End Times Approacheth

It's madness, I tell you.

Forget 12/21. It's the Saturday before Christmas, folks, and the Retailpocalypse is upon us. I've stolen away to the deepest recesses of the Booksmith's labyrinthine bowels, but even here the walls throb under the booted feet of the shopping hordes. Only crumbs remain from my meager stash of gingerbread men and the battery icon on our store laptop flickers like a dying candle.

I will not last much longer. So I have some confessions to make.

- I judge books by their covers (SO PRETTY).

- When you buy my staff-pick, I secretly give you a discount. We're in this together.

- I don't get the Handerpants. We have a million novelty gifts (I counted) to make you the prince(ss) of any yankee swap. Probably no fewer than half are lewd variations on lingerie. You guys love them all and usually I'm on board with that. Squirrel underpants? Fine. Emergency underpants? Ok. Handerpants? No. I'm sorry.

They're here. I will sell them to you. But we will never see eye-to-eye.

- When I say "I've heard good things," what I mean is "this book you're asking me about just took on the symbolic weight of each and every book I've never read and it is now a beacon of my shame. Buy it. Read it. Go on without me."

- I haven't read Moby Dick. I haven't read War & Peace. I have read Game of Thrones and you know what? The HBO version is better.

Lots more dirty secrets where those came from but Xmas is almost here SO - once more unto the breach, Brookline! Been an honor and a pleasure. If we live through this, I'll see ya next year.

The Season of wilting. Rescue-reading for summer-haytaz.

I have no business staying in New England when the heat comes a-creepin down from the backsa' my knees. No business. It's this time of year I'm without fail-RELIEVED to walk into work everyday. Even without AC it is cooler here. Most people get all sad and mopey in the winter, but for me (and I imagine some other Nordic-types), this is the season for sadness. The season for sunburn, high- happiness expectations, baroque displays from mother nature, (that 80's tart) and a complete reminder that we are in fact sitting in meat cages. Oppressive, oppressive meat cages.

Some reading to go with that thought:

The Cow, by Ariana Reines. We have this one in the store, it is the most profound collection of poems on the human diet, the human body, the self. This collection is a syntactical mind-f#$k. I keep thinking about this book. POETS.....READ THIS, POETRY APATHISTS: READ THIS.

next,

The Room, by Emma Donoghue If you didn't read it in hardcover, worry not. It is in paperback. You will want to kiss me on the mouth (hard) and do my dishes after you read this gripping, beautiful intense read. here it is in :ebook form: I cannot overemphasize enough, if you read one book this summer, make it thissun.

For parent with non-sleepin' kiddoz:

check this book out. Dear lord, check this book out.

For reasons you will soon understand, no pictures will be offered. Trust the link ...trust it.

And finally from our Card& Gift room: This adorable med-lugging tin box. (other designs as well, but today, yes today this one just feels so right. So so right.

Last thought of this depressing post comes form Jezebel.com. Wow. This is where we live.

For real last thought,

It's cool in here. We have water outside, and cookies inside for you dogs, and a crazy selection of everything for you. Come by and cheer me up.

Weighing What You Read, Let's Be So Happy This Year

Subtitle: Fat Hatred is soooo 2006

I'm going to ignore the non existent pressure of being the first of my colleagues to blog in this new shiny year...hell this new shiny DECADE.
On my walk home from work yesterday, I got to thinking about how my jeans were feeling snugger than usual. The thoughts that followed were the predictable Rube Goldberg-ing of my self image down the rabbit hole zeitgeist that has been the cultural moment of Hannah Montana, the death of two Brazilian supermodels from anorexia, and let us not forget Natalie Portman in Black Swan.

In short, I felt fat. Well, let's be honest... I am fat. My instinct when I re-remember my size in late December is to buy a crappy magazine detailing all the ways I can become someone else...the obvious...the eat less move more platitudes. Well, this year....I'm calling bullshit on that impulse.

Let's look at the facts:

I love my job.
I love my school.
I love my friends.
I love my family. (mostly)
I love my fella.
I have run (not walked mind you) 3 marathons while fitting into Lane Bryant's finery.

So why then, do I have to have a private meltdown every January about my waist to hip ratio? (With my luck a Doctor is reading this and preparing a comment with a litany of HORRIFYING studies detailing just how damn important that particular ratio is but I'll take my chances)

My life is pretty full, and so are my spanx. Must they be opposed?

So, for 2011................................................................................inhale......

I'm done giving my money to magazines that profit off of me feeling less than. I'm done giving my money to authors who want to sell me something that can't be sold.

This year, the only diet I am going on is a financial one. The money I spend on books will be books I want to read. Books that nourish and challenge me. Books and magazines that actually offer something. More Muriel Rukeyser!!!! (lots of her, and other size friendly feminists in our poetry section)

No more of the vapid glossy plateau- busting simulacrums that have repeated themselves for the last 40 years. I am going to spend my money locally, and only at stores that sell a size 14....(the new average for ladies in this here country.) I am going to buy local in season foods, from local farmers, local merchants. I am going to ignore national chains of most ilks. They make their money when we are fat and sad.


So, to all my chubby brethren, I say let us be strong this year, and be satisfied with what we have this very moment. Let us be so damn happy. If dropping 80 lbs is part of that, that's fine, but ....let's seek that change in a positive key. Let's love ourselves healthier. Let's buy books we want to read, clothes we look amazing in, food we love. Let's start that now. Not after we finish "ironically reading" a SELF magazine checklist written by a 21 year old intern who lives on a diet of Yogi tea and Fiber one.


...and to all my skinny cousins out there...perhaps this year you can resolve to treat yourself better as well...

...and if you are one of those people who already treats yourself and your cat to posh designer everythings...then...maybe this year you can challenge yourself to find beauty in diversity. Read, live and love a outside of your comfort zone... (us fatties do it all the time!!!)

All my love to anyone who gave me their precious time to read this little rant. Happy New Year to everyone...just as you are.

Kate's Holiday Tips Part II

I shall begin with a tangent. Remember waking up early just to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings? Well, waking up to sell books is almost as sassifying. Almost.

Anyway...

We started carrying Taza chocolates and things have changed in my life since. I have lost 30 lbs, I can now complete a full leg split, and suddenly... I can speak Polish. The chocolates are that good. This particular brand is a local company in Somerville, and we are having a free tasting on Dec 18th. This chocolate tastes unlike any chocolate I have had, and now every other chocolate tastes of wax and plastics in comparison.



On to my tip of the week!

In efforts to maintain a healthy BMI do NOT have more than one serving of fiber one's 90 calorie chocolate peanut butter bars. If you don't believe me, then try having 2 before bed. Let me know how you're feeling in the morning. My email is kate@brooklinebooksmith.com The experience was reminiscent of my 2002 foray into the world of olestra. I'll leave it at that. Classy.

What I'm saying is, instead of having a substitute for the real thing, have the damn thing. Forget O'doul's, and waxy chocolates and have the dogfish head and Taza. You'll need less and be a happier person all around.

If you read this far, thank you...and yes I am seeing a professional.

I'm still at the register.

I'm not complaining, just making a general observation. A fella came in to see if we sold Kindle cases. I bought some facial toner. I ate some crackers...so that was a lot of excitement. In a few minutes I'm going to drag what's left of me to the front register and handle some books, interact with some cool people. After two hours I will walk 2 miles home and read some poetry by Nick Flynn. http://www.brooklinebooksmith-shop.com/search/apachesolr_search/nick+flynn+some+ether. I will probably watch a psychological horror movie with my fella, and eat leftover something. I will have a small glass of some type of Korean rice vodka that was a lovely gift from a family friend. I will pet my cat; remember childhood knee injuries, forget to call my grandparents, regret eating those crackers, wash my face, floss (maybe), crawl into bed and read more Per Petterson. http://images.indiebound.com/835/343/9780312343835.jpg

Reading is a safe telenovella... Engaged escapism... Associative dissociation.

Women, Whiskey, Per Petterson and Other Sweeping Generalizations.

Today marks the end of my short relationship with Evan Williams brand Whiskey. Last night, the events manager and I got in a "little" debate about Franzen on the cover of Time. At least that's what I think we were arguing about. It may have been about the cable bill ...I can't say for sure but I can say this; women are the driving economic force in the book industry. We run the stores, buy the books, read the books and gift the books. For all the men out there, I acknowledge you and thank you for your presence too, though today I am just giving the ladies a "what what."

I don't want to detract from Franzen, or any other white male novelist, goodness knows I love Raymond Carver. I just want to see all the lady novelists getting equal critical attention. I don't think we are quite there yet.

Name Drop Time:

When I was walking Per Petterson back to his awaiting line of (mostly female) fans, he said to me....this industry is a woman's industry...but men are the ones getting published.... (or something to that effect). When he said that, I nearly planted one on him, but I'm a professional so I restrained myself. I complimented him on how he answered Diane Rehm's question about one of his character's apparent "alcoholism". Rehm was pushing the topic, and I thought it was so typical, how we in the states rush to pathologize ....everything. The character got drunk a few times....and she needed a diagnosis, from Per. Sigh.

I guess it took Per mentioning this gender discrepancy for me to finally have license into feeling the way I did when I rethought the Time cover..."Great American Novelist". I of course note the dissonance in needing a man to agree with me in order to bring this topic up publicly....but I am working on it...and it doesn't hurt my case that Per agrees.

What do I take away from these loosely connected meditations? I love the ladies of Brookline. The women who work here, shop here, and speak here. Sometimes deconstructive literary diagnostics are just reductive, and miss the point.

Also, no more whiskey. It's better to read about.

Reading Toys. (kindle talk.)

Dana graciously lent me the kindle that we bought for the store to see what all the fuss was about...."know thine enemy" and so on...I took the device home intent on giving it a real chance...and the following is exactly what happened.

I downloaded a few magazines with diet and exercise tips (don't judge me)....and I began reading Dexter Filkin's "The Forever War." On the train home I began with the magazine and was disappointed with the grainy black and white images...It was nice to have no little white subscription cards falling everywhere...but the images were a B-.

As I progressed onto book-readin' I found myself feeling oddly claustrophobic. There was something disorienting about not really knowing, or feeling where I was in the book. The gradual transition from East to West of the page-girth was something I only really missed when I didn't have it.

On the subway I felt self conscious, in the way I always do when I'm holding something expensive...which is infrequent. This is a larger class issue I'm tentatively broaching here....but it still warrants unpacking. Holding the thin, delicate sleekness of a device out of my price range made me feel uncomfortable. I felt like I was an easy target for theft, or gravity. God forbid the train stops short and I huck the thing... If my book gets stolen, that's heart breaking too....but less economically devastating. If the train stops short and I drop my book, the most I can loose is my page.

Then there was the problem of moisture. I had to be chronically aware of that. No bath reading. No post- shower handling. No beverages near by. This may sound paranoid...but it is absolutely not when one has invested serious cash into a toy. This delicacy limited my intimacy with the text.

There were some cool things about the reader. I like the idea of not accruing crap-tons of magazines, but getting to read the articles I want without the detritus of advertising. I think If the screen were larger a la Ipad...reading newspapers, and email would be great.

The kindle, for me is just silly. It is a one trick pony. If I'm going to have to be hyper vigilant with something, it better be serving more than one function for me...such as email, word processing, picture storage, and e-reading/music downloadin' capabilities. If you must sell your soul...make it for the best possible model. Amazon's audacity is pretty righteous, when you consider the fact that you don't have a choice where you can purchase your books from on the Kindle. breathtaking really.

Now, I must come clean. there was an accident. It involved me. It involved the kindle. It involved gravity. It slipped out of my hand...and fell 10" onto my linoleum floor....(I was already crouching over my purse, I'm not that short)... I picked it up sure nothing was wrong, (as it was such a modest fall...)but no. The screen was bifurcated, torn asunder mid- image of a page holding- gryphon, and chapter 3 of "The Forever War." You may be asking yourself, "maybe she's one of those people who just can't have nice things?" I offer you this... I have managed to keep my Ipod alive through 2 marathons and 4 years of training, including many a public spill of both myself and the device. I am not a careless lady, I took meticulous care of the kindle. There was simply a moment of humanity that caused the thing to leap.

I am going to contact Amazon (as it is still under warranty,) and I am going to hope they do the right and noble thing, and replace the kindle.

I am going to email Dana, and throw myself on her mercy.

I will update more on my progress next week. With the installment I shall call...what do you do when your kindle stops working? hint: (Go back to your bookshelves and beg forgiveness)

say a prayer, light a candle (not your kindle)

part of the reason I'm here

My father had visitation with me every other weekend. He would take me for breakfast at a greasy spoon diner, and then maybe bowling...and then finally (and mostly always) before he dropped me back off at my mother's, he would bring me to a bookstore and let me pick out whatever I wanted...as long as I promised that I would (and could) read all of what I brought home.

This was the one huge splurge I was allowed; and I felt it a moral obligation to read the books my father purchased for me with his hard earned money...

I have seen some fathers with their daughters in the store, and sometimes I can tell the pairs on borrowed time...we know our own...

There's a way to stay with someone when you read a book that they recommend, buy for you, or borrow...there is something in the handling of the object, and the object's internal energy that keeps; and ties all involved histories together.

And to lighten the mood, I offer this...

a book chooses you, and wow...our poetry section sure is looking foxy.

I believe if a book is brought to your attention, more than 3 times- that the book is choosing you...and you have a moral responsibility to at least pick it up.
(I'm not talking about heavily advertised mass markets, or best sellers. I'm talking about that 7 year old book that you've never heard of, and all of a sudden a friend is raving about it....you trip over it in a used book store, or the author is referenced by another author on Oprah...that sort of thing.)

This philosophy extends to every other area of life...in my alarmingly humble opinion.

So I'm going to start that process- for anyone who may read this.

Dorianne Laux is a poet. She wrote "What We Carry"...the color of my life changed after I read this book.

Gary Lutz is a writer. He wrote "Stories in the Worst Way"...my concept of what flash fiction can do was broken open. I posit,(again in my alarmingly humble opinion), that he has created a new genre.

Kim Addonizio is a poet. She wrote "Tell Me". I see her collection of poetry as an act of permission-giving to anyone who thought "you can't write about that, that's not poetry"....and that sort of thing makes for the most entertaining and accessible art.

Now if you hear of these authors 3 more times, you are bound to buy their work...but I can save you the time...

Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux
Gary Lutz
Gary Lutz
Gary Lutz
Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio

I know it is cheating, but I'm serious. I'll take that ethical risk.

As another point before I get back to shelving...I chose poets. For those of you who think that you don't like poetry...let me give you this. If you have a short attention span, if you like short stories, or the lace of a novel...If you love stand-up comedy...

Poetry offers more talent and diversity than any other medium...(I'm gonna get slapped for that)

If you don't believe me...check out our poetry section...it is swollen with funny, disturbing, fractured, amorous, academic, experimental, feminist, and humanist poets.

And if you are a poetry lover...buy poetry.

And if you write poetry, buy poetry.

It is affordable...

especially our used poetry.


how poetic.

The Poems I Know By Heart

In Sunday's NYTimes Book Review Jim Holt writes about his endeavors in memorizing poetry, which led me to think about the poems I know by heart.

Two are fairly standard: William Carlos Williams's "This Is Just to Say" and Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening."**

Then there are Robert Herrick's poems. Have you read Robert Herrick? Probably not, or if you have it's his carpe diem classic "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" which you know as "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may..." It's ok, but honestly, doesn't do much for me--what I really love is his, um, more, um, randy stuff. The stuff to Julia (and her legs, and breasts, and clothes--especially love the ones about clothes!). The stuff to Sylvia and Anthea and Electra...ah, Electra.

So, here it is, the poem I know by heart (I think I might be revealing a bit too much about myself with this one, but hey, what else are blogs written for anonymous readers for?):

"The Vision to Electra" by Robert Herrick

I dreamed we both were in a bed

Of roses, almost smothered.

The warmth and sweetness had me there

Made lovingly familiar;

But that I heard thy sweet breath say,

Faults done by night will blush by day;

I kissed thee, panting, and I call

Night to the record! that was all.

But, ah! if empty dreams so please,

Love, give me more such nights as these.

Alrighty then! And if you liked that, check out "The Vine." It makes me giggle and blush in equal measure (which is what I love about Herrick--a fine combination of the erotic and the ridiculous). Herrick never married and claimed he was chaste, but I always have this image of him chasing his maid Prue around the butcher block a time or two.

What poems do you know by heart? Who are your favorite poets? I'd love to hear.

** As I was just talking about Matthew MacFadyen (if you are not watching Little Dorrit, do it now! You can watch online!), and could talk about him a bit more, here's his reading of "This is just to say":

You Can't Stop the Beat

I just recently went to see Hairspray -- the musical-based on a Broadway musical-based on a John Waters film -- and fell in love with it. It reminds me of the best parts of classic musicals--singing and dancing and costumes, yes, but also just the incredible joy of being alive (and a happy ending doesn't hurt). If you haven't seen it yet, go mama go, go, go! (If you have and you got the reference, good for you!)

I actually grew up loving musicals. Near my house was an old-fashioned movie house called The Redford Theater. It showed classics on the big screen with an organ performance and cartoon shorts before the show, an intermission when the organ played again(!), and a ceiling painted to look like the sky with little twinkling lights for stars.

On their website you can actually see a film database with the schedules from the 1970s through today, and if you want to know the movies that shaped me growing up, this is your best way to learn--just pick any year in the mid to late '80s. I was looking at the schedule for 1988, and I have no doubt that I was in the audience for West Side Story and Meet Me In St. Louis and Showboat and Oklahoma.

So, the whole point of this exercise in nostalgia is to let you know how jazzed I am that Rough Guides has come out with a new book in their series of film guides: The Rough Guide to Film Musicals by David Parkinson. It is fan-freaking-tastic for both the beginner and old pro. I learned more about musicals I thought I already knew and am glad to have added some to my needs-to-be-seen list (Love Me Tonight, how have we never met?).

Mr. Parkinson is very informed--this is not a piece of fluff, but neither is it overstuffed with film-school jargon. I also like that he is opinionated (except, of course, for when I disagree...) without being condescending towards the films or his readers.

I should note that this is part of a great series that Rough Guides does on film. I'm quite familiar with The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks by Sam Cook, but there are also books on American Independent Film, Film Noir, Westerns, and others. I'm of the opinion that they are way better than most of the film guides out there.

Speaking of musicals, the store is quite quiet for a Friday night during the summer. Me thinks it is all the kids at home watching High School Musical 2. Darn it, why aren't I?

The Best of the Bathroom

Since starting here I have become way too familiar with two very unremarkable books: What Would Jackie Do? and More Word Histories and Mysteries (I'm not even going to bother putting links). Why, if so unremarkable, do I have such familiarity? Well, dear reader, it is because galleys of them have been in our not-for-public-use bathroom since at least New Years, if not last year's Rosh Ha'Shana.

It was time for something new. But you know what? Finding a good quality bathroom read is a lot harder to come by than I thought it would be. And then a couple months ago it was like the clouds parted and the sun shining through with the arrival of a galley of The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, which was just published last week.

It's all you want it to be in bathroom reading: a concise question-and-answer format that provides a quick-yet-satisfying read and allows the reader to open the book to any particular page. The questions are humorous (What was odd about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Did cannibals cook their victims whole in large pots? What's the best floor of a building to throw a cat from?) or have unexpected answers (Who is America named after? Not Amerigo Vespucci. Where does chicken tikka masala come from? Glasgow. And, most fittingly, What do we have Thomas Crapper to thank for? Not the flush toilet!).

As a testament to its quality, the galley of The Book of General Ignorance was taken less than a week after I left it in the bathroom. I was really quite peeved (dare I say I was pissed off?) however posting a note requesting the anonymous bookseller to return the galley was unsuccessful. So now we're back to Jackie O. and poorly written etymology. Sigh.

On Anne Fadiman and Bookishness

This is probably not all that surprising, but I love books about books. And, in my mind, without question, the book-about-books above all others is Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris. If you haven't read this little jewel, you must. It will only take you a few hours, and you'll feel at the end as if you've found a new best friend.

I always enjoy talking with folks who have read Ex Libris and finding out which essay is their favorite. I usually say mine is the first one, "Marrying Libraries," I think because I like to daydream about what kind of joint library will be created when I meet my mate (you can read an excerpt of that essay here). But, well, looking at the table of contents, now I'm finding it hard to say that's true unequivocally.

There's also "Never Do That to a Book," wherein Ms. Fadiman's brother is chastised by a hotel maid for leaving a book lying spreadeagled and face down. I am what the author would call a courtly lover of the book -- I shudder when I see people in the store fold a paperback cover back over the spine. Like her friend Clark, I have bought two copies of a book, one to read and the other to keep pristine. I'm afraid I can appreciate only in theory the passion of the carnal book lover who destroys their books in the name of love.

And I can't forget "Words on a Flyleaf," Ms. Fadiman's examination of the inscriptions we write in the books we give to others. Whenever I ring up a used book, and it has an inscription, I have to read it. I just have to. And then, depending on what it says, I wonder what happened to George, or if Amy and Laura are still good friends, or whether Mark knows that his gift has been sold for 20% of the cover price in store credit. I wonder sometimes what happens to the books I've given as gifts and inscribed. And I think about the books I've kept through various moves and purges not because of the book itself, but because of what a friend had written inside.

[A side note of pure serendipity: Jessica, a bookseller in New York, has a fantastic blog called The Written Nerd. Today she mentions The Book Inscription Project, where you can see (and send in yourself!) the best and/or worst inscriptions found in used books. So cool!]

So all this is to say that I'm really excited for At Large and at Small, Ms. Fadiman's new essay collection which we just got in this week. Though the topics move beyond that of the bookish, I'm so thrilled for more from such a dear-to-me-though-we've-never-met author. NPR did a very nice piece with Ms. Fadiman last week that you can read/listen to here. I love her stumping for the familiar essay, which is such a brilliant genre when it is well done, and hearing her address the very idea with which I started this entry--that to read her is to think you've found a new friend.

New Title Tuesday!

The big news today, which you probably don't need my little blog to tell you, are the new releases today from Al Gore and Khaled Hosseini, Assault on Reason and A Thousand Splendid Suns, respectively. I should probably be excited, but here's the truth--I never read Kite Runner or saw An Inconvenient Truth, and I can't say I plan to anytime soon.

So here's my alternate pick of the week:

An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone

Belle Greene was an African-American woman born in the late nineteenth century. Passing as white, she became a librarian at Princeton University and was then hired (when she was only 20!) to be the librarian for J.P. Morgan. She then created and curated for him one of the most renowned private collections of rare books and manuscripts in the world (which you can see now that the Morgan is a public museum). Ms. Greene was also quite a saucy lady, with flirtations a plenty and an ongoing love affair with a married man. I think I probably would have skipped right over this book if I hadn't already been familiar with her. My friend Alan told me about Ms. Green when I was getting my degree in library science--he thought I would appreciate a woman who said (perhaps apocryphally) "Just because I am a librarian doesn't mean I have to dress like one!"