in a rut

So, I don't know if you've noticed, but Booksmith has this enormous box of free books at the top of the stairs to the Used Book Cellar. The book is called Rut and it's published by the Concord Free Press.

The concept behind the Concord Free Press is that -- surprise! -- all of its books are free. You can request a book from their website (or come into the Booksmith and pick one up), and they'll ship it to you for free. In exchange for the free book, you're supposed to give money to a charity or a person in need, and then pass the book along so that someone else can do the same. You then record your donation on http://www.concordfreepress.com/ so that the company can keep track of it. They bill themselves as "a new kind of publishing," and their motto is "Free their books so their minds will know."

I am never one to pass up a free book, so I've taken my copy of Rut and am now about 30 pages in. It's pretty good, actually, and to fulfill my end of the deal I gave $5 to a man named Joseph who was sitting outside the Kenmore T stop the other night, wrapped in a big sheet of carpet padding. Then I told Concord Free Press about it, and now I'm telling you.

I really love this new idea of publishing, and while I know it won't replace the traditional method (or the new method of e-publishing), it's actually pretty neat. We've still got a big box of copies of Rut, so come in, pick yours up, and feel like a radical.

UPDATE: The box has mysteriously disappeared!! I am currently looking into why this should be. Check back soon. :)

Bear Hunt Time

Watch this story.



Familiar, eh? (And he actually is this animated in person.) Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury's rendition Going on a Bear Hunt remains to be a staple on the bookshelves of children and toddlers. So many kids have sung this song in daycares and scout troops. But what I love about this retelling is Rosen's brilliant sounds and actions of "swishy, swashy" and "squelch, squerch." Along with Oxenbury's illustrations, it is a captivating story that you can really get in to on the first read as well as the hundredth.

Check out their most recent books:
Michael Rosen (and Kevin Waldron)'s Tiny Little Fly
Have you ever wanted to catch that pesky fly that lands on your ear and nose? So does the tramping elephant roaming around, the filthy rolling hippo, and the snatchful winking tiger. Like Bear Hunt, this book is great for younger children and the sounds and actions you could do with this picturebook might be just as great.

Helen Oxenbury (and John Burningham)'s There's Going to be a Baby
This little boy is anticipating the arrival of a new sibling. But what will he or she be like? If it's a boy then his name should be "Peter or Spider-Man." If he grows up to be a chef, "I don't think I'd eat anything that was made by the baby." The swirls of opinions and questions this boy has will coincide with listeners who have the same predicament. Who is this new baby and what do I do with it?

Let There Be Letters

As the world of communication goes more and more into the ether, I'm very concerned about letters, physical letters written by one person to another. Volumes of letters have been a big literary genre all of my 38 bookselling years and for eons before. What will become of them? How will we know people and events in the unique ways available through letters written on paper and saved. Somehow collected emails don't have the same heft and depth. Maybe that will be okay with everyone going forward. Not me, though. It's not going to be okay with me.

I'm reminded of this concern since we just got in a new book of Saul Bellow's letters, entitled (wait for it) "Saul Bellow : Letters". He has actually been a customer of ours! This is a wonderful, enlightening volume. I love learning the thoughts, history, process and personal writing style of beloved authors this way.

Herewith part of a favorite poem of my husband's. It's from A.A. Milne's "Now We Are Six", a lovely little volume if you don't know it. From "The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak":

"Of all the Knights in Appledore
The wisest was Sir Thomas Tom
He multiplied as far as four,
And knew what nine was taken from
To make eleven. He could write
A letter to another Knight."

Good job, Sir Tom!!

seasonal self-care...won't you join me?

I've been waiting to use this image in my weekly chitter-chat, and today just feels right. We are officially at the top of the pain roller coaster referred to as the "holidays". The time of year when you get real close with your therapist, revisit old addictions, cry, go deeply into debt and resolve to fix the aforementioned hullabaloo. I want none of it this year. This year I am going to do this thing differently. This is the year ,as Dr. Oz would say, "the year of self-care". I am going to make a menu of ways to avoid the fevered hell that is late November to mid February.

Gift reduction.

Everyone on my list is getting a used or discount book. (you're welcome)
If you are on my list and lucky I may make you some neat-erific infused gin thing, it's cheap and useful.

Relaxation.

I am going to work long and weird hours avoiding family functions. (soothing)

Serenity.

I am going to start weight lifting, and dropping the weights, and grunting. OR. I am going to take up sewing.

Celebration.

I am going to use lotion this winter. I will spend too long at CVS deciding between Dove and Olay. I am going to use my extra care bucks. (p-a-r-t-y-t-o-w-n)

I am going to see Amy Sedaris...and learn more poor people crafting techniques.

Acceptance.

I am going to enjoy Turkey Day. (yes I know what we did to the indigenous peoples of this continent, but you can't take this one shrapnel of joy from me today.)

I'm going to go to my brother's house, teach the kids to whittle and swear. Then, I shall eat and drink too much. I will arise the next morn and purge it out during a "5k turkey trot of contrition."

Let us be strong together. We can get through this. I know we can.

Just give the gift of cheap books...(and maybe some infused gin)

that's what the holidays are about. new ideas. and forgetting them.

warning: graphic (novel) content!

So, I know that I am terribly late to this particular party, but I just finished reading Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, which came out in 2006 and was immediately nominated for every book award ever to exist.

If you had told me, even a year ago, that I was not only going to read a graphic novel but finish it and want to read it all over again, I would have told you to get real. Graphic novels? Pshaw. A fancy name for comic books, and I grew out of comic books when I realized that Betty was never going to triumph over Veronica, back when I was about...oh...eight years old. So, year-ago me would have told you NO. I am not going to read a graphic novel. I am fully grown out of picture books.

Ah, but now, after reading Fun Home, I am converted. Bring on the graphic novels (the well-written ones, anyway -- just like I don't want to read a bad novel, I don't want to read a bad graphic novel). Pile graphic novels in front of my door and lock me in my room until I have read them all. I will do so with a happy heart and a smile on my face.

Hyperbole and triteness aside, I really did adore Fun Home. The storyline is as complex and delicious as any well-loved novel. Bechdel chronicles her somewhat tumultuous relationship with her late father, slowly discovering his homosexuality -- and her own -- over the course of the memoir. Only a few weeks after Bruce Bechdel comes out to his daughter, he is hit and killed by a truck -- whether his death was accidental or intentional is for the reader, and Bechdel herself, to figure out. What juice! What depth! Bechdel's chronology is wonderful and twisted -- we know of her father's death and potential homosexuality before the book really digs into the meat of the text. Bechdel also dialogues extensively with other texts and authors, including The Odyssey, Ulysses, The Importance of Being Earnest, Fitzgerald, Camus, and Proust, and does so gracefully.

Bechdel's skilled, thoughtful illustrations added immensely to her text. They don't just illustrate moments in the text -- although some do exactly that. They, instead, dialogue with the text itself; there's a wonderful sequence in which the text is discussing Oscar Wilde and his encoding of homosexuality in The Importance of Being Earnest, and the illustrations are of a community theater group rehearsing for the same play. Speech bubbles coming out of characters' mouths are indicative of the text above: it's hard to describe with no image, but in one panel, the caption text reads Then Wilde was tried for committing indecent acts and sent to prison while both The Importance and The Ideal Husband were playing to full houses. In the accompanying illustration, the director instructs the actors to "take it from 'please don't touch.'" Aghh! My little English major heart goes pitter-pat.

As worried as I was that the illustrations would make it seem as if I were reading a comic book, Fun Home is anything but. Some illustrations are quite adult; there are depictions of dead bodies and lesbian sex, and there is nudity throughout. And they're skillfully done; facial expressions are lovely, and Bechdel draws in different styles depending on what she's depicting -- maps, photographs, or real-life moments. And the final illustration brought a lump to my throat.

So, bringing it back to me (as always!), it's like Evan wrote a few weeks ago -- try something that you don't think you're into, be it Booksmith events or graphic novels or anything in between. I fully plan on devouring the next Bechdel material I can get my hot little hands on, and I definitely recommend Fun Home as a starter graphic novel for anyone who thinks they might be even slightly interested in the genre.

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P.S. We're having a graphic novel author right here at Booksmith at the end of the month! On November 29, at 7 PM, Phoebe Potts will be reading from her new novel Good Eggs, which deals with her journey on the road to motherhood. Come in and try graphic novels out for yourself!

Thought of the Day

A book, as a noun, is a bunch of papers bound together. However, I prefer books as verbs, where they serve as a window to see what another person's life is like; or, as a mirror, where the reader can see someone else's experience on the same issues that they are going through. And, whether you are looking at yourself or out into the world, you are exploring the human condition.

Doonesbury Turns 40

And I, 62, about the same age as Garry Trudeau. I began reading his work as a Viet Nam War protester college student back in the day. He has always been an important voice in my life, chronicling major cultural and political shifts since 1970 in more than 14,000 strips. The acuity and wit with which he does so never lessens. Andrews McMeel Publishing has just released "40: A Doonesbury Retrospective". It's a superb tome affording a unique way to experience the amazing depth and complexity of one of the greatest comic strips ever. There's a wonderful introduction by Garry who seldom talks about his work. He'll be out in the media scrum for this book, another rarity. I will be enjoying this anniversary and reflecting on my much younger, then somewhat older, then even older self in the meantime.