All About Alice

Poet, author and gourmand Calvin Trillin will be on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show Wednesday at 9am CST. You will be able to listen to the show live here.

Trillin will be discussing his latest book About Alice, a memoir and love letter to his late wife, the subject of not only this book but also Alice, Let's Eat and Travels with Alice. She was also a constant steadying presence in his essays and a familiar character to Trillin's many readers. She died in 2001.

Now Trillin has expanded an earlier New Yorker essay, writing a book which the New York Times called "slim but walloping."

James and White: Separated at Birth?

The blog Baroque in Hackney has posted a pair of photographs of Edmund White (see the M&Q posting of February 7) and Henry James. I'm not sure I see it myself.--David E

Doctor, Doctor

Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam, is on Minnesota Public Radio from this morning. The award-winning surgeon and transplant specialist discusses the difficulty of coming to grips with death. If you missed it, the show is archived here.

We have copies available, and in fact, her book is on the 25% off shelf in the front of the store.

Orhan Pamuk, New Yorker

Following the assassination of the Turkish/Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and the string of prosecutions of Turkish authors (usually for "defaming Turkishness"), Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk has moved to New York City, reports The Telegraph.

The news comes on the heels of the cancellation of a reading tour by Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul, nixed because of safety concerns. The Village Voice posted a profile of Shafak yesterday.

Found Keys

A customer turned in a set of four small brass keys that she found on the sidewalk in front of our store. If you've lost yours, ask at the register.

The Redheaded Stepchild of Bilbo Baggins

The Tolkien blogs are alive with the news, but it's out of the basement: There's a new Tolkien novel on the horizon. OK, of course it's not from the late JRR himself, but it's based on his notes and completed by his son Christopher.

The Children of Hurin will be available April 17. List price is $26.00, but we can order you a copy now for $23.40. Get your visa for Middle Earth. It's minus four charm points if you miss this one.

Plan Now for Potter

We're taking advance orders for the seventh and final Harry Potter title, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Our price is $20.99, down from the list price of $34.95. Stop in today and reserve your copy.

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And while we're on the subject, many folks have been wondering a bit over the title. Ever helpful, Wikipedia has this to say on the subject:

The meaning of "Hallows"

When asked "What does 'Deathly Hallows' mean?" J.K. Rowling responded, "Any clarification of the meaning of 'Hallows' would give away too much of the story - well, it would, wouldn't it? Being the title and all. So I'm afraid I'm not answering." She also declined to say what her two other shortlisted titles had been, at least until after publication.

Hallow is a word usually used as a verb, meaning "to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate". However, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the word hallows appears as a noun. In modern English, the word is used as a noun in "All Hallows' Day" or "All Saints' Day," which is the day after Halloween or "All Hallows' Eve". Hallows can refer to saints, the relics of saints, the relics of gods, or shrines in which the relics are kept. Since the essence of these saints or gods were often considered present at their shrines and in their relics, hallows came to refer to the saints or gods themselves, rather than just their relics or shrines. So, the hallow (relic) of a hallow (saint) is hidden in a hallow (shrine).

Clears it all up, right? Only JK herself knows for sure... until July, anyway.

What Would Socrates Do?

Join us be in our store at 7:30pm, Wednesday, February 21, for a reading and discussion with noted philosopher Christopher Phillips.

Don't be scared by the P-word. Phillips' discussion groups, which he calls Socrates Cafes, are easy. They bring together groups of people to discuss topics of the day and to stimulate your curiosity. His modern interpretation of the Socratic Method teaches strategies for thinking about matters great and small with clarity. You'll be philosophizing in no time.

Phillips' latest book Socrates in Love concerns the timely subject of romance. If Valentine's Day left you wondering about the ways of the heart, bring your questions and get ready to hear your fellow citizens' thoughts on life and love.

This is sure to be a popular evening, so plan to arrive early for the best seat.

Think Spring

There's a small notice on the University of Minnesota's Bookstore's webpage, listing an April 2 appearance by Jonathan Lethem. There are no more details as yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, you can catch up on an old Lethem work. We have a nice stack of his early short story collection The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye. You can also find other titles in our store.

Survey Says

We recently received a great selection of books from the folks at the Zagat Survey. Made up of the reviews and recommendations of thousands of diners, these guides are comprehensive and opinionated. Their thumbnail sketches will help you find good eats wherever you're headed.

Our selection includes the standard Zagat Survey books ($5.99), Pocket guides ($3.99), and boxed sets with guides and maps ($11.99). They're shelved with the rest of the travel guides, by location.

PS: "Zagat," according to their website, rhymes with "the Cat."

DreamHaven Robbed

According to Neil Gaiman's blog, DreamHaven Books was robbed over the weekend. The thieves also did a lot of damage to the store and offices. (Try to find coverage in either of the local daily newspapers; I didn't.)

DreamHaven is a great local resource for comic books. Like Gaiman, we encourage you to stop in and make a purchase, now more than ever. The Twin Cities needs all the bookstores it can get.

Through the Airwaves

Pete Dexter, longtime Philadelphia (and Scramento) newspaper columnist, was on NPR Saturday morning, touting his latest book Paper Trails. We have copies on the back side of the first table in the back room.

If you missed it, you can listen to the interview here.

Not Constantinople

The most recent installment of the BBC's program (they call it a programme, really) The Word is about the publishing scene in Calcutta (more correctly called Kolkata). Hear about the Calcutta Book Fair's search for a home, and listen to Amit Chaudhuri discuss his work. Then you can call yourself informed.

Book with a Beer Chaser

There's still time for you to get ready for next week's installment of our lubricated reading group Books & Bars. Join us Tuesday night (the 13th) 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.

This month's book is On Beauty by Zadie Smith, the author of White Teeth. It's a novel of morals and manners. Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon.

The Los Angeles Times said, "Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as 'On Beauty.' It's a thing of beauty indeed."

Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide an atmosphere for lively discussion of lesser known authors, good food and drinks. You're welcome to come even if you haven't read the book.

Tattoo You

Sometimes we get a book in the store that makes us all gather round to take a look. I recently found one while was shelving books: Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia is a two-volume collection of photographs and line drawings depicting the tattoos decorating some of the hardest of the hard in late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.

There are tons of great images for any artist, tattoo or otherwise. A lot of the designs are too adult for us to post, but here are some examples of the nicer ones.--David E

Books... for Dummies

We recently received a large quantity of books from the for Dummies series. I'm not suggesting you need one of these for yourself, but we all have dummies in our lives and we all have to buy them gifts. Maybe some dimbulb you know wants to know more about champagne or cryptography or classical music. We can help you out with books on these and about seventy other topics, especially written for the ... ummm... relaxed reader.

Mashup Made in Heaven: Google Maps Books

While I'm not a big fan of Google's plan to capture all the world's books and put them online, even I will admit that there's a pretty cool feature they offer. Search for a title, then click the "About this book" link. Down towards the bottom of the page is a section called "Places mentioned in this book" where the cities and other places mentioned in the text of the book are laid out on a Google map.

For example, here are the towns from On the Road (scroll down to see the maps). And here are the locations from (shameless plug here) Tim Flannery's The Eternal Frontier. Not all books listed at Google have maps, but looking for those that do can easily kill a few slow hours online. Beware.--David E

Edmund White recalls Nabokov imitating Borges

Edmund White is a strange and exciting mix of the scholarly and the scandalous. So whether you're favoring the mind or the body, you'll find something to like in just about anything he's written. (We have a hardback copy of The Burning Library, a collection of his essays, for an absurdly low $5.99; that's a good place to start.)

Bookslut.com has posted a long interview with White. It's all worthwhile, but if you're in a hurry, here's a great bit from the conversation.

EW: Nabokov was quite a clown. He pretended to be Borges, and he pretended to be all these things…

Q: How do you pretend to be Borges?

EW: He put on a poncho and blind glasses.

We have a great selection of White's work in the store, including my own favorite Our Paris. And we also have a copy of Original Youth: The Real Story of Edmund White's Boyhood, in case you're feeling investigative.--David E

Ryszard Kapuscinski: News and Two Views

The late, great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died last month. He wrote atmospheric, poetic--and, it's been charged, unsubstantiated--accounts of upheavals in Angola, Iran, and Ethopia.

The good news: Granta has posted an interview with Kapuscinski from 1987. Meanwhile, dueling articles at slate.com present the man as either a novelist masquerading as a journalist or a great reporter who wrote in verse, depending on who you believe.

Now the bad news: Kapuscinski is currently out of stock and hard to get. But you can sign up on our website to be notified when we get copies of his work again. It's worth the wait, I promise.--David E

Jonathan Ames at nerve.com

If you have a taste for the odd and funny, you don't want to miss one my my favorite authors (and perhaps the most appealing deviate writing today), Jonathan Ames. He's like Woody Allen with a taste for transvestites. A good place to start is his recent article at nerve.com in which he attends a sex class for men.--David E