November 2008
Dear Reader,
This momentous election is coming to a close.
It is All Souls' Day. We
have been, and will continue to be, sorely
tested by world events,
financial challenges, divisive ideologies,
and fundamental
misunderstandings and confusions.
Independent bookstores are good
places to feed the soul, the mind, and the
heart. They're good places
to knit these together and knit them to a
wider togetherness -- whether
a body politic, a civil society, or a world
culture. As the season
progresses, please visit the independent
businesses in your communities,
sustain them through these times with your
support, as they have
sustained you with their labors. We look
forward to providing you with
the wellsprings of imagination, fact, and
artistry books compose. We
hope you enjoy these reviews and the events
happening at our stores this
month. We are ready to help with all of your
gift giving needs with
thoughtful recommendations, exemplary book
knowledge, and our passion
for books and for reading. Thanks for your
company and your support!
Happy Reading!
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781593762131
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Soft Skull Press, 10/2008
One way or another, the Bush era comes to an end in just a few short months. For the frustrated liberals amongst us, I can't think of a better parting gift than this collection of David Rees' comics covering the last eight years of America's often bewildering War on Terror. Get Your War On centers on a group of clip-art office workers who spend their time spouting profane & hilarious commentary about Anthrax, Abu Ghraib, Alberto Gonzales & all the other highlights of Bushworld. The static quality of Rees' art blends with his ecstatic levels of rage to capture the strange mixture of anger & impotence that was life under Bush for far too many of us. -- Craig
$30.00
ISBN-13: 9780374174224
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Picador, 10/2008
The ability to recapture a dream is one that
few are able to accomplish, mainly because
the vividness of a dream is so magnificent
that no matter how hard one attempts to
captivate an audience, the story rarely lives
up to the experience. And although the
events of the Chinese Opium Wars were
certainly not an hallucination, Ghosh's prose
has the quality of a brilliantly remembered
dream. Woven into this 19th century conflict
is a slave ship staffed by questionably
competent sailors and ruffians on a collision
course with the poppy fields of the Ganges.
Nearly oblivious to the ship and its often
obtusely hilarious characters are the
villagers, who have an almost worker bee
quality to harvesting opium, as the process
for them has become so habitual that the
repercussions of their work becomes
irrelevant. The way in which Ghosh clashes
these two elements together is intoxicatingly
sweet, and not unlike your first experience
with a mind altering substance, the
experience of reading this book will resonate
powerfully. -- Jon
$37.50
ISBN-13: 9780743243025
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Scribner, 5/2008
Since we are heading into election season, it seems a good time for some political history. Nixonland is less a book about Nixon than a mass portrait of a country undergoing something resembling a mental breakdown. Perlstein's epic hits all the familiar events of the period (1965-72) but his dynamic writing and sharp eye for historical detail invest them with a fierce urgency. The highlight passage is his night-by-night reconstruction of the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention as it would have appeared to an average television viewer. If that's not enough, the book has lots of cameos by future political stars. Look, there's Karl Rove. Hey, it's John Kerry. -- Craig
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780679767800
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Vintage, 7/1996
Gully Foyle is despicable, an uneducated merchant marine who is also a rapist and a murderer, and he has somehow managed to survive in deep space in a destroyed vessel completely without oxygen. He returns to Earth with a bone to pick, and also a secret - something so powerful that history itself may bend to his will. In Bester's future, people "jaunte," traveling hundreds of miles instantly with a single thought, hitmen are radioactive, and a wretched sociopath is the most valuable man alive. Gully Foyle is an amoral bastard who forces himself to become moral and, although the transformation is more than painful, it is (as Neil Gaiman points out in his introduction) one that belongs alongside the grotesque literary creations of Poe, Gogol, and Dickens. -- Grant
$50.00
ISBN-13: 9781568987521
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Princeton Architectural Press, 3/2008
Finnish Summer Houses is a dream of a book. Imagine twenty cottages and cabins built by Finnish architects for themselves and their families, set amidst the trees, waters, and sunlight of an endless Scandinavian summer. Full-page color photos reveal the warmth and intimacy of these simple dwellings. From log-cut saunas, to experimental courtyard villas, to weather-worn fisherman's shacks set between the rocks and low-lying juniper of a barren island, each displays an effortless modern sensibility that combines efficiency and beauty with close contact to the natural world. Plans, drawings, historical photographs, and a summary of the architects' works adds depth and context to the designs. It's the perfect gift for an architect in need of inspiration or anyone who could use ten minutes of a lovely Finnish summer. -- Colin
$16.99
ISBN-13: 9780152060572
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Harcourt Children's Books, 10/2008
To the list of perennial baby shower favorites -
Goodnight Moon ,
Sylvia Long's Mother Goose ,
Hug ,
Everywhere Babies ,
You Are My I Love You - this new star must be added. Mem Fox's unerringly playful, rhythmical rhymes combined with Helen Oxenbury's divinely squishy babies will bring a smile of anticipation to any prospective parent's or grandparent's face. The easy language and repetition work especially well for an older sibling to read to the new arrival. -- Margaret
$39.95
ISBN-13: 9780670020409
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Studio, 10/2008
Self-taught artist Nick Veasey uses x-rays and other imaging technologies to reveal the inner aesthetics of everyday objects, plants, and humans. He works in a giant lead-lined studio, and the images he produces are sublime, otherworldly, and surreal. From the innards of teddy bears and headphones, to a bus-load of skeletons, to the intricate carapace of a giant beetle and the translucent symmetry of a Vermilion Starfish, X-Ray captures our world in ways heretofore only experienced by Superman. -- Grant
$18.99
ISBN-13: 9780763620967
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Candlewick, 9/2008
I'd like to think we all have a kinesthetic memory of a special place or moment in our childhoods when it felt like the secrets of the universe were about to be revealed. A threshold moment, deeply anticipatory, elemental; one where you held your breath. Recapturing that moment, however briefly, is one of the most compelling reasons for adults to read children's books. No finer example of this can be found (for me, at least) than David Ellwand's new book. At first glance it appears to be a photo journal of an eerily beautiful part of the English landscape, something to accompany a cultural anthropologist's text. In Ellwand's own words:
In the gentle lowlands of the Downs grow ancient woodlands stunted and bent from the sea wind that howls along the valleys and breaks upon the trees... You can imagine, if spirits are anywhere, this is where they'd be, darting in and out of the holes in the tree trunks and fighting among the tangled roots. It is a beautiful and serene place, but it's also dark, eerie, and dead scary.
There follows a journal within a journal, carefully documented with strange and wondrous artifacts, an investigation into the life and disappearance of Isaac Wilde, artist and fairy seeker. The spell is cast and you will be hooked. -- Margaret
