Department of Book Reports: Some Notable New Books

This spring is bringing out what looks to be some very interesting novels that I wanted to direct attention to. The first two come from authors who are probably better know for their other creative endeavors.
First off is country singer and erstwhile political gadfly to the Right, Steve Earle who has written his first novel, I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive (Houghton Mifflin $26.00). In it, Earle tells the tale of Doc Ebersole, one of the last men to see Hank Williams alive, and is rumored to have administered the morphine dose that killed Williams. Ten years later, in 1963, Doc has lost his license to practice and has been reduced to performing back room abortions in the seedy side of San Antonio in order to maintain his own habit. A young Mexican immigrant girl, Graciela, comes to him for attention and magic seems to re-appear in Doc's life, including the ghost of Hank himself. The book has just been released, as has Earle's new album with the same title, his first since his widely acclaimed homage to Townes Van Zandt.

John Sayles is probably better known for his filmmaking, which include such fine cinema as Lone Star, Matewan and Eight Men Out (in which Sayles cast himself as Ring Lardner, who covered the infamous 1919 World Series). But he has also penned some very good novels as well. His new book, A Moment in the Sun ($29.00), will be released on May 17th from Dave Egger's publishing firm, McSweeneys. It's going to be a long sucker, coming in at 968 pages, but advance word has been terrific, with comparisons to Doctorow's Ragtime and Pynchon's Against the Day. The novel takes place against the backdrop of the Yukon Gold Rush and the Spanish-American War, continuing on into America's great Imperial adventure in the Philippines. And, according the wiki, Sayles next film will be about that insurrection.

Jennifer Egan just won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad (Anchor Books $14.95) and as luck would have it, the book has just been released in paperback. The plot apparently is quite rambling, perhaps more of a series of interlocking short stories, but seemingly centered on Lou, a Record mogul with elements of both Proust and the Sopranos.



Finally I wanted to point out a book that wont be available until October, but is already getting great word of mouth. This is the book all sleep-deprived parents will want to read to their kids, along side with Goodnight Moon. I think the title tell it all: Go the F**k to Sleep (Akashic Books $14.95), and is written as a faux children's picture book with text by Adam Mansbach and illustrations by Ricardo Cortes.

These titles (and 9564 more!) can be browsed 24 hours a day at our catalog page, available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th andfine Independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us on Facebook Jackson Street Books.

Department of Book Reports: Twice a Spy

Twice a Spy by Keith Thomson (Doubeday, $25.95) In this delightful follow up to last years Once a Spy (Now in paperback Bantam, $7.99) we find Charley Clark in Switzerland hoping a new therapy will help his father Drummond's advancing Alzheimer's. NSA operative has accompanied them and is trying to exonerate them from their hasty departure following the explosions in the basement of the Manhattan Project.


Their peaceful time in the chalet won't last long though, before Alice is kidnapped by members from Drummond's old CIA op, the Calvary. The Calvary was established to sell inoperative nuclear weapons to the black market, disguised as Perriman washing machines. One machine is still at large in the Caribbean. Thomson uses brilliant plot twists to produce a fast-paced suspenseful action read with plenty of hight-tech spycraft. As if this weren't enough, his writing has wildly humorous bits and characters you will really come to love. You can check out more of his writings at Huffington Post.

Once and Twice a Spy are available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th andfine Independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us on Facebook Jackson Street Books.

Department of Book Reports: Baseball in the Garden of Eden

Once again Spring is here, and with it, Baseball Season! And Baseball, always the sport that lends itself best to good writing, has a new treasure in John Thorn's Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game (Simon and Schuster $26.00). For years, John Thorn has been the leading historian of the National Pastime and has quite recently been named Official Historian of Major League Baseball. Here he examines Baseball's earliest days, and it is quite a story, really.

For years the "origin" story has been the long debunked one of how Abner Doubleday, at age 20, laid out a diagram of the playing field in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. Despite the fact that Doubleday himself was 1. actually attending the West Point Academy at the time; 2. Never once in his voluminous writings ever mention that he did invent baseball, or ever actually mention baseball at all. In fact, Thorn shows that the game evolved from any number of bat and ball games that came to America from England, including Rounders, Cricket, One 'o Cat or various "safe" base games. Jane Austen mentions "...base ball...." in a group of outdoor activities in Northanger Abbey, which she wrote in 1798. The other competing myth is that of Alexander Cartwright, a member of the New York Knickerbockers club. Cartwright, in 1845, certainly lent his hand to one of the first existing set of rules for the game as we now know it, but his teammates, Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth had an equal influence on the development of the game.


Author and historian John Thorn speaks with Garrison Keillor at the Fitzgerald Theater on March 29, 2011.

Thorn shows how the game, and its popularity, grew with the country at large in the mid-nineteenth century, with gamblers, hustlers, capitalists, and grew into a professional game, suffused with class struggles and racism as well. It's a fascinating history. And none was perhaps more intriguing than the baseball star, turned entrepreneur, Albert Spalding who established the great sporting goods enterprise that still bears his name.

Spalding was convinced that Baseball was a uniquely American invention, having little, if anything to do with English bat and ball games (as was claimed by Henry Chadwick, the British born journalist who was the game's biggest booster in its early days). As one of the sport's leading lights, he called for a Commission to get to the bottom of the game's origins. As it turns out, and Thorn goes into great detail here, Abner Doubleday was one of the leading American Theosophists of his time, Theosophy being one of the spiritual movements of the late 1800's, developed by one Madame Blavatsky, and for whom Doubleday took over as the American head of the movement. And it seems that Spalding's second wife (and previous mistress) was also a leading light in the Theosophy movement in the U.S. Hmm.

This is not only just a fine book on early Baseball, it is also excellent social history of the growing nation. John Thorn is great historian, and a very good writer. Please indulge and enjoy his work. Baseball in the Garden of Eden and other titles by John Thorn are available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th and fine Independent bookstores everywhere.

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Department of Book Reports: New to the shelves!

At the urging of several friends, we've bought in Keith Richard's autobiography, Life (Little Brown, $29.99). He assures us on the jacket flap copy "I remember it all" and judging from my flipping thru the book, he does! 576 pages of Rock n Roll history, told from a true insider. The book has been received very well critically, seeing most celebrity bios are not so absorbing, and this one is something of a history of our times.

Jean Auel's recent release The Land of the Painted Caves, (Doubleday $30) has been a bit of a surprise best seller for us. Weighing in at 757 pages, fans are delighted to revisit Auel's special blend of prehistoric fantasy and anthropology after a 9 year wait.

And of course we are adding more used stock weekly. We just received 5 boxes of books from a fellow bookmonger, Tom of Acorn Books. These titles (and 9564 more!) can be browsed 24 hours a day at our catalog page, available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th andfine Independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us on Facebook Jackson Street Books.

Department of Book Reports: Poetry!

It's time for Poetry Month again! As they have in the past, Knopf publishing will send you a poem a day when you sign up for their email list. Check out the other topics in the right hand side bar while you're there.


I also like to mention a couple of my favorite booksellers, John & Christine, over at Open Books A Poetry Emporium. If you have a chance, spend a couple hours browsing their shelves in Seattle. It's delightful to be surrounded by so much poetry!

Another wonderful resource is The National Poetry Foundation, with links to fill up many a rainy afternoon. I'll leave you with this final bit of whimsy, a gown made entirely of Little Golden Books (via boingboing)

Poetry books are available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th and fine independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us on Facebook Jackson Street Books.

Department of Book Reports: West of Here

Jonathan Evison's West of Here (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill $24.95) is a masterwork by a fine young novelist. The novel is, by turns, an epic, a saga, a book full of characters who live and dream big things. And it is, as we booksellers like to call it, a page-turner. Interruptions during reading aren't happy ones.









The story revolves around the town of Point Bonita (a fictionalized Port Angeles), located atop the north end of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. Evison weaves two time periods together; the Point Bonita of the early 1890's, just before the territory becomes a state, with the hopes to become the jewel of the place as Seattle, PB's rival, has just burned to the ground; and the more contemporary period of 2006, when it has become a town in which Wal-Mart dominates the economy of a city down on its luck. The earlier version of the town has dreamers. Ethan Thornburgh sees the possibilities of damming the Elwah River, providing electricity; Ex-Indian fighter and explorer, James Mather, wants to explore the deep interior of the peninsula, that last wilderness left unexplored in the continental U.S.; Eva Lambert wants to explore the world of the possible for a woman and joins the Utopian community located nearby. But the people of modern Port Bonita also dream, even as the town slowly dies and the Dam is due for destruction. Some search for Sasquatch, others dream of being left alone.

Port Bonita, of course, is a character, probably the main protagonist here. But the characters, and there are many in this 483 page epic, all of whom Evison richly imagines, from the only African-American living within miles of the place who is the parole officer to the Indians who inhabit the fringes of both the town yesterday and today,as well as the prostitues who can think bigger thoughts beyond life in a whorehouse. We learn their hopes and disappointments, all limited by their geography and their dreams, but for whom the place is one of adventure of some scale, whether large or small.

The town of the late 19th century reminded me of another book I reported on a few years back, Heyday, as well as the HBO series Deadwood, albeit without the gunfights. Heyday, though set fifty years earlier, describes a frontier where anything is possible, where perhaps Utopian visions can be made true, or personal fortunes can be made, whether in 1849 California or the South Dakota mud-filled streets of Deadwood where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane walk. That same spirit inhabits the characters of West of Here as well, having finally moved to one of the last places where one can achieve these things. Dream big, have hope, let nothing stop you.

I really cant recommend this book enough. It will be a treat for your hopes, your dreams and your imagination as well. Incidentally, it would make fine reading for Book Clubs. West of Here is available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th and other fine independent bookstores. In the meantime, enjoy this interview of Evison by everyone's favorite librarian, Nancy Pearl.

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up

The publishing newsletter Shelf Awareness has a Dedicated Issue for West of Here, here. If you'd like to help protect this amazing corner of Washington, please consider signing the Wild Olympics petition.

Department of Book Reports: Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer by Wesley Stace ($15.00, Picador) We know from page 1 that Charles Jessold returned home to find his wife and a married man in a compromising situation, poisoned them with arsenic and then shot himself on the night of June 23, 1923. Our narrator, gentleman music critic, Lelsie Shepherd tells and re-tells the stories of their early meeting and the years after as he encourages and guides the musical prodigy to compose the greatest English opera, ever. Shepherd is as unreliable as the best of narrators, and reveals more with each telling. Their first weekends in the countryside gathering traditional folk music which was to be the soul of this opera lead to evenings in pubs debating the finer points of music. Shepherd sees the new-fangled atonality as the greatest threat to English music and hates the Germans for their apparent dominance of the opera world. Jessold travels to Germany to study at Bayreuth and is taken up as WWI begins and spends 4 years in an internment camp. He returns to London an alcoholic, and becomes more erratic at his performances. Finally, the opera Little Musgrave is to be staged, but news of the murders come the night before the premiere. It is left to Shepherd to give police statements and hold forth the reputation of his friend against the tabloids and the scurrilous true crime biography a rival has written.
Since I had to correct a typo (thanks, jcricket!) I'll drop in this video I just found.

Stace captures the fine dialog and dry wit of the writing in that time period and gives a musical history lesson along the way. The acknowledgements at the end give you more title selections and sources to pursue. Wesley Stace is a perfect person to write this book as he is also the folksinger John Wesley Harding. I heard about this book a couple weeks ago on our local NPR show Weekday: Music and Murder Most Foul. when Stace/Harding stopped by to discuss the novel and his music.

Stace's books are available at our online store, or in historic downtown Hoquiam.
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