Sunday Salon: Are Collectible Covers the Future of the Book? and Some Handmade Books of My Own

Europa Editions

Wednesday, my book club met for lunch at Mrs. Dalloway's Books in Oakland.  We didn't eat at the bookstore; we met there and the went down the block to Le Mediterranee for lunch.  (It was okay.) Because I am habitually, hideously early, I had plenty of time to browse books before everyone else arrived.  Mrs. Dalloway's is one of the few commercial interests left in America that includes me in its target market.  Clearly, at some point in our pasts the book buyer for Mrs. Dalloway's and I once shared a Vulcan Mind Meld--every third book in the store looked good to me.

For example, they had an entire table full of Europa Editions.  I know we all say we never judge books by their covers, but look at these--they're beautiful.  Europa features lots of literature in translation, which I'm always on the lookout for, and many authors who are new to me.  While I can't say I've loved every book of theirs I've ever read, they do publish a consistent level of quality literature.  Mrs. Dalloway's also had a table full of NYRB editions which almost always tempt me as well with their beautiful covers and with their contents.  (Did you know you can subscribe the NYRB editions through the publisher who'll send you one new book every month?)

Which got me thinking, maybe beautiful covers can save the book.  I believe it's just a matter of time before e-readers replace printed book.  I know people say they like the feel and smell of books, (honestly, the smell? Really? If books really smell so good why aren't they a perfume?) but I don't see how this can compete with all e-readers offer.  Have you seen the new Kindle commercial?  I've no interest in an e-Reader myself, but apparently you can get them for just over 100 dollars new.  A year's subscription to NRYB's book of the month will set you back 150.00.   But, e-readers still don't do pictures well at all, so I'm told.  Covers like those on the Art of the Novella, Europa Editions and NRYB Books look great and make the book desirable as a collectible object.  Covers are one thing e-readers can't really provide.  They can have a picture of the cover, but it's not the same thing. 

  

NYRB editions

I don't think book covers like these alone will ever produce the kind of sales a new J.K. Rawling or Stephen King e-book will, but I do think they could do very well, especially for smaller press publishers.  Collecting editions with similar cover art, if the cover art is good enough, will certainly appeal to many book buyers.   Covers like these on books that people will want to read anyway, may be just the thing that keeps specialty shops like Mrs. Dalloway's in business after e-readers and economic concerns drive the bigger book stores into history.  

Mrs. Dalloway's also carries artist books and handmade books, though none of mine.  The books pictured below are one's I made during my summer vacation.  These are all blank books, the smaller ones made for my own amusement and usage, the large album is a gift for a friend of mine with a new baby daughter.  

This one is a simple blank book made from recycled book

cloth.  The original book was much larger.  I managed

to get enough cloth off of it for this little book,

approx. 6x7 inches.

I saw this binding at 

Press: Works on Paper , a specialty 

bookstore in San Francisco and thought, 

I can do that.  The do offer classes on
how to make this binding if you're
interested.

Someday, I hope to learn how to make my own marbled
paper.  I bought this paper at the Book Arts Jam in Palo Alto.

I made this little (4X5 1/2) blank book with a sample
of wall paper from Bradbury and Bradbury in
Benicia, CA.  

I'm using this one as my current art journal where I keep

odds and ends, notes about projects, photographs

and pictures.  I took the one on the right above. It's

cross-processed slide film, taken in Benicia, CA.

Various scraps and a photograh/card from a San Francisco
art gallery.  

These were taken in San Francisco with a Diana Mini camera
set on 1/2 frame size pictures which puts two images on each
print.

This was meant to be a proper accordian book when I
began.  I put the first two pieces of paper together
incorrectly and decided to just keep doing it that
way and see how it would come out.  I like it but
a proper accordian fold would have been better. 

The same book from above.  Yes, that is my hand on the left.

This is the album I made for my friend with the new baby daughter.
The cover is made from two pieces of paper glued together.  I used the

same binding I used for the book on the top and large sheets

of watercolor paper folded in half.  

This book should be sturdy enough to hold

lots of photos and still stay flat when closed.

Staying flat when closed is much more 

difficult to achieve than you would think once

you've glued a bunch of photos in an album.

This is the inside back of the album.

This is the inside front cover opened so you can see 

the pages.  The album is 9 x 12 inches, big enough to hold two

prints per page.  I bought the end papers at a Japanese 

stationary store in Berkeley, CA.

Dakota's Favorites: Daisy Miller by Henry James

At the little town of Vevey, in 

Switzerland, there is a 

particularly comfortable hotel.

Opening to Daisy Miller by Henry James

I only recently started reading Henry James. I could not stand him in graduate school, when I was in my 20's, and never finished him when he was assigned, but twenty years on, I find much to enjoy in his work. I suspect he may be someone you have to grow into; I don't think he has much to say to the young; one needs more life experience before he can be appreciated. But why shouldn't living long come with a few rewards?

Daisy Miller may be a good case in point. The main character, Mr. Winterbourne, meets young Miss Miller on one of those protracted vacations wealthy people in 19th century novels so often take. Mr. Winterbourne is at once taken in by Daisy's beauty and by her vivacity; she has a great lust for life and no self-conscienceness to hinder her. Daisy unknowingly breaks all the rules of her society in her search for experience. She does not know what she is doing, but she does not seem to mind.

The two separate and then meet up again in Rome where Mr. Winterbourne finds Daisy engaged in an affair of sorts with a gold-digging Italian man. Daisy has so offended society by this time that none of the other Americans abroad will have anything to do with her or her family. Mr. Winterbourne tries to get her to change her ways, to convince her that she should drop the Italian and rejoin the more proper society of her peers, but she refuses. She will have her way whether or not society approves.

A friend of mine once told me that Henry James ends his stories with an almost throw-away line or two that seems to put everything that went on up to then in a completely new light. That is the case with Daisy Miller, so though I really want to talk about the ending, I won't spoil it. I will say that I think it also supports my belief that one should wait before reading Henry James. Had I read this "throwaway" ending when I was 20, I would have been outraged at the hypocrisy Mr. Winterbourne displays. Now, I understand why he would do what he does, though it goes against what he has said up to then.

My favorite character in Daisy Miller, my favorite in Henry James so far, is Mr. Winterbourne's aunt, Mrs. Costello. Here is her opinion of the Miller family:

"They are hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life that is quite enough."

I think if I had read a line like that when I was 20 I would have come to at least dislike Mrs. Costello and possibly Henry James. Now, even though I realize she would certainly have nothing to do with me, I find her very funny. I've certainly moved away from Daisy's age towards Mrs. Costello's age and that has added to my understanding and appreciation of Henry James. Though I spend much of my time reading Young Adult fiction, I'm pleased to find something written with an older audience in mind. If you are under 35 and haven't read Henry James yet, I recommend waiting. Save a few treats for yourself later in life. You won't regret it. It's nice to discover something new, especially when it is also something old.


Dakota's Favorites are reviews from my archive.  I'm embarrassed to admit that Daisy Miller is still the only Henry James novel I've read.  This is a situation I should rectify.

The Appointment by Herta Muller

I've been summoned.  Thursday, 

at ten sharp.

Opening to

The Appointment

By Herta Muller

translated from the German

by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm

Honestly, I think Nobel Prize Winner stickers should include the word 'warning.'

Warning: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Put it in bold face red type as well.  Buyer beware.  Difficult literature ahead.  "Sit bolt upright in that straight back chair and get set," as Laurie Anderson said in her song "Difficult Listening Hour."

Herta Muller, born in Romania, lived under the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.   She lost her job as a teacher because she refused to cooperate with the secret police and eventually emigrated to Berlin in 1987 where she now lives.  She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 for a body of work depicting life under one of the worst communist regimes of the late 20th century.  

The Appointmentt is a good book, make no mistake.  The Nobel Prize is not given lightly, which may be part of its problem.  (Can you name an essentially comic writer who's won it?)    It's also given for a body of work instead of for a single piece of literature.  Since the entire world is eligible for the award, the entire printed world anyway, the Nobel tends to go to authors who represent the best of a nation, sometimes the best of a language.  Highly significant writers.  Important people.  People who tend to write difficult books.  You won't find much in the way of easy, entertaining reading.  An author like Philip Roth, who is no slouch, is a controversial choice for the Noble Committee:  he just isn't serious enough.  

All this is a long-winded, round-about way of distracting you before I bring myself to admit that I just couldn't follow Herta Muller's The Appointment well enough to write a decent review.  The premise is simple: a woman receives notice from the government that she is to appear at police headquarters for interrogation.  Her crime is putting notes into the pockets of men's slacks in the factory where she works asking for someone to marry her and take her away from Romania.  The pants, bound for Italy, are intercepted by her boss who turns her in.  During the course of the novel the woman rides the tram from her apartment to the police headquarters.  She observes the people around her as she reviews key events from her own life through an extended series of flashbacks.  

I found the extended tram-ride premise wore thin about halfway through the novel and the flashbacks became too difficult to follow since they were not in chronological order.  In my defense, I will point out that this is the basic structure for The Day Last More than a Hundred Years which I reviewed earlier this month and which I'm probably going to put on my yearly list of favorite reads.  

I've no way of knowing how accurate Ms. Muller's portrayal of life in Romania under Ceausescu is--I'm willing to take the Nobel Prize committee members recommendation as proof it's accuracy; they are very serious people--but its is an interesting one.  What struck me was how ordinary everything was. People go to work, ride trams, try to live their lives in an situation of extreme poverty but not in one that felt at all socialist or dictatorial.  A man sells illegal T.V. antennas on the black market but everyone pays rent to a landlord, and works for wages they can save or spend as they choose.  The cast of characters would have felt right at home in a novel by Emil Zola depicting the poorer classes of 19th century France.  It's not until one takes action to leave the country, even a feeble one like leaving notes in the pockets of soon-to-be-exported pants, that the state begins to clamp down.  

For that depiction of life in a totalitarian state, Ms. Muller's novel is worth the effort.  But make no mistake--effort is required.  

You have been warned.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

“Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”


Dorothy Parker




After the Algonquin Round Table broke up, Dorothy Parker went to Hollywood where she had a successful career as a screen writer.  In involvement in left wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist.  The F.B.I. once complied a 1000 plus page dossier on her.  

Making Things Better by Anita Brookner

Herz had a dream which, when 

he awoke into a night that was 

still black, left him excited and

 impressed.

Opening to 

Making Things Better

by Anita Brookner

I started reading Making Things Better, (called The Next Big Thing in England) on International Anita Brookner Day; I would never have considered it if Simon and Thomas hadn't come up with the event.  I can't say why really.  Anita Brookner just never came up on my radar before IABD.

Ms. Brookner published her first novel at the age of 53 and has published one almost every year since, 24 altogether.   There were three on the shelf at my local library.  I'll be honest, I picked Making Things Better because it was the shortest of the three.  I can't help but wonder if this was a good place to start.

Virginia Woolf admitted that she wrote lesser books in between her more serious work.  If you randomly pick up her book Flush, a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog,  for the very first Virginia Woolf book you ever read, you will enjoy the book, but you won't think very much of Virginia Woolf as a writer.  Flush is good, but it's not great.  From reading Flush, you'd have no idea that Virginia Woolf was capable of a book like Mrs. Dalloway.

Maybe this happened to me with Making Things Better.

Apparently, several people who joined International Anita Brookner Day admired her writing but had issues with the overall passivity of the characters.  I'm afraid I had the opposite reaction, at first.  The characters passivity did not bother me--there are undoubtedly passive people in the world.  Making Things Better is about an Herz, Englishman who has spent his life in the service of others, doing his duty to his family and his employer.  He missed out on his one chance with the love of his life, later married someone else and then lost her, too, both due to his family's circumstances.  If he'd left home, things would have gone better for him but he could not abandon his family.

Forced into retirement, he spends the length of the novel observing his own life along with the life of his beautiful, much younger downstairs neighbor until he receives a letter from his first love.  This letter sparks him to take action in ways he never has before, to make an attempt to find solace in her company during their final years.

This all sounds like a perfectly good novel, familiar to lots of readers certainly.  Similar to Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea and Andrew Holleran's The Beauty of Men, both of which I loved.  So how can I explain my problem with the novel?  Start with this section.  Herz is talking to his ex-wife Josie whom he meets for dinner monthly.

     "What is it, Josie?" he asked quietly.
     She smiled sadly. "It never goes away, does it?"
     "I'm sorry."
     "That longing to be with another person."
     "Not with me, I take it."
     "No, no, not with you.  Not even with Tom.  There's a man who comes into the office. We have a drink from time to time.  Married of course.   Yet we get on so well..." She broke off.  "You don't want to hear this."
     "Why not stand your ground? See what comes of it?"
     "Look at me, Julius.  I'm old.  I might as well accept it.  What surprises me is that I could still feel hope, look forward to seeing him, perhaps no more than that.  I couldn't undress for any man now.  As I say, I accept it.  Mother's illness may have been the jolt I needed. Once the decision was made I realized that it had saved me from a lot of uncertainty.  Humiliation, perhaps.  I still have my dignity."
     "I admire you for it.  I know how unwelcome one's dignity can be."
     "So you think I'm right?"
     "Probably.  I also know what you mean. Keeping one's dignity is a lonely business.  And how one longs to let it go."  This was perhaps unwise.  "When shall I see you again?'


Have two people ever had a more bloodless conversation about longing?  Does this strike you as over-written?  Do people really say things like "I know how unwelcome one's dignity can be?"    These two sound like characters in a novel, not like two people having a conversation.  (That was my initial reaction.  My feelings have changed since I finished the book.)

Keeping one's dignity is a lonely business sums up the book.  It's certainly a decent theme for a novel, and Ms. Brookner handles it quite well.  I consider longing  a form of passion which is all but absent from Making Things Better.   I kept thinking about how Iris Murdoch handled very similar characters in her The Sea, The Sea, but I can't imagine Anita Bookner ever creating a character who would kidnap a woman because he loved her.   That's fine really.  We already have one Iris Murdoch; we don't need another.

By the end of Making Things Better I was beginning to think of Anita Brookner as Carson McCuller's English aunt.  These passive people she's writing about are the same people who populated The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  People who long for connection with another person but can't take the action needed to gain it for some reason. But while I can find lots of passion in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I can't find much in Making Things Better.  Everyone is so very well mannered in Ms. Brookner's novel, there's no way they could ever break free of themselves.  They are even more hopeless that the people in Ms. McCulller's novel.

I also had problems with the ending.  I won't go into those here, but I felt it was a bit of a cheat, and I saw it coming several chapters early.  Honestly, it felt a little high school, to me.

So will I read more books by Anita Brookner?  I think I will.  In spite of the problems I had with Making Things Better the characters and their story has stayed with me for over a week now.  Herz is haunting me.  I consider that high praise.  While I did find the character's passivity frustrating, I cared enough about them to want better lives for them.  And while I had problems with Ms. Brookner's writing the first time I read it, it's clear to me that she is the talented stylist Simon and Thomas both said she was.   Looking at the passage quoted above now, I think it's darn good really.  While it may be mannered to the point of unreality, it gets to an essential truth about human nature in an precise, eloquent manner.  I find I'm liking it more and more over time.

I hope Thomas and Simon will repeat International Anita Brookner Day next year.  I'll be back for another go.  I think it will be worth it.

TSS: If I hate the book you love, can we still be friends and other topics

Friends of the San Rafael Public Library Bookstore

If I hate the book you love can we still be friends?  


I mean really hate it.  So much that I can't help but let my real feelings slip out in a snarky review.  My book club, which has been meeting for 20 years, has several members with widely divergent tastes in books.  Some of the books we've read have polarized us.  There have been  books everyone but me loved, and books everyone but me hated.  Snark has been flung.  There has even been some shouting.  I think that's part of the fun.  We're all still friends.

But what about life on-line?  If I hate the book you love will you keep reading my blog?

Which brings me to my next topic....


International Anita Brookner Day

No, you'll have to wait til tomorrow for my review.  I will say that I didn't hate it.  My review will be snark free.

Book reviews as Consumer Reports


Maybe it comes down to how you view book reviews in general.  Some people see books reviews as a means to find other books they'll enjoy.  To this end they seek bloggers and reviewers with taste similar to their own figuring they will recommended  the right books.  I think this is perfectly fine, using book reviews as a sort of Consumer Reports magazine, especially if you're someone who buys books and has a limited budget. It's a very sensible approach.

But won't it limit your reading?  Not just the books you actually read, but the reviews and opinions you read as well.  I think of myself as someone who reads widely-- I did break up a run of noir detective novels for Anita Brookner.  I like to think that this is reflected in the blogs I read, too.   I look for blogs that offer a mix of books I'm familiar with and books that are new to me, as well as opinions I agree and disagree with.   I read blogs by people who love detective stories, for example, along with people who've little but disparaging remarks for them.  (Thomas, at My Porch, managed to get me to read Anita Brookner even though he does not like detective novels much at all.)  I believe one should always make it a regular habit to read people you don't agree with.  I also like reading reviews for their own sake.  A well written review is entertaining reading as far as I'm concerned, even if I don't agree with it and have no intention of ever reading the book.  In addition, reading reviews about books you're never going to read can help make you look smarter than you really are at parties and job interviews.

And can I just say how much I miss Amanda's reviews at The Zen Leaf even if we disagreed about the book almost as often as we agreed.

Tremendous Tuesday thanks to The Chrysalids by John Wyndham


Tuesday I had my biggest traffic day ever, almost 600 visits.  (I liked it better back when 'visits' were called 'hits'.  Yes, I am old enough to be nostalgic for the internet's good old days.)   Usually, I average 100 visits a day with about 140 page views, but this past Tuesday my traffic skyrocketed to 583 visits and over 800 page views.   This must be how Jackie and Farm Lane Books feels on a slow day, I thought.  Wednesday, things were back to normal.  


I looked farther into my stats than I usually go to discover that over 80% of Tuesdays hits were for my June 2009 review of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.   I couldn't find an in-coming link to my review or any other reason why this particular post suddenly got so much attention.  Was is John Wyndham day on the Isle of Wight or something?  The average visit length for the day was two and a half minutes, up from my usual average of just under two, so I guess people really did read my review when they stopped by, but why they stopped by is a mystery to me.  It was a very good review, by the way.


People come and go so quickly here

Dakota.  Diana Mini camera 1/2 frame shots.
Follow me, follow me.

Also this week, I gained and lost my 150th follower for the fourth time this year.  I try not to obsess about stats and followers, (I know, everyone says this), but for the past year I've gone up and down at the 150 follower mark four times.  Once, I made it to 152 followers only to drop down to 148 a week later.  (At the moment I'm typing this, I still have 149 followers.)  It's making me nuts.   Is it something I said?  Someone finds me, and someone leaves me.  I guess a sort of balance in the universe is maintained which is probably good.   I have as much interest in maintaining the space-time continuum as the next guy.  Lots of people have hundreds more readers than I do, something I've learned to accept, but this year long tease is starting to get to me.  Is it because I don't Twitter?  Do I need to start doing weekly memes again?  Host a giveaway?  Post more cute pictures of my dog?   I'm on Facebook now.  Won't you be my friend?


Switching to Bookmooch - 12 books mailed last Wednesday


Finally, I switched from Paperbackswap.com to Bookmooch.com this week.  I've no complaints with Paperbackswap.com where I swapped closer to 80 books;  I just wanted to try out another system.  I uploaded 17 books to Bookmooch and had instant requests for 12 of them.  Great, but I ended up spending over 30 dollars on postage in one fell swoop.  And, it turns out I'll get just one book in return at this point.  It's coming from England which is kind of fun, though not from the Isle of Wight which would have been very cool. I moved my wishlist books over from Paperbackswap, too.  Hopefully, I'll be getting more books soon.  


Not that my TBR shelf was running low.  

Friday Picture Reading: Paul Alexis reads to Emile Zola by Paul Cezanne

Paul Alexis reads to Emile Zola by Paul Cezanne

Leo Tolstoy Sawing Wood

The narrator is Kenneth Clark.

This is why I love YouTube.  Hat tip to the Boston Globe.

Elegy Beach by Steven R. Boyett

The last thing in this world I 

wanted to see was another

damned unicorn.

Opening to chapter one of

Elegy Beach

by Steven R. Boyett

Have you ever read a book out of jealousy?  There are certain types of books with devoted readers--readers who purchase, collect, devour, debate them, become a bit fanatic about them.  The way certain kids did with Harry Potter.  They way some readers did with Lord of the Rings back before is was cool, back when people wrote "Frodo Lives" on the walls of subway restrooms.  Other, more cynical people, make fun of them on late night comedy shows and in animated series.   Think comic book guy from The Simpsons.

I've always been a little jealous of these readers myself.  They look like they're having fun to me.  And their books always have such exciting covers.  Look at the two posted for this review: attractive young men, armed with cool weapons, staring intensely at the ruins of civilization.  You must be this tall to ride this ride.

Now and then, probably four or five times a year, typically in summer, I pick up a book like Elegy Beach out of simple jealousy.  I want to read something just for the thrill of it.  But the trouble with books like this is that so many of them turn out to be  full of talking.  Time and time again the cover promises adventure and excitement, but the book delivers pages and pages of dialogue, debating strategy or problem solving or which side of the upcoming apocalyptic battle to best align with.  Enough political intrigue.  Get on with the adventure.  Stop talking about the end of the world and start doing something about it!  That 90% of this dialogue could be trimmed away without hurting the plot does not help matters.  Really, does anyone ever list the 60 pages spent discussing who should make up the Fellowship of Ring as their favorite part of The Fellowship of the Ring?  Move along, nothing worth saying here.

Steven R. Boyett delivers just the sort of escapist reading I'm looking for.  Adventure.  Magic.  Fun.  Dialogue only when necessary.

Elegy Beach is the story of Fred and Yan, two young men who leave their families to make their way in the world.  Theirs is a 'post change' world.  Mr. Boyett's novels Ariel and Elegy Beach take place after the change, an inexplicable event that rewrote the underlying laws of nature rendering almost all machines inoperable and returning magic and magical creatures to earth.  Fred and Yan are second generation--both born after the change occurred.  They have grown up listening to stories of life before the change without having any point of reference to understand them.  Fred and Yan like the post change world they live in and have no desire to see things go back to the way they were before.

Click for my review of Ariel

Until a few chapter into the book.

The two friends both study to become spell casters.  Both are very good at it, better than their fathers and better than their teachers who were all born before the change.  Yan becomes obsessed with becoming the greatest spell caster ever.  When the two have a falling out over this, Yan leaves to strike out on his own and to become powerful enough to cast a spell that will undo the change.  To gain this power he must get a unicorn's horn.

Enter Ariel.  Fred's father is Pete, the main character of Ariel, written in 1978, who found a 'new-born' unicorn in the days following the change.  Because Pete was a sexually inexperience teenager at the time, he was able to raise the newborn unicorn, Ariel, and to travel with her for several years.  Eventually, after events separated the two, Pete traveled west to Del Mar, a seaside town in what was once California, where he raised his son Fred.   Pete and Fred learn from Ariel that in his quest for power Yan has killed her companion and taken his horn.  If they do not stop him, Yan will reverse the change ending magic and the lives of all magical creatures forever.  

Okay, this is silly stuff.  I admit it.  Elegy Beach is also largely a retread of Ariel.  Wise-cracking, foul-mouthed unicorn and her innocent companions set out to defeat a powerful wizard against over-whelming odds in both books.  But it sure was fun.  Again there is plenty of adventure, just enough dialogue to keep the story moving along, and inventive touches along the way, as well as above average characterization and quality writing.  

I had a very good time.  

But I wonder why Mr. Boyett is so coy about his main character's sexuality.  It's clear to me, though it may be something other readers miss, that Fred is in love with Yan.   In a private discussion with Ariel, Fred asks if she thinks he'll be able to touch her.  Is he a virgin?  He doesn't say what sort of sexual activity he has engaged in, but I can't be the only reader to suspect that he's really asking if gay sex counts.  Technically, if he's only ever had sex with Yan, is he still a virgin as far as the unicorn is concerned?  The subject doesn't come up again until the very end of the book.  At no point do the fathers of either boy ask about it or appear to suspect anything other than friendship between Yan and Fred.  It all felt very 1950's to me.  James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause comes to mind.  Couldn't this all be out in  the open nowadays?  

Mr. Boyett waited almost 30 years to write this sequel to Ariel.  He's said that this second post change story is the final one.  Both a blessing and a curse if you ask me.  Ending the stories here means they won't go on long enough to become stale, nor will readers be encouraged to look long enough to begin finding fault with them.  Knowing when to close the show in spite of the audience's calls for an encore is always a good thing.  On the other hand, there won't be anymore show.  I'd like more.   That's the trouble with always leaving them wanting more.  There isn't any more.

Tuesday's with Dorothy

"Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough."

Dorothy Parker




Viking Press  released The Portable Dorothy Parker in the United States in 1944.  Parker's  is one of only three books in  the Portable series (the other two being William Shakespeare and The Bible) to remain continuously in print.

Paris (Noir) in July

I'm going to kill him and I don't

know why.

Opening to "Dead Memory"

by Patrick Pecherot

translated by Carol Cosman

featured in Paris Noir

edited by Aurelien  Masson

Paris, a city in flux.  Like all living cities, it is constantly undergoing change.   The alternative is a kind of death-like stasis, a city as  museum-- entertainment for tourists seeking the romance of yesterday.  If you go to Montemarte on a summer night you'll find the streets filled with international tourists.  A young crowd, affluent enough to enjoy the pretense of bohemian poverty.  Travel further out to the city's edge near Saint Denis and you'll find streets filled with newly arrived immigrants the new Bohemia where the poverty comes without pretense.  You can buy a freshly cooked crepe throughout Montmarte, but you'll find different sorts of flavors in Saint Denis.  (I recommend them both.)

This conflict between the city of legend and the new city emerging from it forms the basis for the short stories collected in Paris Noir edited by Aurelien Masson.  Paris Noir provides a different kind of tour of the City of Lights, the city of crime, the proverbial city tourists aren't supposed to see.

In Didier Daeninckx's short story, "Rue des Degres," a body is found lying dead on the shortest street in Paris.   The rue des Degres consists of a set of stairways, some 14 steps each, six yards in totol, connecting the rue de Clery and rue Beauregard.  The street is wedged between old buildings housing sweatshops and showrooms at the very edge of the city's grand boulevards.  Mr. Daeninckx's story is a classic detective procedural, brief and to the point set in a neighborhood between social stratas.

In "Dead Memory" by Patrick Pecherot, an old soldier, his faculties fading, has become obsessed with killing.  There is a man he must kill, but he can't recall who he is or why he must be killed.  Through the story the soldier comes to understand that this man is the one who betrayed his comrades to the Nazis during the second world war.  The old soldier's memory has faded to only this thought, find the traitor and  exact revenge.  Through this story Mr. Pecherot confronts a city ill at ease with its past behavior.  

The French writer who calls himself DOA presents a classic crime caper in his story "Precious."  The narrator is in police custody when the story opens, undergoing a long interrogation.  A Russian immigrant has been murdered.  The police suspect the victim was involved in the theft of a diamond wholesaler and that she murdered when she double-crossed the other thieves, Russian mafia members who brought her to Paris to work in one of their nightclubs.  The narrator tells the police everything they want to know except the fact that he still has the nightclub coatroom  claim check the Russian woman gave him to hold on to before she was killed.

The collection's final story, "The Stranger" by Herve Prudon,  is set on rue de la Sante, a street lined on one side with the walls of hospitals, asylums and convents, and the city's large prison on the other.  In between the walled sections are drab apartments where the narrator lives, just across the street from the prison that houses his son.  Not a street you'd want to visit while on vacation.

"To get from my place to the chic neighborhoods, you have to climb on trees, go from branch to branch like the baron in the trees.  I'm too acrophobic.  Also to clasutro to crawl through catacombs.  So walk along asylum, the big prison, the convents and hospitals. Closed spaces......That's rue de la Sante, from one end to the other.  Health Street. The sickest street in Paris."

We come to question the narrator's position.  Is he a free man waiting for his son's release, or is he a resident of the prison or of the nearby asylums?  How much can we trust him, or anyone who lives on the rue de la Sante?

Today the conflict in Paris is between ethnic groups, decades ago it was between generations.  Director Louis Malle, one of the fore runners of the French New Wave, addressed this conflict in his first movie Elevator to the Gallows starring Jeanne Moreau and featuring an improvised soundtrack by Mile Davis.  

In Elevator to the Gallows, Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet play two lovers intent on killing Moreau's corrupt arms dealer husband so they can be together.  Their plan is thwarted by a single tragic error and by two teenagers who steal Ronet's car.  The conflict underlying Elevator to the Gallows is between the passing generation who survived World War II only to drag France into losing and arguably immoral conflicts in Indochina and Algieria.  The emerging young generation embodied by the teenaged car theives acts only on impulse without sense of morality or obligation to their society or their elders.

Director Louis Malle selected the most modern Paris locations he could find for Elevator to the Gallows.  He wanted to break free of the cliched Parisian cafe scenery to present the city not as it had been, or even as it was, but as would it would become in ten years time.  The result is stark but still beautiful.  In the clip below, Jeanne Moreau wonders the city looking for her lover.  It's not the Paris your guidebook will show you; it's Paris noir.

Sunday Salon: Finding Coffee Shops in the Suburbs to a Bossa Nova Beat.

Here is my confession.  I generally like the music they play at Starbucks.  The Starbucks I'm at today is pushing Bossa Nova classics at the counter and on the speakers.  Astrid, Bebel and Joao Gilberto.  See the clip below. In fact, why not play it while you read?




Back in the 1980's and 90's I spent, or mis-spent, much of my youth hanging out in San Francisco's trendier coffee houses.  Probably an hour or two daily, reading, writing or studying for school, correcting papers maybe working on lesson plans.   Drinking espresso drinks no one in my suburban childhood home had ever heard of.  Before Starbucks, suburban California had coffee, just coffee.  You could get decaf, I suppose, but there were no lattes in the suburbs before Starbucks.

I can remember the very first Starbucks I ever went to, in Seattle while visiting a friend before the chain went national enough to have a store in San Francisco.  Like most coffee drinkers in San Francisco at the time, I was a true coffee snob, but even the coffee snobs in Seattle all preferred Seattle's Best over Starbucks.   (Seattle's Best never really took off. For a while they were opening up inside Border's Bookstores, and we all know how that turned out.)  Why would anyone living in San Francisco bother with Starbucks when places like Muddy Waters, Cafe Macambo, Cafe Flore (or Cafe Haircut as we used to call it), Tart to Tart and Cafe Picaro were all so conveniently located and so much better?  (Several of my favorite haunts are now sadly gone.)

Today, I live across the bay in Vallejo, a four Starbucks town.  We had five before the present economic downturn not counting the supermarket locations.  There are two non-Starbucks coffee shops in Vallejo, but one of them closes at 2:00 in the afternoon and the other has very iffy wifi.  Because I do most of my blogging in coffee shops now-a-days, I need my wifi.  So, when I'm up and out of the house early enough I go the Java Jax, otherwise I rotate between three of the four  local Starbucks.  I like variety.  The fourth one is too far away.  Though the mochas cannot compare to those at Muddy Waters and the atmosphere is not at all like Cafe Macando, one need not worry about haircut inferiority at Starbucks and where else can you hear decent bossa nova on the stereo in the suburbs?

C.J. and I hope to move to Santa Rosa by the end of this year. Yelp.com lists 113 coffee shops in Santa Rosa.  That's a per day supply to last almost four months.  It's not the only reason why we're moving there, but it is a major factor in our decision.  Well, in mine.  I've nothing against Starbucks.  They have a consistent product, clean facilities, decent music, and friendly staff who take the time to learn your name.  You can count on all of this throughout the world with Starbucks.  But they've never been my favorite place to go.  Jacob's Coffee House in Washington D.C.; The Book and Bean in Truckee, California;  Cafe Macando in San Francsico; Dr. Insomnia's in Novato, Ca; Aroma Roasters in Santa Rosa; Angelina's Bakery in Lakeport, Ca; Blue State Coffee in New Haven, Connecticut are all favorites of mine even though none of them ever features bossa nova on the stereo.

Speaking of bossa nova.....here's  Waters of March by Elis Regina and Tom Jobim.  You may live a long time, but it won't get any better than this.  Add a decent cup of coffee and that's just fine with me.

Dakota's Favorites: I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti



I was about to overtake

Salvatore when I heard my

sister scream.

Opening to
I'm not Scared

by Niccolo Ammaniti

  


I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti, translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt, is a thriller that slowly builds rather than one that grabs you from the start. This is not to say that the opening sections are dull, quite the contrary.  But I'm Not Scared is a thriller that truly earns its big finish, not one that has thrown every horrifying twist and turn imaginable into the story right from the beginning like so many others do.

I'm Not Scared is narrated by ten-year-old Michele who lives with his little sister Maria and his mother and father in a small country town in Southern Italy. His small group of friends spend the hot summer months holding various contests and making the loser pay a forfeit by taking on a particular dare. When Michele has to pay a forfeit by going in to an old abandoned farmhouse he discovers the body of a boy his own age at the bottom of a deep hole. Is the boy alive? Why is he there?

Michele is ten and he treats the situation as an ten-year-old would, not as an adult would. Instead of telling someone about the boy, Filippo, Michele is too worried about getting into trouble himself to do that, he tries to befriend him. Ten is an age when simple things can be wonderful, like a bicycle, or an old farm house. Finding a boy at the bottom of a hole is a fantastic secret, one worth having and worth keeping. Michele brings him food and water with no notion of just how serious his situation is, until he overhears his father and a couple of strangers having a conversation about Filippo.

I can go no further without giving away too much. I'm Not Scared does not become a page turner until the closing scenes of the book, but I would not view this as a fault. The opening scenes take their time, like a lazy summer day, the tension builds slowly, but it definitely builds. By the end of the novel, I'm Not Scared became very hard to put down.




Dakota's Favorites are reviews from the archive here at Ready When You Are, C.B.  What have you got hidden in your archive?

The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov

The hungry vixen had to be patient 

as she searched for prey among the 

dried-out gullies and the bare 

ravines.

Opening to

The Day Lasts More than a 

Hundred Years

by Chingiz Aitmatov

translated from the Russian

by John French

Do you read to understand yourself or to understand other people?  If what you're looking for can be boiled down to what you have in common with others, does that mean you are essentially reading to understand yourself.?

Burannyi Yedigei, the hero of Chingiz Amitiov's novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, has spent his entire adult life on  the steppes of Central Asia in Soviet Kazakstan.  The small village where he lives with his wife and children is made up of railway workers, there to maintain an important junction connecting the east with the west.  Trains run past their small homes day and night, rarely ever stopping at all, and when they do not for long.

The novel opens with the death of Yedigei's life long friend Kazangap. Yedigei insists that Kazangap will have an honorable funeral in his ancestral cemetary a full days trip from their small village.  He manages to get enough people and equipment released from work on the railway to give Kazangap the burial he deserves.

Yedigei leads the procession atop his prized camel, Karanar, which is fully adorned for a ceremonial parade.  He is followed by a second villager who rides a tractor with a trailer carrying the body of Kazangap as well as Kazangap's son who has returned to the village from his life in the city to bury his estranged father.  They are followed in turn by a final villager who drives an excavator which will be used to dig Kazangap's grave and by Kazangap's yellow dog who trots along refusing to leave the side of his master.  This odd procession starts out one morning across the desert steppes of the Soviet Union.

Along the way, Yedigei recalls the major events of his own life-- friends he lost, women he loved, sons he might have raised.  And here and there the narrative is interrupted by accounts of a Soviet/American space mission which has made contact with an intelligent race from another solar system.  The rockets light up the night sky interrupting Yedigei's life at several key points because they are launched from bases hidden in the steppes of Kazakstan.

Does this have anything to do with your life?  Is there any part of it you can identify with?  If you answer yes to these questions are you more likely to read The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years than you would have been if you had answered no?

It's my belief that most readers are looking for themselves in what they read.  Even when they read about a culture alien to their own, what delights us is finding out how much we have in common with other people.  How much alike we all are.  But what if we don't have much in common?  What if the book represents a culture not just alien to ours but in opposition to it?

Yedigei is not concerned with philisophical questions like this.  He is a man dedicated to the problems in front of him.  How to bury his friend properly, how to keep the trains running,  how to be a good husband, how to keep the members of his village safe and sound, how to preserve the memory and traditions of the past.  He rarely thinks of anything or anyone beyond the horizon unless it is to tell a village child about his own youth spent fishing on the Aral Sea or to wonder whatever happened to those villagers who moved away.

So do I like him as a character because of what we have in common or because of how we are different?  Do I admire the book because it leads me to better understand a culture different from my own or because it leads me to see how much I have in common with a lifestyle so alien to mine?

I know I like it for the image Mr. Aitmatov has painted of Karangap's funeral procession-- a camel in full ceremonial regalia, a tractor pulling a trailer with a coffin on it, an excavator and a yellow dog as they all cross an endless desert.  Nor can one disregard the image of Yedigei on his camel at night shocked to find the sky aflame with Soviet rockets heading towards space and first contact with intelligent alien life.

That's pretty darn good, if you ask me.

And it carries my question out away from earth itself.  If contact was made with life from other solar systems, would we continue to look for what we have in common, seeking to find ourselves in others as we've done here on earth for so long?  Could we accept a culture that shares nothing in common with our own?

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

Dorothy Parker



Dorothy Parker was a two-time Oscar nominee for original screenplay: in 1937 for A Star is Born, written with Robert Carson and Alan Campbell and in 1947 for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman written with Rank Cavett.

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne, Book V: An Unfortunate Accident Involving a Window and a Toy Cannon

"If it had not been for those two 

mettlesome tits, and that madcap

of a postilion who drove them

from Stilton to Stamford, the thought

had never entered my head."

Opening to Book V

of Tristram Shandy

by Lawrence Stern

In Book V,  when Tristram's Uncle Toby needs an additional piece of artillery for his miniature re-enactment of the Battle of Namor where his groin was grievously wounded,  his servant Trim removes the lead weight from an upstairs window sash and makes it into a cannon.  Shortly thereafter, young Tristram has a sudden and urgent need to relieve himself.  Tristram's nurse, unable to locate the camber pot, is forced to improvise a solution in order to avoid an accident.  She opens the window and encourages Tristram to commit an act of liquid defenestration, in the midst of which the window comes slamming down inadvertently circumcising young Tristram.

It's not as funny as it sounds.

I was expecting an expertly written scene of high comedy, like those in the previous books.  Instead, the famous window accident serves as a Deus ex machina   to reunite Lord Shandy, Toby, Trim and Dr. Slop who all wait in the same downstairs room they shared for the 250 pages they spent waiting for Tristram's birth in books one through four.  Now, while they wait for the women of the house to take care of the current crises, they resume their rambling discussion of all things, literally all things, as Lord Shandy has begun work on the Tristra-pedia, a book collecting his thoughts and opinions on everything of importance.  He hopes his Trista-pedia will provide an education for  Tristram who is still far too young to read.

Young Tristram who now must face the world with a name much shorter than the one his father wanted him to have, Tristmagistus, a nose much too small for a Shandy due to Dr. Slop's incompetent use of the newly invented forceps and, well, another appendage made shorter than God intended.  This new diminishment does not bother Lord Shandy much.  Since plenty of great and powerful men were circumcised, they need not worry about young Tristram.  It will probably come in handy when he visits the pyramids of Egypt.  Considering how upset he was when Tristram's nose was shortened, his carefree attitude towards circumcision caught me off guard.  It's actually pretty funny.

Image from diydata.com

That an encyclopedia has now become the book within a book that is supposed to be encyclopedic itself, is genius on Mr. Sterne's part.  Tristram's father is no more capable of completing this task than Tristram is.  For example, his father never did get around to writing the entry on windows, so Tristram eventually wrote it for him.

Tristram Shandy was originally published in several volumes over a period of ten years.  I felt that book V spent so much time getting all of the major players back into the room to continue their discussion that several years must have passed since the publication of book IV, but it turns out the two are just one year apart.  Still, Mr. Sterne did come up with a good way to get back into the grove.  I'm looking forward to book VI.

It has occurred to me that Tristram had to give up a small piece of his artillery so his Uncle Toby could have another cannon.  Add this to the nature of Toby's mysterious wound and to all that business about the importance of big noses and how upset Lord Shandy was to find his son's name shortened.   That's really pretty naughty stuff.  But am I reading Tristram Shandy or is it reading me?  Don't answer that.

Reading all of Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is one of my goals this year.  I'm trying to do one book a month, which means I am currently two months behind.  So look for another Tristram Shandy before the end of July.  I've some catching up to do. 

Sunday Salon: "Must Give Us Pause."

In my old age I will look back
on this and laugh.

If you live long enough, everything you said in your 20's will come back to haunt you.  How many times did I mock middle-aged  people who left the city only to spend their weekends mowing lawns and their weekdays commuting from tacky suburban homes listening to KFOG on their car radios, only to end up living in the suburbs listening to KFOG on my morning commute and trying to get out of mowing the lawn on weekends.   While I don't believe anyone should be held accountable for what they said or did prior to the age of 19,  people in their 20's should really know better.   They often don't, but they should.

I know that at 47 years I'm  above the median age for book bloggers.  (I hope to live long enough to seriously skew the mean before I go.)  I'm also at the point where it's become challenging to find books about people my own age.  Since the marriage plot and the Buldungsroman  dominate classic literature and the YA market rules the publishing world today,  I've begun to identify with the quirky aunts and eccentric grandfathers in classic novels and the bemused and/or confused parents in modern literature.  I am the main character less and less.  Say whatever you want to about this situation, just keep in mind that it will someday be your own.

I've been thinking about this because of a review I read early this week about a new YA book on a blog written by a 23-year-old.  Since I enjoy YA lit and teach YA's, I try to keep up with what's current.  Overall, the book sounded interesting, though too mature for the YA's I work with, but consider the closing lines of the review:

Don't read this book if you're old (or have a closed-in mind).

Ouch.

Let's ignore the "closed-in mind" for the moment.  The reviewer was referring to the book's content which featured teenagers using lots of drugs, cursing a great deal and having lots of promiscuous sex, like the teenagers on the British television series Skins.  You know, realism.  Whether or not today's teenagers spend their days having lots of sex with lots of people and taking lots of drugs instead of engaging in healthier, more interesting pursuits is a topic for another Sunday as is the idea that they now do these things more than previous generations did.  For now, I'll just say read Larry McMurtry's wonderful novel The Last Picture Show, then get back to me.  It's all been done before, and most of it's been done better.  (And why does objecting to drug abuse and promiscuity make you closed minded?  There are some pretty reasonable arguments against both.)

What threw me was "Don't read this book if you're old."    Well, I'm twice as old as you are 23-year-old-reviewer.  Is that old?  (I imagine 23-year-old-reviewer will say I'm reacting like a crabby old man.  Our skin gets so thin as we age.)   I know there are YA books that really have very little appeal to adults, just as there are adult books that are not meant for children, but it wasn't a suggestion like, "This book will appeal more to YA readers than to general readers" or "This book is aimed at people ages 15 to 23"  Just "DON'T READ THIS BOOK IF YOU'RE OLD!!!"

Wow.  If you live to be my age, and I honestly hope you do, that review is going to come back to haunt you.

Mark my words.

And get off my lawn.

----

On a much more serious note...


My book club has been meeting for a long time.  Long enough to go through many, many, many boyfriends (several of them mine.)  Long enough to celebrate three marriages  (two of them mine, both to the same man.  Not our fault.)   We've watched children grow from pre-school to high school and college graduation.    We've all changed jobs.  We've  added a few members and seen several move away (one all the way to Barcelona.)  Although we've had a few very close calls health wise, not until this week have we had a funeral.  The husband of one of our members died suddenly last weekend.  Although he did not come to book club meetings, because we all know each other socially as well as literarally,  we all considered him a friend.  He was just a few years older than I am.  (All of the book club not away on summer vacation attended his service.  Books were discussed.  We just can't help ourselves.)

In Hamlet's famous soliloquy Shakespeare uses the phrase "must give us pause."   I've always liked this phrase.  "Must give us pause."  Must make us stop and be still.  This past week has left us wondering what we're supposed to do.  How can we make this situation any better?  How can we find meaning in what's happened?    Since there are no immediate answers, we must simply pause. Whether we find the answers we seek or not, we'll begin to move again, but this week I've spent a lot of time on 'pause.'

I considered making today's topics two separate posts.  One topic tries to be funny; the other isn't sure what to do.   Our friend, who loved good jokes as much as he did bad jokes, would probably make fun of my age about now.  Not in a hurtful way, mind you.  He'd say something that would have everybody laughing or at least rolling their eyes.  He'd be just as pleased with either result.  So I'm running these two topics together.   Feels right to me.

And I'm going to end with The Boss.  Our friend loved Bruce Springsteen.  Mr. Springsteen is probably open-minded, but at 62 he's even older than me.  This clip was filmed at the Capital Theatre in Passiac, New Jersey in 1978. That's 33 years ago.

Friday Picture Reading - Keats

Keats reading by Joseph Severn

The Fire Engine that Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

The man lying dead on the tidily

made bed had first taken off his

jacket and tie and hung them over

the chair by the door.

Opening to

The Fire Engine that Disappeared

by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Translated from the Swedish by

Joan Tate

The fifth book in the Martin Beck series, The Fire Engine that Disappeared, lives up to the standards set by the previous novels.  Ms. Sjowall and Mr. Wahloo are among the best at what they do, no question about it.  However, I still felt something of a slump, a sense of going through the motions, that I did not feel in any of the earlier books.  

There's nothing remarkable this time around.  The story begins with a mass murder just like The Laughing Policeman, book four, did.  There is a hint that a police officer might be involved when Martin Beck's name is found written on a note pad in one victim's room, just as a police officer was one of the victims in book four.  At first there are no clues, just like in all the previous books.  A handful of capable police detectives work the case among the usual assortment of blunderers.  There is another young officer looking for his chance to shine.  

It's all very well done, there's just this nagging sense that it has been done just as well before .

Repetition and formula are part of the pleasure readers get from a  mystery series.  That you know what to expect and that you get what you expect are both part of the deal.  The previous novels kept this part of the bargain, then delivered the extras that made them stand out as better than average.  The Fire Engine that Disappeared attempts this by making  Martin Beck a minor character in favor of other detectives.  While these other characters are all well done, they didn't push the series to new heights.  I fear a plateau has been reached.  A high plateau, but a plateau none-the-less.

I'll certainly continue reading the ten books in the Martin Beck series.  As I said, knowing what to expect, and getting what you expect are part of the deal with a mystery series.  Part of the deal that is too good to pass up once you've found a series that delivers the goods as well as the Martin Beck series does.