Manifest Destiny

Big changes are afoot in the Valhalla of Books as I just called the UBC just now. We're taking a Westward Expansion into the Events area (hi Jamie!) and filling up large cases with amazing and wonderful books. Our Kids section is now expanding to two cases, and Cookbooks will move making more room for New Arrivals, and our Book Club picks are expanding to include Staff Recommends in the UBC. This all means that we have more room to grow as far as kids books are concerned, so if you have some good children's picture books in nice shape, bring them in during our buying hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 10 AM - 4 PM.

Big Big Big Changes come check em out and load up on books to read outside in this lovely weather!

A Time and a Place

I'm going through a huge Michael Ondaatje phase right now. This happens to me every now and then, when there is something about a writers' work that makes me want to read nearly everything else they've written. Most recently I went through a James Salter phase after reading A Sport and a Pastime; before that, a huge Joan Didion phase, after reading The Year Of Magical Thinking. I loved Salter's sentences, his succinct but eloquent way of examining the fragility of male and female relationships. Joan Didion, who manages to write about the supremely personal while remaining universal. And can anyone balance cynicism and lyricism as well as her?

What triggered this Ondaatje phase was his memoir, Running In the Family. This book was assigned to me in an undergraduate class that I took seven years ago called Reading and Writing About Place, and then, for time reasons, it disappeared from the syllabus. Earlier this summer I found it on my parents' bookshelf and brought it back to Boston with me, curious. In this memoir Ondaatje goes back to his native Sri Lanka to find out more about his parents and especially his father, who was a notorious alcoholic and passed away before the two got to know each other. He weaves together poetry, memories, straight narrative and anecdotes told in the form of dialogue. I was impressed with his ability to pull off this hodge podge of form and genre, to manage to get the reader so close and intimate to each of the various characters in such a short space. But, true to my professor's extinct, what most appealed to me about his writing was how steeped it was in a sense of place.

Some of the short dreamlike chapters make you feel like you're in a fever heat. The train that snakes through the country, the jeep thrashing through the jungle to get to a party in the middle of nowhere, people dancing outside - this book is full of images of a particular lifestyle in Sri Lanka. The scene where he imagines his grandmother, Lalla, floating through her hometown during a flood is one that will haunt me forever. Since then, I've been pleased to find that nearly of all of his books are deeply rooted in different places all over the world. I read Divisadero, a novel in set northern California, then Lake Tahoe, then the countryside in France. The California chapters feel rural and wild; the Tahoe chapters, gritty; the France chapters, other-worldly. Now I'm reading In the Skin of a Lion, set in the 1920s in Toronto. Each of his books transport you to a life completely outside your own.
 
Running In the Family is my staff pick - you'll see it on the shelf with all the other staff picks in a few weeks. And you can always check out our past staff picks on our website.

National Poetry Month, or as I like to call it (cut the crap, stop denying yourself)

Do you dislike poetry? Does the word itself induce high school flashbacks to a time when a bulky clip-art speckled text book told you to find the meaning beneath the meaning? Well then your aversion is understandable. *****************But

I dare you to pick up a book of contemporary poetry. The pageant has evolved. Poetry is sick, twisted, weird, violent, moving, readable....magnetic. Flash fiction? please...

Short attention span? strange tastes? What are you doing not reading poetry? It's like porn and painting and applesauce all in one! If you want something chiller that exists too...*********but

Poetry is there for people who hate grammar, and conventions, or people who love them and want to play with them. If what your brain spits out is to disjointed, or too vitriolic for prose....it becomes consumable as poetry.

Mark has done an amazing job bringing in some of the newest most exciting poets out there. We have the standards too. So.....if you want to expand your reading, challenge your narrative, improve your composing, painting, writing, thinking and living....find a cover or title that speaks to you, read a poem....if you hate it put it down (life's too short-juts pick up another) If you love it you will find a never ending supply of that wealth.

Poetry is not what you read in High School, or for that matter college. It is inappropriate, vivid, uncomfortable ENTERTAINING and alive...and the good stuff is very impolite.

You'll be making your significant other/cat listen as you slur your new favorite poem over 3 glasses of wine and tears...I promise.

Here's what I'm reading now:

April Mowing the Lawn

Drunk and barefoot is surprisingly

Meticulous, especially in the corners,

Shoving the old vrooming machine deep

In the knee-high thrushes of weeds and mint

And flush with the giant slate stone steps

Some glacier dumped a millions years ago.

Up and down, back and forth. Why bother?

I yell to her. Why not simply ask all the horses

Over to take the blades down with their teeth?

Hell, let it grow- Like the golden shadow cast

By our growing pile of beer bottles, like

Who cares? She yells back over the motor that

In South Acworth, a lawn's merely all you

Choose to take away from all that's there

To take away.

from collection Drunk by Noon

(by the kickass Jennifer Knox)

reading = people watching.

The sign on the horse's blinder says...."stay back I bite." I do not believe this horse bites. I think the owner would prefer drunk "pub-crawl" attendees not commune with Sheila (or whatever the horses name is.)

Either way I stood there, this past Saturday (in what felt like spring) and photographed the horse.
I was a bit tired from roaming the aquarium, that when I noticed a drunk broseph stumble over to my subject....

I didn't warn him about the sign on Sheila. I think part of me wanted to see if the written warning was truthful. Then I heard myself think that, and said (to myself) did you kinda want to see Sheila bite Logan (or whatever his name is)?

I love people watching, and reading especially good narrative poetry brings me closer to a humanity that I'm often distanced from.

On the trip home, I didn't have anyone sitting in front of me to creepily watch. That's where having a collection of kick-ass poetry comes in. The good stuff is better than hoping a horse bites a stranger.

Come in and check out our selections of new poetry. There's some filthy-brilliant-sick-funny stuff here. There's tons of staff recommendations to help guide you to the perfect collection...just in time for poetry month! (Or did I miss that?) Either way...It's more entertaining, and makes you look less crazy than say....taking photos of empty seats.

Staff Picks--Alie

In the past Alie has recommended some really great mysteries: In the Woods by Tana French, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (which is a total suck-you-in and spit-you-out thrill ride that you want to immediately line up for again), Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris (we just got this in paperback today! I can also vouch for this as a really great read.) and Field of Blood by Denise Mina.**

Her new recommendation is for K. O. Dahl's The Fourth Man: "Yet another engrossing and captivating Norwegian mystery. There are so many available in English now--but this one stands out. A wonderful mystery and interesting characters."

**You can read all her recommendations here!

A Time To Every Purpose...Including a holiday!

I'm leaving for Detroit tomorrow to spend Passover with my family, but before I go I thought it a good time to mention one of my staff picks for this month--A Time to Every Purpose: Letters to a Young Jew by Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish Studies at Brandeis.

I first read this last autumn, when I was home for Rosh Ha'Shanah. It was in one sitting, on the train between Detroit and Chicago, and now that I think about it I'm surprised by how many of the chapters (each based around a major Jewish holiday or event) I can still clearly remember. Professor Sarna writes in what I would call a wise-but-not-overbearing style (it's a very tricky thing!) and I felt like he was really speaking to me and the exact questions and struggles I've had about what I want to believe and how I want to live and behave as a young Jew in the 21st century--for example, questions about identity, the environment, social justice, and Israel. Stuff like this--meaty and without being didactic--is rare and welcome!

Staff Picks--Liz, Liz, and Elizabeth

More staff picks! I realized I need to go through them quickly as there are a whole new batch that will be going up in a few weeks (which means I need to decide what my next pick will be...I saw that Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles just came in today which upends my shortlist).

Elizabeth recommends The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman: "This book gives new meaning to selflessness. It's the story of a family and countless others who put themselves in the face of evil to help others to stand up for what's right. Could you do the same?"

Liz E., who spends much of her time in our children's section, loves If You Were a Penguin by Wendell and Florence Minor: "I have been a fan of Wendell Minor for years -- his illustrations are wonderful, capturing the very essence of each story he helps to bring alive! This one is just wonderful -- plus, it's all about penguins! Can you toboggan on your stomach or fly underwater?"

And Liz T. suggests The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History by Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza: "I love old movies and movie history. My cable box is permanently set on Turner Classic Movies. This book sits on the bookcase next to the couch for quick and easy reference. In addition to the lists of winners and nominees, there's also a lot of great trivia. Love it!"

Read more of their recommendations here, here, and here.

By the way, in case you were wondering, in addition to the Liz trio we also have Kate F., Kate R., & Katie as well as both Lisa F. and Lisa P.

Wherein Andrea's staff pick is upstaged by my obsession with books about Frank Lloyd Wright

Andrea, the other half of our UBC team, recommends T. C. Boyle's Talk Talk this month, calling it "a fascinating glimpse into the snarly issue of identity theft. Boyle never fails to be provocative and entertaining, and to impress with his use of language."

I thought it especially appropriate to highlight her pick today as his new book The Women comes out tomorrow. In the New York Times Joanna Scott was full of praise and called it "Boyle at his best" while Michiko Kakutani described it as "dreary" and "a tedious, predictable melodrama." Yipes! I found it a bit odd, actually, that, neither made reference to Loving Frank, Nancy Horan's novel from 2007 in their reviews as it also is a historical fiction based on Frank Lloyd Wright's personal life--though Howard Frank Mosher does in his review in the Boston Globe.

My favorite part of his review, though, is the beginning when he says he would never want to live in a Wright house because they look uncomfortable. This is because I spent a good amount of time in a Wright house growing up (my Great-Aunt Sara and Great-Uncle Smithy built it. You can see pictures here and here and here). As a small child I adored it--it was cozy and beautiful. But my mom, who is 5'11, said she always felt like a huge galumphing giant whenever we were there. I do miss it though I wonder if I would feel more like her now that I'm a lot bigger than I was at 10.

Staff Picks--Carl

Carl is one of our used-book sellers (He's a bookseller who works in the Used Book Cellar. I love that way more than I should.). He also publishes poetry and writes an occasional blog about the UBC that you can read here and here. He also has amazing taste.

Carl's current recommendation is for William H. Gass's Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas. Here's his favorite passage (from page 29): "All her senses were acute, but she could hear and see and feel most marvelously well: the tremor in her neighbor’s face, the scrape of cloud, the grumble of molasses, like her soul, folding from its bottle..." Read more about the book here and more of Carl's recommendations here.

Staff Picks--Katie

Katie (comedienne, vegan chef extraordinaire, and master of our psychology and history sections) picked a classic sci-fi book for her recommendation--The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.

She says, "As if coming-of-age wasn't tricky enough, young David must keep his telepathic powers secret in a society where religious and genetic fundamentalists destroy anything that deviates from the norm. Thank you, New York Review of Books, for resurrecting this fantastic gripping tale."

P.S.- Paul highly approves of this choice.
P.P.S.- Read more of Katie's recommendations here

Staff Picks--Dava

Dava recommends The Knitters Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd.

She says "Like a good cookbook, this book is filled with basic 'recipes' to get you into knitting. Take the information about gauge, needles and sizing (all explained in the introduction), mix with the appropriate yarn, and you will be whipping up some lovely creations."

More recs from Dava here!

My Staff Pick

New staff picks were due today and as usual I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to recommend. There were A LOT from which I was trying to choose. I thought about my recent faves, Blindspot, Graceling, and then I thought about doing something a little more old-school and recommending Cooking for Mr. Latte or Tender at the Bone (there's something about the winter that just leads me to food memoirs). In honor of Sasha and Malia I thought of recommending The President's Daughter and I still think I might see if I can slip that in as an extra this month.

Finally I decided on a book I loved last year that just came out in paperback--Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. It tells the story of Greek gods run amok in modern London and the unsuspecting humans who fall prey to their shenanigans, and it completely charmed me when I first read it. Thinking about the book always makes me smile, and while part of me feels like maybe it's more of a summer read I decided in the end that maybe it's actually good to have something light and fun to turn to while cold brutal winter sets in over the next few weeks.