Luminarious New Zealand

This week 28-year-old New Zealander Eleanor Catton became the youngest person to win the Man Booker Prize with her 2nd novel The Luminaries. I haven't read The Luminaries yet, but a reviewer on the BBC called it the "Kiwi Twin Peaks." This alone is sufficient to whet my appetite, but there's a lot to this book, in fact the longest Booker Prize winner ever clocking in at a staggering 848 pages. It follows the story of Walter Moody, who's come to work the goldfields in 1866 New Zealand who stumbles upon a series of unsolved (and possibly related?!) crimes including the disappearance of a wealthy man, the suicide of a prostitute and the discovery of a cache of money in the local drunk's house. I hugely can't wait to dig into this!

Right now it's spring in New Zealand, and if you're considering on taking a second summer for yourself in this beautiful archipelago, December would be a great time to jaunt away from New England and sip egg nog on the beaches of Auckland. If you're planning a trip on the sole basis of having an 848 page novel to read on your way there now, don't stop at Ms. Catton, the Kiwis have a magnificent array of beach reads to bring with you: 

The Bone People by Keri Hulme. The 1985 winner of the Booker Prize, this is one of those books that has a huge cult following but sells steadily despite being a generally unknown book. Without giving too much away, it's basically the story of a woman artist in New Zealand and a young Maori boy who tries to steal from her one night but then returns and their interactions thereafter. It's a bit of a challenge but a rewarding one.

Katherine Mansfield is easily one of the greatest authors from New Zealand, and if you haven't read her yet put Alice Munro down for a sec and read some of the greatest short stories in English. She wrote around the time of H.D. and Virginia Woolf and she's definitely of their ilk though in a class of her own, of course. “The Garden Party” is really great.

And if you haven't read the book that serves as the basis for the amazing film The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, do it now! It draws on Maori myths and tells the beautiful story of a girl born to a patriarchal family who overcomes tradition to prove herself to her traditional grandfather by riding a whale along the coast (which in the Maori legend was done by a male).

Fall is the greatest time in New England, but we all know it's brief, so after the leaves change, come load up on Kiwi-fic and keep summer going year-round!

Happy Birthday, Jay

My baby brother and I have the same birthday, a decade and a half apart.  My fifteenth birthday was spent in a hospital waiting room sitting placidly while my mother gave birth. As the only boy in our family, he has been saved from hand-me-down dresses and dolls with tangled hair, but still ends up getting everything after my sister and I are done with it.  His bedroom is scattered with a motley collection of electronics, old beanies, and books he poached from my shelves.

For his birthday, my perpetual gift is a pile of books.  We have similar tastes, meaning I'm very good at selecting books that he'll read ravenously.  The only downside is that means I will also read the books ravenously before sending them to him, making his books yet another accidental hand-me-down.  On occasion I read his books with post-its, writing "!!!" and popping it on the page after a salient plot point so he'll call me afterwards.  We've consumed Kazu Kibuishi's Amulet series, Gene Yang's graphic adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender, all of the Rick Riordan books, Doug TenNapel's books for younger readers, Raina Telgemeier's graphic adaptations of The Baby-Sitter's Club, and pored over dozens of galleys.

This year he is turning thirteen, and I know that my days of brilliant gift-giving may soon come to an end.  He has an iPhone.  He's starting high school next fall.  He knows what twerking is.  He isn't a baby anymore, even though I insist on calling him my baby brother.

As he matures, I'm curious to see where he'll go with his reading.  Will he follow in my ravenous Nicholson Baker footsteps?  Will he like Christopher Moore?  Will he discover Jessica Hagedorn?  Will he still love the books he read as a kid?  For now, I'm able to give him the following books that I know he'll love: Gene Yang's Boxers/Saints boxed set, the new Kazu Kibuishi Explorer collection, and a book that some dude scribbled in.

In which we learn having an events director as a sister has its benefits

Happy birthday, Jay. Love you. 

The Tricky Thing About Endings

Three books I'm psyched we got in the children's section:

1. House of Hades by Rick Riordan
 Do I really need to say anything else about this?
2. Unbreakable by Kami Garcia
Half of the writing team of Beautiful Creatures. Creepy ghosts. Some romance. Wonderful.
3.Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson.
Okay, so we got this one back in. It's a favorite of mine.

I know a lot of people who are happy ending people. They want every book to end with everything neatly wrapped and tied with a bow.

That's fine. I think some books should end that way. Not everything needs to end with a string of deaths and heartache. It would be boring, not to mention very strange if every book did (I imagine a lot of rogue cars jumping curbs, random snipers, and spontaneous rockslides).

But there are books where most of the book pretty much promises death. You read the entire thing on the edge of your seat wondering which character is going die. Someone has to. Maybe our ragtag band of heroes is horrendously outnumbered. Maybe someone starts off the story incurably ill (John Green proves that that can still be surprisingly heart-wrenching). You read the entire thing completely certain that someone is about to die.

And then no one does. At the last second that surprise army comes in, or someone with a magical cure to this previously incurable illness appears and everyone is okay...happy even.

I am usually disappointed... I am also infamous among friends for having no qualms about killing characters off.

Sometimes people are okay. I'm cool with that. I don't want to read books where everyone dies all the time, I'm not that macabre. I do usually like it if the characters bleed a little first (that can be emotional bleeding. I'm not picky). If no one gets hurt what are the stakes?

That's the thing though, the stakes. They need to be high for what's happening to matter. The threat must seem great. Even in books like the teen romances they are up against time. It takes place over a summer or a school year and they only have so long. But if the threat is going to be big enough to matter something must be lost.

I'm never convinced when five main characters go up against an army (with maybe 10 of their closest friends) and no one dies. Often no one is even gravely injured. It doesn't make sense. There should at least be lots of blood. Maybe most of them make it out alive thanks to their superior powers or that last minute help but there's no way that there were no casualties.

Often authors will toss in what I mentally refer to as 'padding characters.' These are the ones whose names we hear a couple times before, maybe they share a joke or two with the main characters. They are almost guaranteed to die. Because you recognize the name you care just enough and the author can say that someone we knew died.

I'm not okay with just padding characters dying. The stakes aren't high enough.

But how many people are really happy with a book (or series) that ends with the main character alone and grieving...or dead? There would be outrage. But at the same time people are still angry when the consequences aren't high enough.

Where's the line? Can we ever be happy with the way it ends?

I would be okay with the main character dead if it made sense. But I also think the story requires the same respect the characters do. To change the flow of the story for the sake of the ending is cheap. And I think it often shows when that happens. The ending doesn't make sense. There is never a time when every reader is going to be happy. I'd rather be devastated but satisfied.

But I'm beginning to think that I might be a little bit bloodthirsty.

-Amy

Around the World in 80 Bites

While literature doesn't get much better than a long, super-descriptive food scene (the meals in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy! The restaurants in Hemingway's Movable Feast! The baked yam in Invisible Man!) it does get better when you are describing in minute detail meals had on epic journeys. There's been a spate of food memoirs lately, and even more recently than that a new crop of food memoirs On Location. There's something nostalgic and comforting reading about the food that people grow up with, and even if it's from a culture entirely foreign to you, what better way to understand cultures than in the food we grow up on. Some of the most beautiful sentences in literature seem to come from whatever gland is deep within us that hold the genuine love, passion and nostalgia for the foods that sustained us when we were young. Here's a roundup of my recent faves, and one I'm drooling to dig into:

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, Anya von Bremzen  This book was such a funtime treat to read. It was equal parts history of the Soviet Union, nostalgic memoir of a not-so-easygoing childhood, and a love poem to a century's worth of food from one of the biggest nations in the world, encompassing such a huge swath of culinary traditions it was dazzling, dizzying, and hunger-making. Von Bremzen is both funny and skilled, she made my stomach grumble embarrassingly over fish bones cooked in butter, something I'd never be interested in eating under normal circumstances. She is a sauce-y wordsmith!

My Berlin Kitchen, Luisa Weiss  On the other side of the Iron Curtain, Luisa Weiss grows up learning to cook and bake in her West German home. As a grown-up in America she returns to the recipes of her youth and tells a beautiful story that instantly transports you to the homey kitchens and worldly restraurants of megalopolis Berlin.

Blood, Bones and Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton  By now you might have noticed that the books in this post present a common color scheme. Red and yellow, the colors of the golden arches, have long been considered colors that will make consumers hungry and therefore to eat more. Perhaps this is true also of books, but when you've got a writer AND CHEF of such superlative skill as Gabrielle Hamilton, you cook drop her sentences in a greasy wax bag and the whole world would beg for more. Simultaneously a memoir, coming of age story, complicated love story, and hilarious if grueling account of the blood and sweat poured into opening her own restaurant, Hamilton's book is beautiful, true and offers one of the most fascinating accounts of understanding hunger in a brilliantly wrought scene that catches up with our narrator on her first trans-atlantic trip in Amsterdam. The simplicity of a small meal of a boiled potato and sliver of cheese has stuck with me YEARS after reading this book. She is SO BRILLIANT WHERE IS HER NEXT BOOK!?

A Fork in the Road, ed. James Oseland  Is a book I haven't even read yet but am salivating to dig into! It comes out in December and my-oh-my: Francine Prose, Andre Aciman, Rita Mae Brown, Marcus Samuelsson, Michael Pollan, Monique Truong, Madhur Jaffrey and a bajillion other writers dish on the best meals they've had abroad. Run don't walk--OH MY GOSH is it lunch time yet?!

In the Emergency of an Event

It's a quiet weeknight after a long, hectic day. You're through putting up with people for the time being, and maybe it's starting to rain, but that's nothing a pumpkin spice latte and an hour of bookstore browsing can't soothe away. Nothing more therapeutic than sinking into the hushed hum of a new novel on a cool Autumn night - until 450 fans come stampeding in.

Last night, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri graced our store with her presence, signing copies of her new book for a line of fans that snaked its way up and down all the aisles and almost reached out the front door. I love these huge events; Booksmith staff keep a tight rein on the chaos while giddy readers meet their heroes face to face.

But I always feel a sympathetic twinge for the innocent browser caught up in the bustle unsuspectingly. It doesn't happen often, but if you find yourself in a quiet store one minute and thronged by voracious readers the next (on, say, October 22nd, October 30th or November 7th), just follow this simple guide.

1) Don't panic.

2) Stick close to the walls and edge your way toward the front of the store. With a crowd pouring in this may feel like spawning upstream, but if food can do it so can you.

3) Across from the front register you will see a doorway. This is your escape hatch. Go through it.

What's this? Suddenly the teeming hordes are gone. You descend the stairs in a slight daze. While the main sales floor fills to capacity, you have the Used Book Cellar all to yourself. Chairs, laid-back music, one-of-a-kind scoops... paradise at last. Consider it your fallout shelter from the mayhem up above.

Some new finds:

Calaveras: Mexican Prints for the Day of the Dead

Classic and antique postcard art from the Holiday Most Envied by White People. Printed on heavy, removeable card-stock.

Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom

And you thought Trekkies were obsessive.

The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present 

It was the Lautrec-esque cover that caught my eye, but the subject matter couldn't be more sordid and captivating. Check out the NPR review.

Harry Dickson: Les Spectres Bourreaux

Hardcover reissue of the classic pulp magazine. Great practice for French language learners, though the Parisians might mistake you for a gumshoe detective.

Three real winners

This weekend, I attended the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards and the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium, which focuses on the books that were honored. Though a bit lesser-known than the Newbery and Caldecott Awards, the BGHBs are a high honor within the children's book community, and the winners often don't get enough attention. (Heck, these days even the Newbery and Caldecott don't make it onto the Today show.) This year's winners were all books we're enthusiastic about here, so I thought I'd give them some screen time.

The Picture Book Winner:

Building Our House, by Jonathan Bean

With spare text but very informative (and very '70s) illustrations, Jonathan Bean tells the story of how his family built their own house when they moved to the country. This one is a must for any budding engineer. Just ask Paul about how he and his family have embraced Bean's work; Bean's new book, Big Snow, "makes [his] heart sing!!"

The Fiction Winner: 

Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell

This young adult novel is romantic but not just about the romance. It has characters with big problems, but it isn't just about those problems. It's funny, sometimes even while it's heartbreaking. It takes place in the '80s, but you can get it without having experienced them. John Green loved it. What more do you need to know?

The Nonfiction Winner:

Electric Ben, by Robert Byrd

Don't be fooled by the thinness of this picture book biography. It's full of information, arranged for maximum grabability. Ben Franklin had personality, and by the end of the book, you'll feel like you're on a nickname basis with him.

There's variety in kids' and YA books, is what I'm saying. Particularly in good kids' and YA books.

Oktoberfest: OR, It Could Be Wurst

The real live Oktoberfest wraps up in Munich this week, though if you're planning on going we still have plenty of great books AND if you plan on bypassing the crowds and going to Munich after Oktoberfest, many of the biergartens will still be around, not to mention all those great breweries, so this exhaustive display in your favorite travel section can help no matter where you plan to drink your beers in October.

The original German-style Oktoberfest has been around in various incarnations since King Ludwig I married a pretty princess in Bavaria. Since then, a huge party complete with many of the beers from the regions spotlighted by breweries have washed down countless Wurst, Brezeln and Sauerkraut for locals and tourists alike always around the end of September to the middle of October. So slap on some lederhosen and get the low-down with Meet Me in Munich: A Beer Lover's Guide to Oktoberfest which breaks down the best tents, what to wear and the whys and hows of all the many Oktoberfest traditions. Also the author's name is Moses Wolf and that in and of itself justifies the price of this beautiful, photo-rich book. And as with most locations in the world, we have quite the Schmaus of more general guidebooks and maps to the region.

For many in New England, the dual signal of leaves changing colors and the proliferation of pumpkin beers signals Autumn time. What better time to hit the road, go on a road trip through the brilliant leaves, stop for a jaunt in an orchard, and to wrap up with a tour to the many magnificent New England breweries? Norman Miller's Beer Lover's New England is an exhaustive list of the best breweries, restaurants and bars in New England. So if you don't want to shell out a tiny fortune to Lufthansa, stay stateside and celebrate your own Oktoberfest, in the prettiest autumnal location in the world!

Conversely, for the armchair tourist who wants to avoid all those Mid-Atlantic leafers scoping out our trees, stay at home with this massive, beautiful World Atlas of Beer. There's a lot of history and science about beer in the beginning, and then broken up by region a rundown of the most popular beers by location. What the locals like, what the international community likes that is produced there, and at what specific temperatures to best consume a beer in a pub in Sheffield. Among many other details. There are also tons of gorgeous photographs. An incredible gift for those upcoming holidays, too, folks.

To keep track of all these beers is the Moleskine Beer Journal where you can write down all the beers you've tasted and what you thought about them BEFORE YOU FORGET. So go out there and toss one back for me! And if you've gone to Oktoberfest or are having your own, tell me all about it in the comments!