Great Booksellers Answer Not So Great Questions About Great Books, In The Warwick's Octagon with Reggie Style. Volume Two: Adriana Hill-Diamond

Now that my dream interview with starlet Alicia Silverstone (at last month's Warwick's cooking club event) has officially fallen through, I've turned to my other 'Favorite Lady I'm Not Married To', bookseller extraordinaire Adriana Hill-Diamond, to provide some quote fodder for the Warwick's Blog.  Adriana is the lynch pin behind both the Warwick's Book Club Program and our lovely magazine section.  If there's a magazine that smells pretty, or has pretty things in it, or has something to do with England, we have it and she reads it.  One of my long term goals in life, if my wife and I accidentally have a child, is to have that child spend a tranquil happy decade before embarking on an arranged marriage with Adriana's future child.  Thusly, the married couple, if they chose to hyphenate, would have the last name of Hill-Diamond-Ehrig-Burgess, which sounds like a great name for an architecture firm, or some crazy accountants.  In fact, my kid's first name would be Hyphen (Which is a pretty common first name in some countries), so my kid's name would sound like:  Hyphen Ehrig hyphen Burgess hyphen Hill hyphen Diamond, for example.  Anyway, what were we talking about?

Reggie Style:  Adriana, welcome to the Octagon.  Why does the magazine selection at Warwick's intentionally alienate half of the population?  No Sports Illustrated, no Car & Driver, no Consumer Reports, no Field & Stream.  What message are you sending to the La Jolla Man?

Adriana Hill-Diamond:  No one cares what they think.     Unless they're fashionable, in that case they're reading Vogue.  There is one rule of thumb for selling magazines:  It's got to have breasts on the cover; either women's or chicken's.

RS:  Can you think of a policy any more discriminatory in the history of the world? I’ll answer that one for you:  no, you can’t, because it doesn’t exist.

AHD:  (Look of daggers, tapping fingers impatiently.)

RS:  If you had your own Magazine what would it be and what would it be called?

AHD:  Baking For the Weak Willed or Cats on Bikes.

RS:  As Book Club Coordinator, what insights can you give to people who have perhaps been scared to take the leap and start a bookclub?

AHD:  Don't.  It causes nothing but heartache.  They're right to be scared.

RS:  Why is there always someone in the bookclub who suggests reading The Red Tent?

AHD:  Not true.  No one reads that.

RS:  Let’s talk about your dominance in the Warwick’s cupcake battle: I believe you won Best in Show, Best Frosting and Best Cake.  Do you have any rituals while you’re baking? Like standing on hot coals or guttural chanting?

AHD:  Curse, cry, start over.  Have another tantrum.

RS:  What are some of the cookbooks you’ve been influenced by?

AHD:  Nigella Express, Magnolia Bakery and Baked by Lewis and Poliafito, which is my baking bible.

RS:  Have you ever had a job where so much cheese was served in the breakroom?

AHD:  No.  But it's not enough.  Who doesn't love cheese?  (Editor's Note:  Nancy Warwick, the owner of the store, is second only to Wallace, from Wallace and Gromit, in her love of cheese. . .we suspect Adriana is up for a performance review soon.)

RS:  I am contractually obligated to ask you about books, so tell me about the Joyce Maynard book, Labor Day, so we can get to the speed round.

AHD:  It's about a lonely boy who lives an isolated life with an even lonelier mother.  They spend Labor Day weekend with an escaped convict and it changes their lives forever.

RS:  I spent a lost weekend in Yuma with an escaped convict when I worked the beauty pageant circuit, but that story's probably best for another blog, another day. . .

AHD:  (Scowls.)

RS:  Any other books you'd like to give a shout out to?

AHD:  Man Who Ate the World by Jay Raynor, First Stop In the New World by David Lida, First & Last Freedom by Krishnamurti.

RS:  Ok.  Speed round.  How many tatoos do you have?  A.) 20+ B.) 15+ C.) 10+ D.) Less than 10

AHD:  D.

RS:  Name the celebrity baker you would most like to challenge to a cupcake bake-off?

AHD:  Bobby Flay, because he'd probably make some lame blue corn cupcake.  Can't imagine that would taste good at all. . . then again I've never tasted a blue corn cupcake. . .but I refuse to like anything by the man who once jumped on Morimoto's counter.

RS:  Final thoughts.  I like to tell people that you’re my work wife, and I know you think of me as your work husband. Have you ever had a relationship with another human that was lower maintenance yet as beautiful and enriching as ours?  This is a yes or no question.

AHD:  Human relationship?  No.  But Abbey, my dog, is certainly lower maintenance.

Are You Seth? vol.4

Let's step back a bit for this edition of "Are You Seth?" - step back to a simpler time... This book has been on the shelves at Warwick's since May 5th of this year, but I'm afraid that there are still those of you out there who have not only not read this yet, but have never even heard of it. For shame! The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen just might be the best book out there this year and it has brushed past you like a specter in the night...

"Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere inside of your head, as if you were born with a complete map of this world already grafted onto the folds of your cerebellum and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?"

Twelve-year-old genius cartographer, Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his family - to his young eyes, his mother is a floundering entomologist and his father is an unloving, gritty rancher. Ever since his younger brother died tragically the summer before, T.S. feels as if his parents don't care whether he's present or not, and he retreats into the elaborate mapping of his world. Now, these are not maps in the traditional cartographic sense, but rather intricate diagrams and illustrations of every object, experience, and thought that he deems important enough to put down on paper. An elaborate diagram of a "Freight Train as a Sound Sandwich", the history of 20th century, mapped according to 12-year old boys eating Honey Nut Cheerios, the structure of the Bailey train yards in Nebraska. The scientific drawings he does for a professor friend at Montana State are so accurate and so beautifully rendered, that the professor sends them off to "the attic of our nation", the Smithsonian in Washington, without T.S.'s knowledge. When the museum awards T.S. the distinguished Baird fellowship, without knowing that he is only in junior high, T.S. debates whether to accept his new life or to continue in anonymity on the ranch. In light of his parental ignorance, this boy who has never been more that 50 miles from home, decides to slip off under cover of darkness, hop a freight train, and make his way across the country, on his own, to accept his award in D.C.

As a reader, I relish those books that challenge my perceptions of what a novel is meant to be, bending the rules of narration to create something truly unique and wonderful. The trick here lies in Larsen's delivery of T.S.'s story, not just in the tale itself.  Being that our narrator is a cartographer, we are provided with diagrammatical footnotes in the margins as a sort of illustration of whatever T.S. sees or thinks about. When confronted by a bible-thumping hobo, T.S. illustrates the man's terrifying features under the journal heading, "Fear is the Sum of Many Sensory Details". He has never seen a car with spinning rims before - "The Car With Black Windows That Drove Backwards While Traveling Forwards". The added element of these illustrations creates an entirely different book - one that transcends mere novel and becomes a visual, physical mapping of a story. A novel as art, if you will - in a more literal sense. T.S.'s humor, naivete, and intelligence become remarkably magnified through his maps. Everything he experiences becomes heightened and the writing takes on a more evocative air when coupled with these remarkable additions, creating a beautiful, hilarious, moving story unlike anything I have ever read.

How could there possibly be another novel this year that is more of a complete package than this? I was left stunned by it's brilliance and humbled by Larsen's talent.

Remember Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

by Heather
One of the perks of being a bookseller is that we are fortunate enough to receive advanced copies of books. One of the disadvantages of being a bookseller is that we receive advanced copies of books. Why is this blessing such a frustration? Think about it this way; when you first finish a really good book what do you want to do? Put it down and forget about it? No, probably not. How about call up a friend and encourage him/her to pick it up? Ding, Ding, Ding! There’s a certain thrill and excitement when you can share a good book with someone. There’s that feeling of camaraderie, the intellectual stimulation, and the downright enjoyment you feel when you can connect with someone over a book. So, if you’re paying attention you get the bookseller’s dilemma. What do you do when the book you just read and loved isn’t available for 3 or more months? Well, you can get all of your bookseller friends to share your advanced reading copy or you can blog about it. So, here is my opportunity to share one of those books with you.

A couple of months ago there was this novel - Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman - floating around the staff (mainly the female members). It was a debut novel that takes place in the south, seemingly quaint, simple, “kind” chick-lit as I like to call it (you know the type, no sex or foul language, kind of dull). Not my cup of tea, so I heard the title and dismissed it from my mind. As the weeks rolled by the title started to creep up again in conversation. First I heard Vicki describing it as a heartwarming modern fairy tale, then Jan and Barbara were discussing it, comparing it to The Secret Life of Bees. A week or so later Adrian handed me her copy and asked if I would read it. I believe her words were, “If you like southern, you’re going to love this book”. Now, I’m not exactly Miss Southern Lit, but okay, my interest was slightly piqued, if only because I had just been told by 4 other booksellers that the book was good, and I needed something to read on my break. So, I went for it.

Here are my thoughts: Yes! Yes! Yes!

This wonderfully delightful novel absolutely grabbed me. The author, Beth Hoffman, has this smooth prose that captures the idiosyncrasies and nuances of southern life and style. The cast of characters is vivid in personality, feminine intelligence, and southern charm. Hoffman also manages to convey a hard core of strength and determination beneath her sweetly loving and exuberant female characters. This seemingly simple story of a newly motherless girl taken in by her great aunt is truly superb. It is both laugh out loud, and cry in the dark, a multi-dimensional story wrapped in the façade of a light and easy read. This is one of those books that you put down, and then pick right back up because you must find someone else to read it and enjoy it with you.

Do I hear Reading Groups clamoring yet? I should! As Janet told me “Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is my new favorite book! I’m already telling all of my reading [group] friends and relatives to watch for it.” So watch for it! No one else should have to say to themselves “Why didn’t I pick this up weeks ago?" So, thank me in January (yes, you have to wait that long, but I promise it will be worth it) for introducing you to as Adriana puts it, “a delightful new novel that will charm and win over girls ages 10 to 100”. I’ll be waitin’ ya’ll!

Take a Coffee Break

I figure this is as good a time and place as any to start hyping this awesome new venture we're about to embark upon at the store: Coffee with a Bookseller, debuting at Warwick's on the morning of Saturday, November 7th at 10am. Mosey on into the book department at 10 and I will offer you a cup of coffee, some snacks, show you around the place, talk about what's new in books, as well as the best of what I've been reading lately. If you don't drink coffee, it's okay, you can stay and listen anyway - its free! This is to become a regular thing (we'll switch to Tuesday mornings with the second installment), hopefully with different, brave booksellers, but for the moment, you're stuck with me.              

The point of all this is for us to distinguish ourselves from the impersonal chain bookstores, the giant online retailers, and the big box stores who would never even dream of trying to connect with the people in their communities on such a personal level. Maybe we can't sell $35 books for 8 bucks like Target, but we can offer something else - something less tangible, but much more fulfilling in the long run. We offer a personal relationship - whether its just for the ten minutes you spend here looking for a book to read on the plane home to Minneapolis or whether you come in every day, attend author events each week, and have your book club registered with us. We offer uncommon bookselling honesty and intelligence - if I don't think Shantaram is the book for you, but Cloud Atlas is, I will tell you so. We offer opinion. We offer conversation. We offer the chance to shake hands with famous authors (like Ron Carlson, see here with Scott & I. I'm the tall one.) We offer treats for your dogs. We offer ourselves, really - we are all voracious readers, just like you - and can offer you our expert reviews, on the fly, tailored to your reading tastes. Can you get that at Costco? Has Walmart ever even carried Cloud Atlas? Does Amazon host book signings? See, we are as much a part of your community as you are of ours and we want to give you a really good reason to shop locally. Free coffee may not be the thing that gets you in the door, but if you're a passionate reader, having a bookseller chat with you, face-to-face, about literature - that's a uniquely independent bookstore type of thing. So come on in & chat over a cup of coffee - I promise I won't bite.

Crazy King Philip

This is a re-post that I wrote for my other blog, The Book Catapult that I thought was worth posting again here.  If you have any thoughts on Roth's comments after reading this, leave them in the comments field - I'd be curious to hear what others think. Enjoy. 

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Has the esteemed Philip Roth, one of our most respected living American novelists, gone insane, at age 76?  In this interview (see below) with Tina Brown, lately of The Daily Beast, Roth plays harbinger of doom and announces the death of the printed word - coming to you in the next 25 years.

Roth predicts that the culture of the book will be relegated to the darkened caves in the society of the future, there being little place for the printed word in a world dominated by television screens and computer monitors. While I agree that the bound book is headed for a major change in readership, his ideology that most modern humans lack the concentration and focus to be able to read a novel, thus being the impetus for the impending doom, is somewhat absurd. Is the number of casual readers (those reading for "fun") in the world, per capita, so different now than at any other point in history? Can we really make a blanket statement like, "people just don't read anymore", when there are so many more of us out there than ever before?

There are readers among us (hello!) who take umbrage at being referred to, even hypothetically, as "cultish" for preferring the bound book, as opposed to viewing or reading books on a "screen". Or worse yet, he equates the potential numbers of bound book readers in the future to be similar to the numbers that today "read Latin poetry". The weird part about his prediction is that he doesn't think e-readers will have a positive effect on readership at all - as if it is already too late for humanity.

"The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen, and it can't compete with the computer screen. Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn't measure up." (excerpted from The Guardian, UK)

Despite all that, the craziest, most alienating thing uttered by Mr. Roth was this: "If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don't read the novel really."  As if to somehow highlight his "fact" that people lack the proper concentration for novel reading. (Note that Roth's last three books have all been novella-sized. Coincidence?) I read fairly fast, but I guarantee that in over 2 weeks, I will still be reading Orhan Pamuk's new book. Does that mean that I lack the "concentration, focus, and devotion to the reading" necessary to be a reader?  

 

Tina Brown Asks Philip Roth About the Future of the Novel from The Daily Beast Video on Vimeo.

Bed Ridden

by Heather
Comfort food. That’s a phrase that evokes pictures of hot soups, freshly baked bread, and a pint of ice cream (Ben and Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake for me). Yes, everyone has their own version of comfort food to pull out when they are feeling blue or ill. But what about comfort reads? What do you read when you’re under the weather?

This last week I’ve had a lot of time to ponder this question. Holed up in bed, with a large, unwieldy cast on my right leg and a pair of crutches that have left their imprints on my palms, and scuffs on my hard wood floors, I have had ample time to think about comfort. I’m fortunate enough to have stacks of unread books, both new and old lying about my bedroom, living room, garage, and car (this is what happens when you come from a family of book addicts). I have the new Audrey Niffeneger, Her Fearful Symmetry, sitting on my desk right next to an advanced copy of Christopher Moore’s Bite Me: A Love Story. I’ve been reading an amazing upcoming novel, The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, it’s one of those books that is just plain good, well told, moving, and a novel I can’t wait to introduce to readers when it’s released next year. You’d think I’d be sunk into those fantastic pages, but no. So, what is it I turn to? A stack of novels and stories I have read at least ten times each . . . go figure.

Yes, I turn to my comfort reads. Books that I’ve read so many times that I have memorized lines of dialogue, uttering them mentally like a movie freak shouting out the lines before the actor speaks them on screen. With characters who feel more like friends than words on a page, whose personalities are as well known as those of my co-workers. I can become engrossed, enter a familiar world, one where I don’t need two legs to dance, play, hike, explore an old eerie estate in Arabia, or solve a murder in Alabama. I ask myself, do other people turn to their comfortable favorites when they’re on house arrest? I think they do. Ask any person what food they like when feeling down, what movie they turn on when home with the flu, what book they’ve read so many times the pages have yellowed with age and the spine has creased from love. I guarantee you’ll have an answer almost immediately. Why? Because as humans we seek the familiar, especially when we are unable to act on or own, or need comfort when our brains just can’t handle the overload of information that is thrown at them all day. We seek the wealth of emotions that imprint themselves in our subconscious bringing us the stimulation we can’t find or are denied by circumstances. Books, loved books, give us that same satisfaction and endorphins that good food and good friends can provide, but unlike the others, books can be pulled off the shelf at any time, they are eager to be used, want to provide that wonderful cathartic release, and when you’re contagious, or, stuck on the couch with your foot elevated in a hot, uncomfortable cast, and everyone you know is working, the familiar ones can bring that perfect touch of joy, or sorrow, needed to connect you to the world and the people in it.

So, enjoy those comfort reads. Take pleasure in them. Take ownership of them, even if they’re silly romances, or cheesy detective stories. They bring you contentment and joy, and connect you when you just can’t connect. They’re your happiness and they relieve you from really bad daytime television . . . seriously. Now excuse me, but Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree is calling.

Are You Seth? vol.3

I will admit, I struggled through Iain Pears' labyrinthine, 700+ page mystery, An Instance of the Fingerpost, when I read it back in the day. It weighs in at over 700 pages, tells the story of a murder from 4 differing perspectives, and while it took me forever to get through, I realized afterward that I love books with narrative structure like that, which ultimately lead me to authors like David Mitchell and Orhan Pamuk. That said, Pears has returned with a similarly structured new novel, Stone's Fall, which encompasses the life of a wealthy turn-of-the-century industrialist named John Stone. When Stone dies under mysterious circumstances in 1909, (did he fall out the window, jump out the window, or was he pushed out the window?) a young reporter begins to dig into Stone's life, not entirely sure what he is unearthing or who is pulling his strings. When the enigmatic Henry Cort directs him to pre-WWI spygames in Paris 1890 and Venetian industrial espionage in 1867, this incredible onion of a novel begins to gradually unfold.

Pears expertly keeps the storyline unfolding backwards in time, until all preconceived notions we may have about the characters (established chapter to chapter) are sufficiently pummelled into submission and reworked. In each section, the reader emerges with a completely new perception of what Stone was really like, as well as what the motives and ambitions of the people he surrounded himself with really were. Great reading for fans of historical fiction (not the romancy type, more meaty like Neal Stephenson or James Clavell), historical mysteries (such as Caleb Carr or John Dunning) or even Iain Pears himself.  Well worth the time investment, a fascinating, meticulously researched, multi-layered masterpiece. Leaving you asking, who was John Stone, really?

I Am Heather

“I’m dreaming of a frightening story

Just like the ones’ I used to peruse

Where my hairs had risen

And fear would glisten

To see such terror and abuse...”

You get my drift. It’s Halloween time, the month where the strong of stomach and mind go searching for that perfect hair-raising story to read during the cold, dark, and windy nights. They go searching for horror and ghosts, psychotic cars, and men named Freddy, but as movies move from the frightening to the frightful, and horror stories of yesteryear become romances of today it is harder and harder to work up a good scare. I too have been in this desolate place, reverting to my worn and torn childhood copy of Scary Stories 3, or revisiting all one million Halloween’s and Friday the 13th’s, yes even Freddy vs. Jason, yet I am continuously let down. I’ve tried the Saw’s and Hostel’s, but found myself more sickened by the blatant, gratuitous violence, torture, and just plain cruelty of this new breed of horror, than frightened or entertained. Thank God for an old friend who managed to bring the terror back into my cheery October nights.

The first time I came across Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend a friend handed it off to me ensuring that I would be captivated. I have to admit I was leery. Let me preface this by saying that the horrible, action-packed ridiculousness, which was the Will Smith film version of this title (really it just used the name and basic plot elements, nothing else was remotely close to the novel) was not even in the works. I was hesitant because the plot sounded way too much like the Charleston Heston 1970’s film The Omega Man, a movie I had seen more times than I had really wanted, and didn’t actually care for. The basic storyline (as given by the publisher) is this: “Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone. An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him. By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.” Sounds like Omega Man, right? Anyway, after sitting on my desk for a few weeks I finally decided to pack it in a bag and take it to the beach with me.

It was an overcast day, the Santa Monica beach nearly deserted, as I sat by my surfboard, book in hand. The story began:

“January 1976: On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when the sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.”

As the story of Robert Neville’s desperate loneliness, his incurable depression, his fight for survival along the dead and abandoned streets of Los Angeles unfolded, I could feel his world. I sat up and saw the deserted beach with it’s barely breaking waves, and listened to the aged, eerily tinkling tunes of the Carousel as it spun emptily on the rickety old Pier, and could see Neville’s empty LA streets lined with dead cars, stinking of abandonment, the stale taste disuse floating in the air. And I had chills.

I realized that I was terrified. Not by the soulless, taunting monsters who stalked the nights, terrorizing a lonely and half-mad Neville, but by the utter emptiness of a city that was so vitally alive, and by a man, broken and nearly defeated. The fear and terror of the story is pulled freshly from a fear that is so prevalent in all of our psyches, the fear of being completely alone, with only the monsters of memory (as seen in flashbacks, and embodied by the neighbors and friends of Neville’s who taunt him nightly with their blood-thirsty catcalls) as companions. “For he was a man and he was alone…” These words, this concept, can evoke far more than the most brutally sadistic scenes of today’s so-called horror. And this simple story of a man, a legend, surviving by the skin of his teeth in a world that no longer no wants him, is not only thrilling in it’s creep factor, but stimulating in it’s underlying concepts. The horror is not in the vampire creatures, but in the fact that they two were simple humans, and now they are lost. This isn’t Buffy, this is a tortured soul looking to survive, when there is nothing to survive for. This is what happens when there is nothing.

So, instead of yearning for a new, exciting thrill, and ultimately being disappointed, I have embraced a story of old, one that still, after several years, manages to both thrill and chill me with its brilliance. I Am Legend, I am devoted.

The Wild Things Are Here and They Are Covered In Faux Fur

When I was in writing workshop, back in the day, someone said to me, 'Why do you insist on this pose?'  That's how I looked at Dave Eggers when he first published A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
I took the book as an unreadable, post-modern disaster, full of overly-clever, but ultimately unreadable, meta-fictional catrtwheels, obfuscating the story's heartbreaking heart, which, from what I could grasp, was a staggering, heartbreaking tale, that stood on its own without Eggers' endless props and gimmicks.  Essentially, my take on the book was what my grandmother used to say about the kids with mohawks that sat outside the Nordstrom in Denver:  'Those kids are saying look at me, look at me.'  I suddenly felt old and uncool.

Naturally, not being a gatekeeper, my opinion, in the minority as it was, was thankfully dismissed.  In 2002 he followed up A Heartbreaking Work. . . with his first proper novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, which, after trying to read a page or two, caused me to toss my hands in the air and shout, 'Why do you insist on this pose?'  When he released a revised paperback, which among other riveting changes, included an exclamation mark added to the title, I swore I was done with the young literary cause-celebre.


And yet, there is something hopelessly endearing and brillant about Dave Eggers.  A man who has taken so many risks, botched so many experiments while pulling off so many others can't be anything but sincere.  His resume is so original and scattershot as to be beyond contrivance.  He's written another man's memoir disguised as a novel in What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng; he's written serious non-fiction about wrongly convicted felons, underpaid teachers, and most recently, a searing study of a good Samaritan caught up in the government's post 9-11 paranoia in the aftermath of Katrina, Zeitoun, which my blogging rival Seth has reviewed in a recent post.  He's also written short stories, collaborated on screenplays (Away We Go & Where the Wild Things Are) and produced absurd children's books with titles like Giraffes? Giraffes! & Your Disgusting Head, with his little brother Christopher, under the psuedonymns  Dr. & Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey. 

But Mr. Eggers has been his most creative, courageous and experimental as the driving force behind one of the best independent publishers in America, McSweeny's.  They are one of but a handful of book publishers left that have seemingly never made a decision based on the bottom line, trusting instead that the market will appreciate honest, carefully crafted and packaged, iconic work from young, daring, innovative (and sometimes unreadable!) young writers (which the market too frequently does not support).  William Vollmann, who was recently at Warwick's, said Mcsweeny's was the only publisher that had the courage to publish an UNABRIDGED seven volume edition of his reportage on violence masterpiece, Rising Up, Rising Down.  Not to mention their royalty share to Mr. Vollmann was many times more generous than the typical New York publishing house.  As an offshoot to Mcsweeny's, Eggers has also co-founded 826 Valencia, a not-for-profit which provides writing skills tutoring for 6-18 year olds, which started in San Francisco and now has seven national chapters.  Essentially the man is a saint.  Did I mention 826 Valencia also has its own Pirate Supply Store?  Does it really matter at this point what I think of his fiction?

Which brings me to Mr. Eggers's latest contribution to his canon of the bizarre: a novelization of a screenplay adaptaion of a classic children's book.  As if that weren't beguiling enough to process, Mr. Eggers's version of Where The Wild Things Are is stunningly bound in . . . a coat of faux fur.  Do I want a novel to have hair on it?  Do I need or want to read a novel covered in fur?  How do I dust it when it's been on the shelf for a year?  Do I need a flobee to maintain it?  At this point it no longer matters what I, or anyone else, thinks.  The world of books is a more vibrant, interesting place, because of Dave Eggers and his relentlessly sincere 'pose'.  So buy your fur covered book before the world of publishing becomes boring, predictable, and homogeneous, and all works of art are delivered electronically and clean shaven.

Our Owner Shares Some Fanciful Thoughts & Fanciful Places For Bibliophiles

A year ago I found myself absorbed in a new idea for the Warwick's website. I decided it would be intriguing if Warwick's could link up with other independent bookstores, located in different parts of the world, and establish a group of 15 or 20 foreign booksellers as regular contributors to our site. We would ask these booksellers to tell us about what they're reading, as well as the current "hot" read, in such far away places as Nairobi, Oslo, Barcelona, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Paris, Jaipur, London, etc. 

We would post a picture of each bookseller, as well his or her bookstore, and look forward to some strong and passionate opinions, and, undoubtedly, many intriguing cultural insights. Imagine how fascinating it would be for our webmaster, Seth Marko, to host a monthly on-line book club with these fifteen or so booksellers from distant lands. Would such a group even survive a discussion of the Booker Prize? How I would love to follow such an exchange.

In the end, practical issues hampered my pursuit of the project. No one could figure out how such an initially time-consuming project could be supported by the store. I had to accept that my talented crew needed to focus their creative energies on existing endeavors that were already shortchanged by time constraints.

Notwithstanding, my enthusiasm for the project has remained steadfast and in the process of researching this idea I came across a rather beautiful website, Bookstore Guide, maintained by Sonya and Ivan, two young Eastern European booklovers.  They provide a select listing of mostly independent, European bookstores, which include English-language books in their inventories. I particularly enjoyed the Top 5s page, which includes such groupings as Europe's Top 5: Travel Bookstores, Top 5: Oldest Bookstores, and Top 5: Impressive Bookstores. My heart skipped a few beats on this last page.

I'm unable to pursue the fanciful thoughts I've written about here, but I sure hope to someday visit these phenomenally fanciful bookstores.

Nancy Warwick

Prize Fighters

"...Booker remains a truly important prize because it's about so much more than the winner, or the shortlist. It has become the indispensable literary thermometer with which to take the temperature of contemporary fiction." (Robert McCrum, The Observer)

This week is unofficially "Prize Week" in the bookworld, with Wednesday's announcement of the Booker Prize winner - Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall - and this morning's unveiling of the 2009 Nobel Prize Winner for (Obscure European) Literature, Romanian poet/author, Herta Müller. And next week (in the "Prize Week" annex), the finalists for the National Book Award will be announced, so lots of gold stickers are coming to books near you. But does any of this matter? Does anyone care?

We here at Warwick's are big fans of the Booker Prize - previous winners include The White Tiger (2008), The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Life of Pi (2002), The Blind Assassin (2000), The English Patient (1992), The Remains of the Day (1989), Midnight's Children (1981) - you get the idea, all great books. My personal favorite author, David Mitchell, is a 3-time Booker nominee (Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, & Black Swan Green) and Scott (the other main contributor to this blog) has had a Booker-nominated title actually dedicated to him by the author (Darkmans by Nicola Barker, a 2007 nominee). You'd think that these amazing pieces of information would be enough to generate sufficient buzz, right? Yet the prize remains shrouded in obscurity in this country for some reason. Last year, at our popular Book Club Night I mentioned that one of my picks, The White Tiger, had just been nominated for the Booker. A show of hands in the crowd revealed that the majority of this well-read group had no idea what the Booker was, nor what its significance is. What does this say about said significance? When I asked them, "Who has read Life of Pi?", almost all 75 raised their hands. "That won the Booker Prize."  "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," they replied.  I'd like to use this opportunity to take sole credit for all sales of The White Tiger at Warwick's, since it clearly has not been the Booker Prize that has turned it into the huge bestseller that it is.

The historical list of Nobel winners is impressive: Kipling, Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck, Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Saul Bellow, Naguib Mahfouz, Toni Morrison, Jose Saramago, and Gunter Grass, to name a handful.  J.M. Coetzee (2003), the late Harold Pinter (2005), Orhan Pamuk (2006), Doris Lessing (2007) are recent laureates who are recognizable, widely read authors of renown and all people who had been rumored to be in the running for the Nobel in the years leading up to their actual win. 2004 found obscure Austrian novelist, Elfriede Jelinek as the winner and last year Frenchman Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio won from out of nowhere. Most honest booksellers would admit to having no idea who either were, prior to the award announcements. This year, the early rumors (and the early betting in the UK) favored Israeli Amos Oz, Japan's Haruki Murakami, Canadians Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, and American Philip Roth (the Susan Lucci of the Nobel), possibly ending the 16-year American drought in the Literature department. Alas, it was not to be, as Herta Müller, a German poet/novelist of Romanian birth, was awarded the Nobel this year for her "concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" that so "depict(s) the landscape of the dispossessed."  Awesome. What was her name again?

Every year, whenever a new major award is announced, I seem to feel that there is some sort of inherent flaw in the selection process. Last year, I defended Aravind Adiga in the Booker contest, railed against the Peter Matthiessen re-write that won the National Book Award, and openly complained (along with the rest of humanity) when mystery man le Clezio was awarded the Nobel. This is the natural order of human nature, I suppose - we are never going to agree, especially when it comes to making lists of "the best" of anything. Either I'm disappointed that no one cares that England's biggest literary award even exists or I'm disappointed that a major award (that consumers are aware of) is given to an author that no one knows exists - it's an "either-or" sort of thing, like Paul Auster novels.
 
"We" always think that "They" are wrong. The New York Times puts together a Notable list every year that I disagee with half of - to the point that I have come up with my own notable list every year on my own website. The recent poll by the lit-blog, The Millions, named the "best fiction of the millenium so far" with some great choices, some glaring omissions, and a very questionable champion. And David Mitchell should have won the 2004 Booker over Alan Hollinghurst, everyone knows that! Personally, even though I have never read a single word she has ever written, I think there are most likely dozens of more qualified (or at least, qualified) writers in the world than Herta Müller deserving to be honored for their life's work with a Nobel Prize. As of press time, a poll on nobelprize.org shows that 93% of humans visiting nobelprize.org have never read anything by Herta Müller. 93%! And this poll is right on the Nobel Prize website - as if they're admitting, openly to picking a ridiculously obscure author as their Prize winner!

"What's your point, Seth?" you may ask.

Well, all in all, I guess the lesson here is that you should just read whatever you want - whether or not you've ever heard of Herta Müller or Dario Fo, the Booker Prize or the Whitbread (or is it the Costa Award?) just doesn't matter. Aren't these "accolades" just a matter of opinion anyway? I say, just read, my friends.

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Where are they now?

• Booker winner, Wolf Hall goes on sale at Warwick's on Tuesday, October 13.
• Several publishers are currently scrambling to reprint the few translated works of Herta Müller.

Are You Seth? vol.2

Even though I wrote a very similar post for my own site last week, (see The Book Catapult) I thought I'd post an abbreviated version of my review here on the Warwick's blog since no one reads both, do they? Although, you could read both and I wouldn't mind, really. Besides, I really liked this book, so what's the harm? For more of my shameless self-promotion, visit sethmarko.blogspot.com!

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
Homer and Langley Collyer - fictionalized here in E.L. Doctorow's new novel, but actually real figures from early-1900's NYC - lived lives that are rather hard to comprehend for the average human: born into the New York upper crust of the turn of the 20th century, they chose to seal themselves off from the world amid the squalor of their townhouse, their quality of life steadily degrading with the passage of time.

Over a 50 year span, with virtually no prompting from the outside world, the brothers - crazed, WWI vet Langley and blind, innocent Homer - collected every manner of object, paper, or item that either of them deemed necessary. A full Model-T in the living room, multiple pianos for Homer to play, and the newspapers, oh my god, the newspapers - the literal foundation of their empire of squalor. Langley was convinced (most likely from his experience breathing mustard gas during the war) that news could be condensed down to a few basic, archetypal storylines. He believed that every human story repeated itself so much that one could print a newspaper for all time, so to speak, with articles that would pertain to any possible story that could ever happen, anywhere. This paper would need to be published just one time, ever, since the stories are so cyclical. To research every possible storyline, in order to print such a masterpiece of humanity, Langley needed to read and keep, in perpetuity, every single newspaper printed in New York City. The Collyer home was eventually stacked, quite literally, floor to ceiling with these papers - a fact that would lead to their eventual demise.

Doctorow skillfully brings these people back to life - not necessarily out of his own head this time, but more from the ashes of American folklore, which is where their incredible story has ended up residing. Homer exudes such a simple innocence throughout his brother's madness that you cannot help but sympathize with his plight - a plight only made liveable by the simple fact that he cannot see any of it. Again though, this fact is ultimately the undoing of both men and their odd, symbiotic relationship. The final paragraph - without spoiling anything for you - is one of the most arresting I have ever read, anywhere. Even though I knew how the real story of the Collyers ended, Doctorow's prose stopped me dead in my tracks, mouth agape. These men were magestic fodder for the very objects they collected - a story so bizarre, that even Langley couldn't possibly have found room amongst his archetypal "newspaper for all time".

Are You Seth? vol.1

"Are you Seth?" is, apparently, a common question in the book department whenever I am not around. (Personally, I am rarely asked this, for whatever reason.) I read a lot and I write a lot about what I read - my "Warwick's Recommends" cards are in many places around the store - and many customers ask to pick my brain a bit about certain titles, share their thoughts on books we've both enjoyed, or even to ask me whether I "actually read any of these books" or to half-heartedly accuse me of plagiarizing from the New York Times - these are all great dialogues!  So, in answer to your query, "Yes, I am Seth." And these are the books I recommend.

This is the first of a regular post of extended book recommendations by yours truly. Shorter than a real book review, longer than a "Warwick's Recommends" card, I'll just enamor you with my scholarly wisdom and hope to convince you that these books are worth reading. For more on my personal reading habits, reviews (like E.L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley), rants, and reflections on bookworld trends, (plus a tad bit more foul language) visit my website, The Book Catapult.

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
Walter is the author of the 2007 Edgar Award winner Citizen Vince and the 2008 National Book Award Nominee, The Zero. I'm a big fan.

Halfway through this cautionary tale of financial woe, as my sides ached from laughing, I thought, “I had no idea Jess Walter was so funny”. The humor is very dark and the situation is bleak for sleepless, unemployed Matt, who is in danger of losing his house, his wife, all his money, and his sanity. Before the market crash of 2008, Matt quit his job as a financial news columnist to start an ill-fated website of poetry-laced financial tips and articles called poetfolio.com.

Buffeted by fuel costs soaring
and with labor costs surging
Delta and Northwest are exploring
the possibility of merging.

Two years later, after the website tanked miserably, he returned to the journalism job he left, only to be laid off when the market ultimately bottomed out. Now Matt can't find work, the bank is threatening foreclosure, his wife has managed to shop her way into an insurmountable credit card debt (and is more than likely having an affair), his children pick fights in their expensive private school, and his father, plagued by dementia, can offer no support, as he spends his days clutching his television remote and thinking in a perpetual loop. (His favorite refrain is, "Know what I miss?" - a question with only six possible answers, among them "chipped beef", "Angie Dickinson" and "The Rockford Files".) And his financial planner tells him that he has "fiscal ebola". One fateful evening, while purchasing $9 milk at a 7-Eleven, he decides to sell pot to his middle-aged contemporaries, as a way to make the money he needs to save it all – how do you think that ends?

At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Walter has created a moving, timely, & very human story about how quickly our lives can change & how we each handle life’s persistent curveballs just a little bit differently.

In Honor of Banned Book Week, Another Misguided Plea For Banning Books

Many moons ago I wrote a piece for a now defunct online literary magazine about my enthusiasm for book burning, The Internet and the Argument For Burning Books, as the last best defense against what many, myself foolishly included, were perceiving as the decline of proper culture at the dawn of the internet age.

My argument, though a bit muddled in retrospect, was in favor of the book burning methods of Cervantes’ Priest in Don Quixote’s library- rather than burn the things that were a threat to orthodoxy, the Priest basically burns everything that lacks, in his opinion, literary merit. A sort of proto-Bloomian brownshirt burning books purely on aesthetics. Through this tyranny of good taste we’d all be better read, fitter, happier people, the nation’s book groups re-reading Moby Dick again and again until everyone is seasick. At the time, I thought it was paradise.

Upon reflection, I’ve come to the bitter realization that not everyone has my impeccable taste. Ironically, as many despots have learned, the books most often burned are also the books most likely to outlive the burners. My sensible program for protecting the reading public from itself would have led to a hyper-literate dystopia in which zombie-like bookworms would shuffle about mumbling in iambic pentameter while the resistance lived below in the sewers, smuggling James Patterson novels, eating the pages as they read to avoid being imprisoned, waiting for a Nora Roberts led coup.

Banning books has become a bit of lark nowadays, judging from the lists provided by the ALA that we’ve been highlighting this week. There are always the usual suspects most sensible folk cherish as classics: To Kill A Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn. But The Kite Runner? Who wants to ban that? In fairness, these banned book lists that stores like Warwick’s are promoting in their windows this week have lost the context of why someone wanted them banned in the first place. A boy is raped in the Kite Runner, so few would object ‘banning’ its being read by, say, a class of fourth graders. Not every attempt to ban a book is by a reactionary nutjob trying to censor us. The Gossip Girls series, for example, was banned by numerous school libraries for being sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and for offensive language. Isn’t that the point? The Gossip Girls certainly would have made my list of books to burn, so wasn’t I onto something profoundly good for society? Also, keep in mind when you hear these lists, that the banned books are often ‘challenges’ that ultimately, because of reasonable people stepping in, do not actually get banned. The Kite Runner though, gets attacked on high school reading lists. And really, even if Harry Potter did turn our children into witches and warlocks, isn’t that worth it, considering it also got them reading books again?

And so it goes. The book banners keep plugging away while the rest of us shake our heads, for in this day and age, can anything really be censored in a hyper-networked culture like ours? You can visit this handy map of book censorship and then with a few clicks, in most cases, you can download an electronic version from Warwick’s new e-book store and be reading the taboo content in minutes. Philip Pullman summed it up best after the banning of His Dark Materials: "The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone.  Why don't the censors realise this?" Sherman Alexie said, “the amazing thing is these banners never understand they are turning this book into a sacred treasure.”

Books, of course, should be sacred treasure, without burning or banning them, but everyday there is another affront to their relevance and value. The latest was reported by the New York Times, about something called a ‘Vook’, being published by Simon and Schuster. You see, the smart folks at Simon and Schuster asked themselves what it was that books were missing. Editors that edited? No, don’t be silly. They realized the main drawback with a book is that it isn’t enough like watching TV. So they’ve added video clips, hence, a ‘Vook’. Rumour has it that among the ideas the ‘Vook’ beat out were the ‘Cook’ which was a microwaveable book made out of mashed potatoes, and the ‘Flook’, which was an inflatable book that could be, in an emergency, used as a flotation device. I get it, you’re not selling enough books, you have to try something new, it’s just that at some point you’re no longer a publishing house (which would probably make the shareholders happy).

I once heard someone lament that there was no censorship in America, for if books were burned it would make literature a more important part of our culture. I’m sure any of the authors throughout the world who have truly had to suffer for their work would dismiss this as naiveté, but I think of it every time I mail a book at the Post Office. The clerk always asks: “Is there anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous?” I want to say yes, I think books can be hazardous, can change lives and minds and cultures, but inevitably I say no, it’s just a book. Just a bunch of words that never caused any trouble.

At least for a week then, every year, we’re reminded that there are still people who think books are dangerous and that there are still people and places like Warwick’s willing to defend those dangerous books, even if it does mean, by way of some convoluted logic, that I might end up burning a few. Just know when you see it on the news that my heart was in the right place.

Ban This Post, I Dare You

Happy Banned Books Week everyone!

It’s hard for me to believe that we are still challenging and banning books in the United States of the 21st century. The sad fact that this behavior occurs at such a rate to warrant a full week devoted to anti-book banning awareness is a bit shocking, really. Is this the Inquisition knocking on our door? Are we standing in the Bebelplatz in Berlin? Is this Mao’s Cultural Revolution? No, this is 2009 Obam-America, yet we are still challenging the literary value of Toni Morrison, Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, John Gardner, Aldous Huxley, and The Kite Runner (all challenged in the last year).

Even though we have lived through Vietnam, September 11th, South African Apartheid, Britney Spears shaving her head, and countless other atrocities across the globe, we are somehow still shocked by The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, even though every high school student in America has been assigned to read both of them since the 1960’s. Harper Lee is not racially insensitive (try the opposite) and Salinger is not a pornographic pervert, at least as far as I know. Harry Potter is not an advertisement for the occult and Philip Pullman is a children’s book author, not an anti-Catholic hate-mongerer (at least not publicly). And Harold Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is not “un-American, leftist propaganda”. C'mon, people, lighten up.

My point is simple: You are free to read anything you want - this is a basic, fundamentally democratic freedom that we enjoy. Ignore all this hatred and ignorance and go out and read one of these banned books. There have been over 10,000 formal challenges to printed works since 1990 - with over 500 last year alone. These challenges, while often overturned by rational school boards and sane libraries who recognize the folly of banning A Brave New World, seek to not just remove books from classroom curriculums, but to remove them from public shelves - in effect, censoring them from viewing. Nine of the top ten greatest novels of the 20th century (according to the Radcliffe Publishing Course panel) have been challenged or banned at some point in their published lives - 42 of their top 100. It’s almost as if a book isn’t worth reading unless it pushes the envelope somehow….

Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Funny Strange or Funny Ha-Ha?

It's not everyday at Warwick's that you hear somebody say 'That Kazuo Ishiguro is a laugh riot' or 'I laughed so hard while reading Remains of the Day that milk came out my nose.'  That's probably for the best as one wouldn't want to taint Mr. Ishiguro's reputation as one of the most talented, distinguished and classically restrained novelists working in stuffy old England today.  But, beneath Ishiguro's stoic poker face, his understated prose, and his quietly brooding, melancholy characters, there is a great deal of humor, often missed, misread, or misunderstood. 


Ishiguro's latest work, Nocturnes, a collection of five short stories (But not a short story collection, as this Guardian UK interview explains), linked thematically by music, nightfall, and characters whose lives have not quite turned out, should dispel any notion that the author is incapable of a good chuckle.  Among the moments of high-brow slapstick are an ill-fated Gondola ride to serenade the scraps of a crumbling marriage, an old friend's visit to a college roommate who is trying to hold together the scraps of a crumbling marriage, a pair of Austrian musicians trying to hold together a crumbling marriage . . . fair enough, it doesn't sound funny, but that is what is so beguiling about Ishiguro: the prose is so unstylized, so deadpan, you are completely caught off guard by a saxophonist who gets plastic surgery because his agent convinces him he is too ugly to be a star.  At first you don't know if you're supposed to laugh.  His wife's parting gift as she leaves is to have her new boyfriend pay for the surgery, which the musician hasn't wanted all along.  This discomfort continues, the narrator wrapped in bandages, hiding out in the upper floors of a posh hotel, until the moment a stranger on a cellphone says,

"But it's a man.  With a bandaged head, wearing a night-gown.  That's all it is, I see it now.  It's just that he's got a chicken or something on the end of his arm."

Legend has it that Franz Kafka, another author few would confuse with Groucho Marx, was often overcome with fits of laughter, to the point of tears- his own and others- while reading his latest (unfinished) manuscripts to friends.  Ishiguro, I think, is commonly lumped in with the descendants of E.M. Forster, plainly because of the Booker Prize winning Remains of the Day, which, at its surface is a novel of English class and manners (and implicitly a critique of such things).  But that book, like all of Ishiguro's work, is littered with sublime bits of humour and the uncomfortable comic situations that our lives are unintentionally cursed by.  I read Remains of the Day while working at a used bookstore.  It took roughly four hours, which meant, at $6 an hour, it was the most money I've ever been paid to read a book.  At the time I was too young to know it was okay to laugh as Stevens repeatedly attempts to explain the birds and the bees to Lord Darlington's engaged, 23 year old godson.  Rather, I thought, isn't that strange?  I also thought it was crucial at the time whether Gregor Samsa was really a cockroach or simply believed himself to be one.

Nocturnes then, for me, finishes the loop Remains of the Day began.  Ishiguro has given us the dense, uncanny Unconsoled, whose most surreal (Read 'Kafkaesque') moments are also the most hilarious; When We Were Orphans begins as a detective novel and morphs into a Fellini film; Never Let Me Go is a haunting, deadpan parable, whose premise becomes ridiculous in the hands of any other living writer.  Ishiguro's style is the ultimate straight man.  He is able to convince the reader that even the most ridiculous situations can reflect the melancholy poignance of the human experience.  Now that's comedy.

Nocturnes is not Ishiguro's masterpiece, but any doubts about his genius, or his brillant sense of humour, are given the ghost by the second story of the collection, 'Come Rain or Come Shine'.  In it, the narrator is invited to visit two old college friends, now struggling in their marriage.  When he arrives, he discovers that he has been brought to town because they think he is a sad, complaining wretch.  He is told by the husband simply to 'be himself', which will be so unpleasant to the wife that she will suddenly reappreciate her husband's merits.  By the end of the story there is an old shoe boiling in a pot and the narrator is on all fours tearing the pages of a coffee table book with his teeth.  Like Kafka, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when the story reaches its climax, but it is clear enough that we are in the hands of a master of many things.  Nocturnes adds the short story and poignant farce to Kazuo Ishiguro's toolbox of genius.

Seth's Book Roundup!

An embarrassment of riches is coming your way this fine September day from the world of the book - and even more throughout the whole Fall. With Dan Brown striking fear into the hearts of publishers everywhere, everyone has pushed the release dates back on their biggest titles of the season, starting with today. This "Fat Tuesday" sees Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, Richard Dawkins, Alexander McCall Smith, James Ellroy, Anita Shreve, Kazuo Ishiguro, and even Glenn Beck.  That's just today!  Later in the season, we'll see A.S. Byatt, John Irving, Paul Auster, Richard Powers, J.M. Coetzee, Jonathan Lethem, Philip Roth, Barbara Kingsolver, for sure another James Patterson or two, maybe another Clive Cussler or a Janet Evanovich, who knows.  The point is, there is much more to read out there then just Mr. Brown's latest.

I, for one, have read the Margaret Atwood (left), the Coetzee, the Auster, and the Jonathan Lethem already (one of the perks of being an independent bookseller is the early copies of such books) but with the possible exception of Auster's Invisible, haven't been blown away by any of them. I liked Atwood's The Year of the Flood - a prophetic vision of a post-apocalyptic world that does not seem so far fetched - but felt it was too closely tied to her 2003 novel, Oryx & Crake, which I did not read. I guess this is my fault, but I felt I was mislead. She is a remarkable writer though, have no doubt - the world she has created (filled with far-reaching corporations, over-processed food supplies, and the threat of global pandemics) is frighteningly close to somewhere we could conceivably be headed ourselves.

I ultimately ended up hating J.M. Coetzee's Summertime, not for his writing ability, but rather for his self-indulgent, self-serving material. Summertime is an autobiographical novel - the third of these he has written - that is so heavy handed with the self-deprecation that the reader comes away liking him far less for admitting within that he is a successful author but more for forcing us to see how pathetic he used to be. I read this because it has been nominated for the 2009 Booker Prize, although, now I'm not sure why, save the fact that that's what happens when he writes a new novel. (For more on Coetzee, you can check out my post on my other blog, The Book Catapult.)

Jonathan Lethem is the author of two of my all-time favorite novels - Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude - but has been unable to fully recapture that spark in his work since. His new book, Chronic City, shows flashes of that brilliance - biting satire, great characters, absurd social situations, a vivid depiction of New York - but ultimately, he lost me, spiraling downward into a nearly incomprehensible storyline about virtual realities and online gaming. (I'm still suffering from the disappointment, actually.) Of its 408 pages, you can probably sleep well after stopping at 390 or so.

Ah, then there's Mr. Paul Auster. Auster is an author whose work I either love or hate - in that order, according to his publishing schedule. Book of Illusions (good), Oracle Night (bad), Brooklyn Follies (really good), Travels in the Scriptorium (really bad), Man in the Dark (pretty good) - so, I didn't have the highest hopes for Invisible. Surprise! The pattern has been shattered!  Invisible is a clever, well-wrought novel that tricks the reader at every turn with false information and embellishments by the multiple narrators. In reality, people often do not tell the truth - or at least they sometimes alter that truth to better serve themselves - so why is this not usually the case in fiction?  Why should we implicitly believe every word that our narrator imparts to us? I love books that test the boundaries of fiction like this - David Mitchell, Borges, Calvino - and Auster (with the exception of Follies) always tries to push that, but often ends up bound in the knots of his own overreaching machinations. Not so here - this left me really wondering about the place identity, truth, and narration in both fiction and reality. If you read just one Auster novel in your life, this just might be the one - it's certainly the most resonant for me.

So, there's no need to read just The Lost Symbol this season - there are hidden gems everywhere, you just have to now where to look.

Heather's Paranormal Corner

So apparently I’m the resident expert in all books paranormal, particularly if those books speak to a certain age group (yeah, I’m talking to you, Twilighters). So, I thought that I’d use the fantastic, new Warwick's blog to speak about a few of the good, the okay, and even the ugly paranormal books that are currently available.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater: Grace and Sam have a connection. They’ve watched each other for years, but have never met. Grace and Sam are in love, but can never be together because of one thrilling secret…Sam is a wolf. Enter the mysterious and wonderful world of Shiver, where two people, one cursed to live a life he wasn’t born to, come together to overcome the greatest of odds. This is a great book, a combination of romance, mystery, drama, and the paranormal that literally kept me enthralled. This up-and-coming series by Maggie Stiefvater just plain rocks. If you were really a fan of this genre, Shiver would be on your bookshelf showing signs of wear and tear despite the fact that it only came out in August. Out of the list I’m posting today, this is my number one pick!

The Evernight series by Claudia Grey: This series so far consists of two books, Evernight and Stargazer. The series surrounds a young woman, born to vampires and attending Evernight Academy, an exclusive boarding school open to “special humans” and vampires. This is a fantastic series! Both books are fast-paced, dramatic, and romance laced stories that absolutely captivated me. The storylines are unique, and I eagerly looked forward to the third installment.

Adult fans of this genre, why aren’t you reading the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning? Seriously! The central characters are strong, sexy, and sarcastic. The dark, dangerous streets of Dublin are entrancing, and the mystery at the heart of this series is fantastic, dramatic, and heart wrenching. Read book one in the series, Darkfever and you will be hooked. I have personally introduced this addictive series to several eager readers and have received glowing reviews. The fourth book in the series, Dreamfever, has just been released in hardcover, I brought it on a plane with me to Dublin, thinking it would take the whole flight, and finished it in hours…I just couldn’t stop reading! Check it out and thank me later!

For space sake I’ll write briefly on the “okay” titles.

The Hollow by Jessica Verday has an interesting premise and likable characters, but doesn’t quite cut it in the end. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy reading this, I just was enthralled enough to spend the time to write a recommendation.

Immortal by Gillian Shields: I don’t know if the author was just trying too hard with this one, or if I was hearing too many echoes of Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr, but this book didn’t quite click. I’ll read the sequels, but I won’t be in any hurry.

Now, I’m having a moral dilemma. I respect just about anyone who puts pen to paper and is actually able to get the results published by a major publishing house. So, it is difficult for me to write negatively about their work, but really, this needs to be done! So here they are…the ugly:

Now, this will be difficult for many to swallow, particularly since Stephenie Meyer wrote that the following book was “…a remarkable debut; the ingenuity of the mythology is matched only by the startling loveliness with which the story unfolds.” Now, as a Meyer fan I’m sorry to say this, but Aprilynne Pike’s Wings, was dull, predictable, and just plain bad. I mean a story where a girl finds out she’s really some sort of faerie with flower petals that grow out of her back, sounds kind of cool, but in reality the unremarkable prose, and annoying, unintelligent characters creates a book that you just want to put down.

Carrie Jones’ Need is one of the few books that it was painful for me to read. Why anyone would think that main character Zara, with her over emphasized interest in the ACLU, Amnesty International, and a penchant for writing letters to various political organizations is interesting I just don’t know. I’m all for a politically and environmentally conscious character, I think it’s great to see one in a teen novel, but the extreme attention paid to this character trait is ridiculous and becomes tedious quickly. The writing is just plain uninspired. Let us hope that the upcoming sequel is a little less clichéd, and a little more original.

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Heather is one of our fine, well-read booksellers and the assistant to our Event Coordinator. She has been at Warwick's since 2005.

Zeitoun

I had the great fortune to live in the city of New Orleans from February 2001 to May 2003 - quite enough time for me to fall completely, hopelessly in love with its people (including the girl of my dreams), its incredibly rich history, its dirty dozen brass bands, the peat-smell of the river after a rain, the po-boy sandwiches (dressed), its oak-lined avenues, night-blooming jasmine, and countless other idiosyncrasies that make the Big Sleazy so appealing.

We left for San Diego just over two years before Katrina - a date now four years past, but forever etched into the memories of every American, whether or not they had ever personally glimpsed that city nestled in the elbow of the Mississippi. One of the hardest experiences of my adult life was watching on CNN as the city was abandoned - by residents, authorities, everyone - and given up as lost. My sister and her husband - French Quarter residents at the time - lived through the Storm itself, left town in its darkened wake, and returned again to keep living. According to her, the worst part was not the hurricane, but the progressively worse days afterwards, when the lights went out, the Quarter was abandoned, the police left town, and the looters and "zombies" wandered the streets.

Every New Orleanian has a Katrina story - and that's what they do, they tell their stories. Dave Eggers, author of the bestselling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the recent novel, What Is the What, has produced a stunning new book chronicling the post-Katrina story of the New Orleans family of Abdulrahman Zeitoun. Eggers writes with a simple, straight forward grace, skipping the looming soapbox completely and offering a concise chronicle of Zeitoun's experiences in all their horror and inhumanity. Dare I say, a heartbreaking work of...well, if not genius, then satisfying competency.  As I read this book, I quite literally had to keep reminding myself that this story actually took place in the United States of America of the 21st-century and not war-torn Sierra Leone or some other awful place.

Zeitoun was an upstanding member of New Orleans life - he was a homeowner, a self-starting business owner, he had 4 perfect children, he paid his taxes and he stayed out of trouble. In hindsight, his only mistakes in life, if you can call them that, were staying behind in New Orleans during Katrina to protect his home and being of Syrian descent. After the storm surge flooded his Uptown neighborhood, Zeitoun patrolled the streets in his canoe, rescuing as many people from their water-logged homes as possible. About a week into this new, flooded, apocalyptic world, the home where Zeitoun and 3 friends were staying (a house owned by Zeitoun) was raided by a military-styled swat team and the four men were detained. I say detained because they were not Mirandized, not charged with crimes, they were just shuffled downtown to a makeshift prison that had been constructed attached to the Greyhound bus station. The only information Zeitoun received concerning his incarceration was muttered phrases from the military personnel along the lines of "terrorist" and "al-Qaeda".

"It had been a dizzying series of events - arrested at gunpoint in a home he owned, brought to an impromptu military base built inside a bus station, accused of terrorism, and locked in an outdoor cage. It surpassed the most surreal accounts he'd heard of third-world law enforcement."

Without giving too much of Zeitoun's story away, he spent the month of September 2005 imprisoned first in "Camp Greyhound", then in Hunt Correctional Facility in upstate Louisiana, for crimes that were never made clear to him by anyone in any authoritative capacity. He was met at every turn by uncompromising bureaucracy, a rudderless government, and uncaring or uninformed military personnel. The worst part, perhaps, is that his is just one of thousands of stories born out of the unique and tragic circumstances surrounding Hurricane Katrina. That said, I believe it is one story that should be read by every single American in order for them to have a proper perspective on just what sort of unspeakable things happened in our own backyards in 2005. In that sense, Eggers has done the rest of us a great service - bringing to light this tale of domestic atrocity in such a methodical, straight-forward way, without overt embellishment, so that there is no question that this story should never have happened on American soil. But it did.

Obviously, for me, Zeitoun resonates on a very personal level, although many of my friends and family were able to avoid such tragic circumstances as the Zeitoun family experienced.  I realized, as I read, that the Zeitoun family home was just four blocks from the first house I lived in in New Orleans in 2001. Would I have seen Zeitoun paddle past in the days after the storm had I still lived there? Would I have gotten in his canoe to help? Would I have needed rescuing myself?

Needless to say, I will return again to the city that remains in my dreams. I think that everyone on this planet has a place just for them - a perfect fit somewhere. I knew the first time I set foot on the rain-washed streets there, that New Orleans was that "somewhere" for me. Return, Rebuild, Renew, as they say.

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For further reading, I heartily, heartily recommend Chris Rose's book, 1 Dead In Attic. Chris is a sometimes-NPR contributor and a long-time entertainment columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune whose book is a collection of his columns from the year after Katrina. They will break your heart. Maybe six months after the Storm, I heard him read one of his stories on the radio - about taking his kids to the Ninth Ward for the first time, post-Katrina - and it completely reduced me to tears.

Great Booksellers Answer Not So Great Questions About Great Books, In The Warwick's Octagon with Reggie Style. Volume One: Jim Stewart

Jim Stewart's prolific Warwick's career began part time in February of 2002.  As his online Warwick's profile states, "if Jim gets behind a book, its true destiny as a monumental bestseller will be revealed."  Towards the end of our riveting interview we are joined by the Book Department manager Adrian, who is denoted by an 'A'.

R: Let’s pretend Warwick’s is on fire.
J: On fire?
R: Yes, on fire.
J: Oh my gosh, ok.
R: You’ve safely evacuated all the customers and there’s just enough time to go back in once more before the roof collapses. What book do you chose to save from the flames?
J: Shantaram!

R: What if my limp body was draped over the last copy?
J: Then I would pull it away from you. And since you’re already dead I don’t care, so-
R: No, I’m still alive, I’m just stunned.
J: You’re still alive? And you want that book?
R: No, I’m begging you to leave me and save the book.
J: I would save the book. No, I would save you. That doesn’t sound as exciting though.
R: Now, with Shantaram, you’re approaching a big milestone- the 1,000th copy sold.
J: 1,000 copies, cool, and how many we’re stolen?
R: That’s quite a feat and a testament to handselling. Shantaram will be up there with books like The Da Vinci Code, The Kite Runner and Secret Life of Bees. What do you think the key to your success has been and is there a copy you wish you hadn’t sold, if you had it to do over again?
J: Well, I do regret selling a copy to this one groom to be of a wedding couple because he took it with him and when he got back the bride was upset with me that I had given him a book that was so much more interesting than talking to her on the plane.
R: Incidentally, have you ever actually read Shantaram?
J: (Indignantly) Yes, and I have the 48 CD set at home.
R: Wow, how many hours is that? Two days?
J: Right, two days, it would be.
R: Let’s do some role playing. Imagine I’m a grandmother browsing in the children’s section.
J: Oh, that is so easy.
R: Because of the pony tail?
J: And the beard.
R: All right, here we go. Excuse me sir, do you work here? I’m shopping for my grandson.
J: Yes, I can help you, I hope. How old is he?
R: He’s six months old, but he’s very advanced for his age. He reads at a fourth grade level.
J: Oh yes, I totally understand.

Awkward Silence.

R: So what would you sell her?
J: I would probably suggest an anthology of stories, because a lot of people spend a lot of money on one book and they have one story. You should buy a book that’s going to have a shelf life . . . and some mileage.
R: Speaking of shelf life. I notice that you’re reading Paws & Effect. What drew you to the book?
J: I have two Corgis. So anything that makes me more enamored with my dogs.
R: So do you think that your dogs have healing powers based on your reading?
J: Oh, definitely. Last night I wasn’t feeling well so I laid down on my bedroom floor (Editor’s Note: Passed out?) and Penny sat next to me and I put my head on her. She never lets me do that.
R: And you felt this healing energy?
J: I definitely felt something.
R: I had a friend whose black lab would poop in the bathtub every time there was thunder. Do you think he was a healer dog, according to Paws and Effect?
J: Hmmm. Probably not, unless he could do something special with the poop.
R: If dogs could read do you think they would all buy coffee table books of pictures of owners throwing tennis balls?
J: Now, they’d want dog pictures of the opposite gender.
R: What would you try to handsell a dog, assuming they’ve read Shantaram?
J: I have a book on how to make dog treats.
R: That would be good. Do you have the ISBN on that one? 
J: I’d have to order it. 
R: What would your biography be called and who would you want to provide a blurb for the back cover?
J: Oh my gosh, biography. I’ll Never Go There Again, would be the title. And I’d probably get . . . I’d get John Stewart. And I would be able to go on his show then.
R: You’ve already planned a tour?
J: Sure. See, I’m not actually going to interview him, I’d just write the blurb myself and put it on the back cover.
R: Oh, it would be a fake blurb?
J: When he finds out what he wrote he’s going to want me on the show.
R: So a little guerrilla marketing?
J: Exactly.
R: If I came over to your house and browsed your library what would I see? Books stacked on the floor? Alphabetical by author?
J: No. The books I purchase I put on the top shelves. The books I need to read pre-publication are on the two bottom shelves. They’re sorted by date, so when October rolls around I know I have to read these books. That’s the idea at least . . . then reality sets in.
A: Who distributes Client?
R: Perseus. Perseus is Client. If you don’t like a book do you put it down or are you one of those people who just have to finish?
J: No. If I’m not caught up in it by the third or fourth chapter I’m outta there. Unless somebody tells me different.
R: What kind of food would they serve on a flight full of Vampires?
J: Oh man, Vampires. Well . . .
R: Is there anything you’re reading right now that this would pertain to?
J: Well, yeah. There’d be . . .
A: Blood sausage.
J: Yeah, blood sausage.
A: Sorry.
J: Well, most vampires don’t really need to eat. All they want to do is drink.
A: Hagis.
R: Just in-flight cocktails.
J: Yeah, so you’d have to put the blood sausage in a blender.
R: So is The Strain any good?
J: It’s very good. It’s a different approach. This Vampire spirit from Eastern Europe gets on a plane. And victimizes everyone on the plane, including the pilots- drains all their blood by the time they land. So when they’re released, it releases a virus in the people, so they become Vampires, and it becomes this huge Vampire plague.
R: Okay, final question. I know you loved the Zookeeper’s Wife and I know you’ve worked as a newsman before, so let’s pretend I’m Diane Ackerman and today is October 1, 2009, the day she appears at Warwick’s for her new book, Dawn Light. You have one question, which I will try to answer as Diane Ackerman.
J: Well, the thing I’m always interested in with writers is what inspired them. I know they get that question all the time, but it is interesting to me because being a wanna-be writer, I’m always looking for ideas that inspire people.
R: As Diane Ackerman, I would say having readers like you is what inspires me. And thank you for coming tonight.
J: You’re very welcome.
R: I would be happy to sign your books.
A: That’s a bunch of B.S.

Note: for more of Jim's adventures, check out his blog - jimstewartstories.blogspot.com

Guess the Booker Winner Contest!

Office pools are a huge part of what makes America great - who doesn't fill out an NCAA bracket in March or buy squares on a Superbowl grid? (Well, I'm sure lots of people, but bear with me here.) How confident are you in your prediction abilities? Have you surveyed the field and drawn a logical conclusion as to who you think will win?  No, not Week One of the NFL season, the Booker Prize shortlist field!

In celebration of the announcement of the Man Booker Prize shortlist this week, we have decided to host a little contest here at the store - or at least the virtual portion of the store. Decide who you think will be the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize and leave your answer on our Facebook Discussion posting.  That's right, you have to be a "fan of Warwick's" on Facebook to complete your entry.  Don't worry, it's free, we just want more Facebook friends - and besides, don't you want to be our friend? You're reading our blog already, so what's the harm?

After the Booker Prize is awarded over in England on the evening of October 6, we will randomly select a winner from the huge pile of correct answers and award our own super-great prize: a copy of the winning book! (Of course, the contest winner may have to wait a bit for the book to become available here in the States, but that's a whole 'nother issue.)

Here is the list of nominees again:

• A S Byatt - The Children's Book
• J M Coetzee - Summertime
• Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze
• Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
• Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
• Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

Will Coetzee become the first three-time Booker winner? Will 34-year old Adam Foulds burst onto the literary scene with a win? Will Mantel maintain her early lead on the English odds boards and pull out her first win?  Get your entry in today!

Pointless, Incessant, Barking

Every time I think of blogging I remember the only New Yorker cartoon that has ever made me laugh. There are two dogs and the first dog says, "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to pointless, incessant barking." On the other hand, Melville liked to throw around the quote "All is Vanity, All." and most of what he wrote after Moby Dick was considered pointless, incessant barking at the time, so maybe that isn't such a bad thing after all. Maybe the only reason I remember this cartoon is the fact that it is posted by the bathroom sink in the employee restroom at Warwick's, which is technically in my 'office' (A future blog post?).

So what exactly is a book blog suppossed to do? Back in the day folks had the literary salon, the Bloomsbury Group, the Algonquin Round Table, etc. Nowadays, rather than authors haunting bookstores, they are posting on their website and tweeting as they write. We have such bizarrely named places as the Book Slut and the Book Catapult. The web is full of great places to talk books, but for me it just isn't the same. James Joyce isn't loitering at Shakespeare and Co. anymore, he's in a chat room for two hours mediated by his publicist. I am not completely cynical, however.

More experienced bloggers than I have ironically bemoaned the death of culture in their culture blogs, but I think they would be heartened if they spent some time at Warwick's (the physical entity). It's not like a big box store where people are strewn about the floor, not a staff member within shouting distance, it's a place where customers interact with the staff and, most importanly, talk about books- what they're reading, what they've liked. Each recommends card our staff members write and place next to a book reaches just as many readers as any blog post or tweet. It's a lot like a blog with instant feedback- a blog without the anonymous nature of the interaction. It's great to see people posting comments about what you've written, but nothing can replace the pride you feel in the store when a customer comes back trusting your taste and wants you to tell them what to read next. In fact, the entire staff are potential bloggers and don't even know it. It's actually impossible to blog about books in the building without three or four co-workers interrupting to talk to you about books. I know this is true as well at the many great Independents just in Southern California- Vroman's, Book Soup, DG Wills - which is just down the street and is close as you're going to get to Sylvia Beech's store in 2009.

So for me this book blog is like getting the home version of Jeopardy after you've been on the show. It can't ever replace the face to face interaction with staff and actual, physical books, but it's a great place to trade ideas and to incessantly bark about the books I believe in. I hope that any readers we are lucky enough to have will come down and meet us face to face, and I hope that my co-workers, who are always talking shop, will share some of their insights on this blog.
So there it is, I'm officially a book blogger. Now I just have to find a good book to read. Any suggestions?

2009 Booker Prize Shortlist

"We're thrilled to be able to announce such a strong shortlist, so enticing that it will certainly give us a headache when we come to select the winner."  -2009 Booker Prize chair, James Naughtie

The Shortlist for the Man Booker Prize (essentially England's Pulitzer Prize) was announced this morning, dashing the hopes of Cheeta the chimpanzee, Colm Toibin, and William Trevor, while not surprising perennial favorites J.M. Coetzee, A.S. Byatt, and Sarah Waters. The list:

• A S Byatt - The Children's Book
• J M Coetzee - Summertime
• Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze
• Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
• Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
• Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

No real surprises to this list, really, as I think a lot of folks see Coetzee headed toward an unprecedented third Booker win. (Although I read the galley for Summertime last week - the 3rd of Coetzee's fictionalized memoirs - and ultimately thought it pretentious and way too self-indulgent. But that's just me.) I don't think that there was any way such a strong longlist (with the likes of Byatt, Trevor, Toibin, Waters, & Mantel) would not produce an equally strong shortlist.
 
But there is a surprise here, actually. Not that Warwick's condones such behavior, but, in England there is a serious Booker-betting subculture and the first set of odds were announced immediately after the list itself. The surprise is that Hilary Mantel is the early front runner with 11/10 odds of winning. Shocking. Warwick's staff favorite, Sarah Waters is the second favorite at 7/2, with Coetzee at 4/1, Byatt at 13/2, and Mawer & Foulds at 11/1.  Will Coetzee come from behind and snare his third prize? Or will Byatt be the darkhorse?  The suspense! The drama! Place your bets!

Light My Fire

Given enough inward thought, most people can remember back to the days of youthful enthusiasm when reading on their own was a new thing to be enjoyed and savored like, well, a good book. To be able to (literally) curl up in a chair and (figuratively) disappear between the pages of a book, without worrying about the petty concerns of the adult world - most of us pine for such days. (In fact, some of us became booksellers with the hope that that was part of the job.) What was it about that first formative volume that really stuck in your craw, leaving a voracity for reading in it's wake? Why did it become a stepping stone to a life of reading rather than just another pile of glue and paper to be tossed aside for something else?

Janet, one of our prime booksellers, posed this question to her peers: What was that first book that really lit your fire and made you realize that escaping into the pages of a book was the greatest activity you could possibly do? Here are our answers:

Janet:  The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
John:  The 21 Balloons by William Pene Du Bois
Emily:  Matilda by Roald Dahl
Susan:  The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Adriana:  The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Jan:  Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
Adrian:  Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Seth:  The Book of Three, then The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
Vicki:  Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott
Jim:  Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Barbara:  Half Magic by Edward Eager
Heather:  Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott
Rhonda:  Little Pilgrim's Progess by Helen Taylor
James:  The Mouse & the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
Rob:  Charlotte's Web by E.B. White and/or James & the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Scott:  E.T. the Extraterrestrial (film novelization)
Steven:  cannot read

What about you, reader? What was that book that first got you interested in reading - enough so that it became a lifelong pursuit, if that is indeed what it has become?

The New Warwick's Blog

You have suddenly found yourself on a Warwick's blog.... How did this happen? What does this mean? What will I learn here? Have no fear, gentle reader - we are here to help.

First and foremost, we are readers here at Warwick's. And we know that you are too, so allow us, if you will, to be your guides through the rich and magestic world of the book. The Warwick's blog will serve as a forum for our booksellers to write about the hot book topics of the monent - whether its about the incredible novel they just finished (see example below) or the amazing news about the forthcoming Sony E-Readers or the scathing review of So-and-So's new book in the New York Times - this is the place to hear what our Bookies have to say.

For instance - I loved the book Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr. Oh, do tell:
Imagine that you were born with the absolute, unquestionable knowledge that the world would end in a fiery comet collision somewhere around your 36th birthday. How would you live your life knowing that everything you say, think, or do is relatively futile – or at least decisively finite? Would you throw it all away, would you try & save the world, or would you just...live? This was a book that completely caught me off guard – both with Currie’s brilliant narrative crafting and with the story’s powerful, raw humanity. Sharp, intelligent humor permeates every page & is the driving force behind it all – without laughter, the very idea of this would be too morose & depressing. Instead, Junior’s life story makes for one of the most original & compelling novels I have read in a long while. It’s rare that you read a new novel & come out the other side knowing that it will become one of your all-time favorites....

See? Now the seed has been planted.... So check back often for updates - we also have a Facebook page and a Twitter page - plenty to keep you entertained while away from La Jolla.