announced November 29th at the In and Out Lounge in London.

These books are available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores. We're on FaceBook now.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

Department of Book Reports: Guernica

In Guernica (Bloomsbury $15.00), Dave Boling has written a fine, sobering. and engrossing account of the lives of those people who live in or near one of the most revered places of the Basque people. The story is centered on the lives of the Ansotegui brothers, who are orphaned at an early age. Justo grows up to become the "strongest" man in Guernica, well-respected among the townsfolk; Josepe takes up fishing in the Bay of Biscay; and baby Xabier becomes Father Xabier.

In 1935 one Miguel Navarro, avoiding arrest after an encounter with the Guardia Civil, comes to Guernica, where he meets, courts and marries Justo's daughter, his only child, Miren, famed for her dancing. Together they begin a family. In the meantime, of course, the Spanish Civil War begins. The Basques, given some autonomy, and with an aversion to the Fascists, side with the Spanish Government. The characters try to lead normal lives, but the war moves closer. Food becomes scarce. And the Fascists move closer and closer, aiming to take the port of Bilbao. Guernica itself is of no military importance. But it does provide the Fascist's ally, the German Luftwaffe to indulge in what Winston Churchill called "..an experimental horror". On April 26th, 1937, Wolfram von Richtohofen's Condor Legion made its bombing raid over Guernica, devastating the town and immortalized in the famous mural of Pablo Picasso. The lives of Guernica's survivors are forever changed. And there seems to be little hope left.

Boling gives a splendid picture of the Basque people. Their lives may seem simple at a glance, but they live lives of great passion and with verve and nuance. The minor characters are well-imagined and provide a fine background to the story. The reader feels he knows this town and these people, and their tragedies give us the right amount of pity and terror. Guernica is one of the better novels I have read in a long while, and it is well worth your while to read it, especially if you like family sagas in historical settings.
Here's a video from one of those fine independent bookstores we always mention, Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo. Catch their blog for pairings of books and appropriate beers, and follow them on twitter @LIBERTYBAYBOOKS.

Guernica is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

On a side note, I wanted to point out the long-time Jesus' General commenter, Dave von Ebers, has begun a new blog, The Corner Tavern, which you can find here: davescornertavern.blogspot.com. There is already a lot of good stuff on it. Enjoy!

Searching for Mark Twain's Illustrators

Alice asked if there was any notation of the artists in the Harper & Brothers editions of Mark Twain that I featured on FaceBook. The books, which are probably the equivalent to our modern mass-market editions have little documentation. However, researching the subject has been no end of amusement for me.
Barbara Schmidt notes the artists from the various volumes in her A History of and Guide to Uniform Editions of Mark Twain's Works. Most of the documentation here is for the earlier deluxe editions in red, Part One covers 1891-1920, Part Two has 1899-1920, while we have copies with cream boards with a small cameo of Twain embossed onto the front cover, which will be documented in Part Three, books after 1920.

In Life on the Mississippi, Harper & Brothers 1917, I discovered the photographer Napoleon Sarony, who photographed an estimated 20,000 celebrities of the day and perhaps 300,000 members of the general public, but it best known for his landmark 1883 lawsuit for photographers to claim original copyright of their photographs. The case was over a disputed photograph of Oscar Wilde, in which Burows-Giles Lithographic argued that Sarony had not invented Oscar Wilde and they should be able to use it in a department store ad. The courts agreed with Sarony's lawyers that the photographer was the author and inventor of the photograph.
In 1884, Sarony participated in a April Fool's prank on Twain inwhich 150 of Twain's friend wrote him requesting his autograph but neglecting to include a SASE for return. Sarony addressed his note to "My dear Clements".

Napoleon Sarony wore a Fez and "picturesque" clothing which must have been noticed even in New York city.
What is perhaps Sarony's best known photograph of Twain was most disliked by Twain. Writing in his own 1902 copy of a honorarium book presented by Harper & Brothers at his 67th birthday party,

of course they would frontispiece it with this damned old libel, which began as a libel when Sarony made it, in my fortieth year

The picture most likely was taken when Twain was 60. In 1905, he was still complaining about the photograph:

November 14, 1905.
Dear Mr. Row,

That alleged portrait has a private history. Sarony was as much of an enthusiast about wild animals as he was about photography; and when Du Chaillu brought the first Gorilla to this country in 1819 he came to me in a fever of excitement and asked me if my father was of record and authentic. I said he was; then Sarony, without any abatement of his excitement asked if my grandfather also was of record and authentic. I said he was. Then Sarony, with still rising excitement and with joy added to it, said he had found my great grandfather in the person of the gorilla and had recognized him at once by his resemblance to me. I was deeply hurt but did not reveal this, because I knew Sarony meant no offense for the gorilla had not done him any harm, and he was not a man who would say an unkind thing about a gorilla wantonly. I went with him to inspect the ancestor, and examined him from several points of view, without being able to detect anything more than a passing resemblance. "Wait," said Sarony with strong confidence, "let me show you." He borrowed my overcoat and put it on the gorilla. The result was surprising. I saw that the gorilla while not looking distinctly like me was exactly what my great grandfather would have looked like if I had had one. Sarony photographed the creature in that overcoat, and spread the picture about the world. It has remained spread about the world ever since. It turns up every week in some newspaper somewhere or other. It is not my favorite, but to my exasperation it is everybody else's. Do you think you could get it suppressed for me? I will pay the limit.

Sincerely yours, S. L. Clemens.

I'll continue my research tomorrow. I doubt I'll find the artists from these books, but I am sure I'll find something utterly fascinating.

Department of Book Reports: Al Capone & Hellie Jondoe

I have some wonderful YA novels to talk about today. If you have a pre-teen or teen interested in history, these volumes feature great characters and fascinating stories.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko ($17.99, Dial Books) Moose and his family live on Alcatraz Island, where his father is a guard. There are other families on the island, almost enough for pick-up baseball games, if the girls agree to play. The kids are not supposed to talk with the inmates, but it's too tempting to them to not try to sneak a peek of Al Capone or one of the other famous gangsters who are locked up and assigned tasks to keep the island running. When Moose's autistic sister get dropped from a special school in San Francisco, he sends a note in the pocket of his dirty shirt, asking Capone's help. When a return note comes back saying "Done." he realizes this favor could get his dad fired from the job they very much rely on. Then, a note arrives asking for a favor from Moose and he must figure out how to get yellow roses for Capone's girlfriend, May without the Warden finding out that Moose has been in touch with the convict. Set in a time when autism wasn't well known or spoken of, many people on the island urge the family to send the sister to an institution rather than keep her in the family. Moose has to negotiate the usual rivalries between his friends and the precarious hold his father has on his job.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes is the sequel to the Newberry Honor book Al Capone Does My Shirts ($6.99, Puffin Books), which is in paperback now. These books give a great history lesson in the lives of the people who called Alcatraz home.


Hellie Jondoe by Randall Platt ($16.95, Texas Tech University Press) Hellie (Helena Smith) is an orphan "street Arab" in New York City where she and her brother Harry pick pockets and find food in garbage cans to survive. Harry has signed Hellie to the Orphan Train, taking children to the West to find families. Hellie does not want to leave Harry, but it's getting more difficult to hide her female status from the gang they've pitched in with. When a gunfight leaves Harry apparently dead from a bullet wound, Hellie reluctantly embarks on the train. It's on this train trip she meets A.B.E. Collier, a woman (!) photographer, herself a former Orphan Train child who is documenting the journey to sell to Mr. Hearst. Hellie, half-blind Lizzie, and an infant with a club foot are finally adopted by the domineering Mrs. Gorence, to work on the Hidden Hills Ranch in far away Oregon. Assigned to live in the wash house, and not the home, they come to realize their true fate, they had been sold to the Orphan Train and indentured for 3 years. Harry has actually left the hospital with a new trade, selling the Morphine he was introduced to and now has enough money to try and rescue Hellie. His encounter with A.B.E. Collier exposes him to the Spanish Flu that is sweeping the country and he unwittingly carries it to Pendleton and the Hidden Hills. Nursing her brother, herself and the farm cook back to health, Hellie learns some truths about her birth family and her newly formed family.
Platt has used period slang to great effect here and provides a Glossary at the end.

These books are available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

Department of Book Reports: Pitchforks and Torches

In a week where we saw justice, light, right and might prevail in our land, it was only fitting that MSNBC suspended the ultra-liberal, Keith Olbermann from his show, Countdown, on Friday. Of course, the islamoliberalsphere is protesting by calling the MSNBC offices, and setting up Facebook pages in protest. What more could we expect. They want you to call MSNBC at (212) 664-4444 and urge them to bring Keith Olbermann back!

SEND faxes to MSNBC urging Keith's return here at: Fax: (212) 664-4426

You can e-mail Phil Griffin who suspended Keith at: phil.griffin@nbcuni.com.

It turns out, that the nattily-dressed one has just published a book, Pitchforks and Torches. Conveniently, the book is a Liberal's wet dream, full of invective and reason. As Seattle Tammy and I would never want to be accused of censoring, we are stocking that book, as well as others by this Olbermann fella.


If we have inadvertently made you look at these protests and caused you to join the brouhaha, we are deeply sorry. But the books are available at Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.