A World Without Us

How ironic is this? I haven't had time to read Caleb Crain's article "Twilight of the Books" in the latest issue of the New Yorker because it's been too busy in the store. Which is a shame, since the article (which I've skimmed, thank you) looks interesting. Crain isn't optimistic about the future of books, but we certainly are, and the customers filling the store this month clearly agree.

Apologies to Alan Weisman.--David E

Head to Head

In this corner, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy--which the Catholic League hopes you won't read or see in movie theaters.

And in this corner Why I Am A Catholic for obvious reasons. Who will win?--David E

So 2007

According to the semi-official news website china.org.cn, wall calendars are out of fashion in the Middle Kingdom. "The Yantai Daily has reported that Xinhua Bookstores in the city's urban area have stopped selling them completely. ...Wall calendars are no longer considered a must in their daily life as many new digital devices can do the work better and easier."

Well, that may be fine in China, but here in Uptown, we're doing a brisk trade in 2008 calendars. Stop in today for these and many, many other great, old-fashioned date-keepers.--David E

Way Out West

The Flathead Beacon has a profile of the independent booksellers in Montana's Flathead County,just to the west of Glacier National Park. The moderately upbeat article--entitled "Flathead’s Remaining Bookstores Hang on Through Changing Times"--is interesting, but of real note is the slideshow tour of the stores themselves. I can't post it on this blog, but if you click here, you can see what shopping for used books is like out west.--David E

Seriously

Iran's government is holding its first Satirical Book of the Year awards.

I'm not kidding. One of the world's more repressive regimes, which regularly restricts publishers and bans books (ses details here, here, and here) hopes to "help raise the status of satire in Iran."

Details of the awards are here. Winners will be announced December 16.--David E

B'gosh and Begorrah!

Dublin's Independent newspaper recently talked to Maria Dickenson, who buys books for that city's branch of the Easons chain of bookstores, and asked her picks for the Christmas season's big sellers. Among her picks are some that you can expect to see flying off our shelves here in the states--Man Booker Prize-winner The Gathering by Anne Enright, Per Petersson's much-feted Out Stealing Horses, Eric Clapton: The Autobiography, and The Golden Compass. But there are also some uniquely Irish choices on the list:

• The Guinness World Records 2008 is no surprise, really.
• Great Irish Speaches would be harder sell in this country; even the Independent says it's "perfect for bedtime reading." No comment.
• The Ballydung Bible by the comic duo Podge and Rodge sounds like an emerald Lake Woebegone book and promises "sexy secrets of the Farmer Sutra."

Grab a pint of Harp and get reading.--David E

Sabuda Popping Up All Over

One of the most beautiful books out this holiday season has to be Robert Sabuda's pop-up version of The Chronicles of Narnia. Sabuda is probably the best-known "paper engineer" or pop-up book artist working today. His books are avidly collected and always beautiful. This one is no exception.

Get an inside look at the book and its maker--courtesy of the Wall Street Journal of all places.--David E

Crafty

Make magazine's video podcast this week shows you how to make a book into a secret hiding place for your small valuables. --David E

Before You Go to the Movies...

Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis tells the story of a young girl growing up in Iran during that country's Islamic revolution. It's an amazing story of resistance and resilience. It's also a darn good read. Now Persepolis has been made into a movie. It has already won the Jury Prize at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. It will be released in the US on December 25.

But the movie is only a condensed version of the original novel. Read the books before you see the movie, and get the whole story--David E

Book with a Beer Chaser

There's still time to get ready for next week's installment of our lubricated reading group Books & Bars. Join us Tuesday night (the 11th) at Bryant Lake Bowl (map) for conversation and a beverage with some very interesting folks. Doors open at 6:00pm for socializing; discussion begins in earnest at 7:00pm.

December's book is Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. This comic science-fiction romp encompasses the atomic bomb, theology, technology, and even the end of the world. But don't worry--it's less than 300 pages long.

Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide a unique atmosphere for a lively discussion of interesting authors, fun people, good food and drinks. You're welcome even if you haven't read the book.

The Wow Factor

This just might be the world's most beautiful bookstore. It's an eight-hundred-year-old converted Dominican church in Maastricht, in the Netherlands. Today it's part of the Selexyz chain. Best of all, it's an English-language bookstore, so if you get the chance to visit, you can take home a souvenir you can actually read.

Check out thecoolhunter.net for more photos.--David E

Happy Birthday, Calvin

Today is Calvin Trillin's birthday. Trillin is a prolific writer, whose work spans several disparate genres, and he's one of my favorite authors.

• Trillin is an avid eater and food writer: The Tummy Trilogy brings together three of his best works on the subject.
• He's a wicked political poet: besides being the "Deadline Poet" for The Nation where he contributes topical, satirical poems each and every week, his poetry has been collected in Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme and A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme.
• He's a novelist: Tepper Isn't Going Out chronicles one New Yorker's affair with the perfect parking spot.
• And he's powerful memoirist: his recent paean to his late wife About Alice is as moving a tribute to love as you can hope to find.

I don't know where he found the time to turn 72. Many happy returns of the day, Mr. Trillin.--David E

Art Imitates Life (Retroactively)

In the wake of the Gillian Gibbons teddy bear brouhaha in Sudan (details here), a British author has decided to revise an existing children's book to change a character's name from Mohammed to something less potentially offensive.

The Times of India reports, "Gray's book, an illustrated volume called Who's Poorly Too, has sold 40,000 copies in Britain and abroad over the last eight years it has been in print. But the author says he decided to postpone a re-print and rename the mole to guard against the possibility of trouble from angry Muslims."

The Mole-Formerly-Known-As-Mohammed is now to be called Morgan.--David E

Top That

I was reading a review of John MacIntyre's The Montreal Book of Everything because you never know when you might find something interesting in an unlikely place, and sure enough I came across this factoid: 80 per cent of North America's screw-top caps come from a single factory St. Césaire, 60 kilometres east of Montreal.

Now I'm bummed to find out that the book--the ninth in a series of Canadian Books of Everything--isn't available in this country. What else am I missing? Until some brave American distributor takes on this series, I'll just have to make due with MacIntyre's syndicated column Figuratively Speaking.--David E

PS: "Top That" was my second choice for a title for this posting. I'll leave it to you to guess what I'd originally thought to use, though I'll say that the second word was still "that."

Inside Joke

Life imitates art in Santa Barbara, where someone is spraypainting graffiti on the local UC campus. The red figures are in the shape of the muted trumpet (below) from Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the book, the trumpet is the clue which allows the protaganist Oedipus Maas to discover the reclusive organization called Tristero. Fifteen to twenty of the designs have been found so far on the University of California campus.



No one has claimed responsibility for the grafitti, and says insidehighered.com, presumably with a straight face, "Pynchon could not be reached for comment."--David E

Word

Kalima (Arabic for "word") is a project funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage which aims to increase the number of books in translatation available to readers in the Arabic language. According to their website, that won't be hard; there's a real dearth of such works available at the moment. "If you are looking for the works of Freud or Chaucer for example, you will not find them in Arabic. ... Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the past 1000 years."

I'm already a fan of the project just from having learned that one of the first six titles they've translated is Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore. Arabic readers looking for something meatier can at last read Stephen Hawking's A Briefer History of Time--David E

Agony, I Tell You

You may not know the name Vinko Bogataj, but his world-famous wipeout in the opening credits of ABC's "Wide World of Sports" was formative to me in my youth and gave rise to the expression "pulling a Vinko."

I mention this because on Saturday, Decepber 8, at 8:30pm, Wayne Johnson, author of White Heat: The Extreme Skiing Life will be in the store. Johnson has met Bogataj and other similarly wild and crazy skiing guys. So that video isn't looking so gratuitous after all, is it?.--David E

You Tell Me

If you're having trouble choosing a book, you can always ask the staff at your friendly local independent bookstore for some suggestions. Or visit whichbook.net. There you can choose up to four characteristics for your desired book. Should it be short or long? Safe or disturbing? Sex-filled or sex-free? Click on the appropriate bar, then move the slider to get just the right balance. Then click on "Go," and see what you should be reading.

You can also search the recommendations by character, plot, and setting. The possibilities are endless.--David E

Boldly Go

I'm not a big fan of science fiction, but when the Seattle Public Library's book maven Nancy Pearl--author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason and Book Crush For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest--makes some suggestions, even I pay a little attention. Pearl has listed six of her favorite SF novels. Better still, there are excerpts for them all, so you can get a taste without leaving your computer.

You can find the list and the excerpts here.--David E

Since You're (Probably) Not at Work Today

First, Ian McEwan's novel On Chesil Beach is passed over for the Booker Prize. Now he's been hit with a nomination for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award. Also on the list is the late Norman Mailer for his book The Castle. Details of the prize and its history are here.

In fairness to McEwan, On Chesil Beach is a novel about sexual dysfunction. It centers on a rather unsatisfactory honeymoon night, so the attention actually means McEwan has done a good job of writing,perversely enough.--David E

Sneak Peek

The New York Times has posted its list of 2007's 100 most notable books. The list will be in print on December 2, but you can check it out online now. Click here to refresh your memory and help jumpstart your holiday shopping list.

Remember that you can always check our inventory on our website or by phoning us at 612/822-4611 (toll-free: 888/912-6657). If the book you want isn't in stock, we can always order new copies of in-print books; special orders are 10% off the publisher's price and generally arrive in under a week.

I Cry a Little

Oh, you tired, underpaid publishing industry insiders, at last your story can be told. The Onion has the inside scoop on how Rupert Murdoch tried to drive Judith Regan to quit her job as the head of Regan Books, attempted publisher of OJ Simpson's If I Did It. Enjoy the semi-truth.--David E

They Pulled Me Back In

So I'd just given up on NPR's news program aimed at twentysomethings with woefully short attention spans, The Bryant Park Project, when darned if they didn't go and post an item I'm actually interested in.

The BPP talked to Dan Borchert, author of Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library. He blows the lid off these publicly-funded ratholes, detailing theft, drug-dealing and other such shenanigans. But the choice morsel of the report is about folks who park their kids in the library all day, finding it a cheap alternative to daycare.

Hear the interview here.--David E

Now You're Talking

A few weeks ago, Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! and author of The Book of Vice, talked to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air program. It was all very nice; I recommended it. It was very appropriate for most any audience--good, if not quite as sensational as you might expect an interview on the subject of immorality to be.

Ah, but now Sagal, umm, lets his hair down in an interview with nerve.com. My favorite revelation: Sagal wrote the first draft of the screenplay that would eventually become Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. If that's not a sin, I don't know what is.--David E

Can't Find Me! But Call My Agent for an Interview

Andrew Morton's forthcoming unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise--titled plainly enough Tom Cruise: The Unauthorized Biography--seems to have landed the author in hot water--or at least in a good publicity stunt.

Morton is the author of biographies of Princess Diana, Madonna, and Mel Gibson, but has said researching Cruise was his hardest task yet. According to London's Daily Mail, Morton is under such pressure from the Church of Scientology that he's sold his apartment and gone into hiding. Says the author, “I have received threats from the Scientologists and things have become pretty heavy--to the extent that it’s almost more than my lawyers can ­handle.”

Tom Cruise: The Unauthorized Biography will be published January 15, 2008.--David E

Support Your Loal Poets

Magers & Quinn Booksellers and the Walker’s mnartists.org present a reading by the winners of this quarter’s poetry contest: "What Light--this week’s poem." The reading will be Sunday, November 17, at 5:00pm, in our store (map). Refreshments will be served.

Among the readers for this reading wil be

• Charisse Gendron
• Margaret Hasse
• Amy Levine
• Cass Dalglish
• Greg Watson
• James Henderson
• Andrea Matthews
• Vanessa Ramos
• Terri Ford
• Karsten Piper

All Minnesota residents are invited to submit their poetry to "What Light." Visit mnartists.org for more details.--David E

Up North... Way North

The Iceland Review has published a summary of the state of publishing in Iceland. It seems the little country of only 300,000 souls managed to publish an astonishing 800 books last year. What's more, Icelandic publishers and bookstores manage to sell those books at quite decent rates: 8,000 to 12,000 copies constitute a bestseller. Most small publishers in the US would be very happy to see numbers like that, too.--David E

Talk to Him

Minnesota Public Radio has interviewed Wing Young Huie about his trip around North America, chronicled in his book Looking for Asian America. In 2001 Huie and his wife traveled all around the US and even into Canada and Mexico, seeking out Asian Americans in the most unexpected places. They found a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco's Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., and a bubble tea Valley Girl.

But you can do more than just listen to the MPR interview. Huie will be in our store (map) on Tuesday, November 20, at 7:30pm. He'll be giving a talk about his trip, showing slides, and answering questions. Don't miss this unique opportunity to interact with this great local artist. The event is free and open to the public--David E

The Nationals

The winners of the 2007 National Book Awards have been announced. The fiction winner is store favorite Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. The Young People's Literature winner is Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian--which is also #5 on our Uptown Bestsellers list this week.

Rounding out the winners are Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes for nonfiction and Robert Hass' Time and Materials for poetry.--David E