Shelf Awareness for Thursday, April 28, 2011


Grove Press: 33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen

Berkley Books: These new Berkley romances leave quite an impression. Enter the giveaway!

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: How Sweet the Sound by Kwame Alexander and Charly Palmer

Palgrave Macmillan:  Scotus 2023: Major Decisions and Developments of the Us Supreme Court (2024) (1ST ed.) edited by Morgan Marietta and Howard Schweber

NYU Advanced Publishing Institute: Register today!

Frances Lincoln Ltd: Dear Black Boy by Martellus Bennett

Soho Crime: Broken Fields by Marcie R. Rendon

Quotation of the Day

Books 'Sturdy Enough to be Handled, Read and Transformed'

"I like the early 20th-century books because I like the design of the books, the typography, the little extras like frontispieces and illustrations. I also love the attention paid to the forming of the book as an object, in terms of materials: the linen used to cover the boards, the design on their spines and a signet--the author’s initials or full name or some other embossment on the cover, if not a full-on graphic.

"There wasn't a compulsion to attract the reader with flashy covers, but rather a quiet display of design that seemed devoted to that of books. There is also a wabi-sabi type of patina that these have, where there is some wear-and-tear but they are still sturdy enough to be handled, read and transformed."

--Artist Lisa Occhipinti, in an interview with the New York Times, which noted that her book art "can resemble fossils; haunted stacks of decayed, burned and water-soaked books; or crisp origami." Occhipinti's new book is The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life (Stewart, Tabori & Chang).

 


Disruption Books: How We Heal: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out by La June Montgomery Tabron


News

Notes: S.C. House Nixes Amazon Tax Break; Davis-Kidd Lives

The South Carolina House of Representatives voted 71-47 yesterday to reject a proposal extending a sales tax collection break for Amazon, WIS-TV reported. The proposal would have exempted Amazon from collecting the tax for five years.

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee voted in favor of the tax break, moving the measure to the Senate floor for debate (Shelf Awareness, April 20, 2011), but the State noted that "both sides agree the outcome in the House was a key showdown on the future of the exemption for Amazon."

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Bankruptcy Judge Tracey Wise tentatively approved the results of the Joseph-Beth Booksellers auction (Shelf Awareness, April 21, 2011) "pending the entry of a sales order that's expected Wednesday afternoon. The deal will close at the end of business Thursday, with the new owners taking over operations Friday morning," the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Booksellers Enterprises LLC entered the highest bid--$3.977 million--for three  former Joseph-Beth stores in Lexington, Cincinnati and Cleveland, as well as the corporate headquarters in Cincinnati. The figure "included $2.604 million in cash plus various other items including the assumption of gift cards," the Herald-Leader wrote.

Joseph-Beth founder Neil Van Uum had entered second-highest, and losing, bid of $3.801 million, but he has since struck a deal to continue operating the former Davis-Kidd store in Memphis (Shelf Awareness, April 27, 2011).

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That Memphis Davis-Kidd location "not only has a new, 10-year lease with Laurelwood Shopping Center, but plans for a major remodeling," the Commercial Appeal reported. The bankruptcy judge's approval of the store's purchase by DK Booksellers, a group that includes Neil Van Uum (Shelf Awareness, April 27, 2011), will ultimately result in "a large--24,000 square feet--independent bookstore."

"I'm sorry everybody went through this," said Van Uum. "It's been a grueling period for our people." He praised Laurelwood Shopping Center president and owner Tom Prewitt for his support, saying, "I can't thank him enough. He's a great Memphian. We're going to march forward arm-in-arm."

Van Uum also hopes get the rights to the bookstore's original name back from Booksellers Enterprise. "We're not giving up on the 'Davis-Kidd Booksellers' name," he said, adding that DK Booksellers would be the fall-back choice. He also looks forward to focusing on one store instead of a chain: "As pressure built with Amazon and with the chain roll-out, probably the mistake I made was to grow our company to scale."

After thanking the Memphis community for its support, Prewitt said, "During this complex, four-month process, Laurelwood has been motivated by finding a bookstore operator that would remain committed to the best interests of the bookstore employees and customers of Laurelwood Shopping Center, as well as the Memphis community."

Prewitt told the Daily News he wants "to make this the finest bookstore in the Memphis area. I was certain Neil was virtually the only bidder who was going to retain the employees, keep the focus on the customers and really commit to remaining in Memphis. I am going to meet with Neil really very shortly and start looking at interior enhancements to the store that will make the experience there even better."

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In a letter to shareholders, CEO Jeff Bezos made the case for Amazon's heavy investment in technology. "All the effort we put into technology might not matter that much if we kept technology off to the side in some sort of R&D department, but we don’t take that approach," he wrote. "Technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do.... As I've discussed many times before, we have unshakeable conviction that the long-term interests of shareowners are perfectly aligned with the interests of customers."

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Reminder: tomorrow is the day voting closes for the shortlist of the inaugural Independent Booksellers Choice Awards, sponsored by Melville House and Shelf Awareness. Find your e-ballot here.

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At his Los Angeles bookshop Libros Schmibros, David Kipen "has created the closest thing to a public square for the local, mostly Latino community--a place where people feel just as comfortable camping out for the free wi-fi as they do stopping in just to use the restroom (as a patron does during our conversation). It's all the same to him, says Kipen, as long as they're reading," GOOD reported. 

"Job number one is to get books into people's homes," said Kipen.

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R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Conn., is celebrating Get Caught Reading Month (i.e., May) by dedicating the store window display to pictures of customers reading. The most inventive photo gets a prize.

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B Is for Books, Orchard Park, N.Y., hosted a "Princess Party" Tuesday to celebrate the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton as part of the bookshop's "Regal Week." Owner Jane Bell, who is from the U.K., said that as a teen she was one of millions of "royal watchers" who lined the streets the day Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. The Princess Party "was also a good excuse to enjoy fun picture books with little girls, eat cherry-pink cupcakes and mini-chocolate cakes, make crafts and celebrate the community spirit of a locally owned, indie bookstore that specializes in children's books," she added.

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To celebrate National Arbor Day tomorrow, Harper Perennial is offering booksellers a tree sapling from a famous author’s home. "An arborist has all of Richard Horan’s tree seeds from his travels during the writing of Seeds: One Man's Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers," said Harper's Carl Lennertz. "Many are sprouting now, but are still fragile. If you send me a photo of Seeds displayed nicely, tell me you’ll sell a bunch, or tell me your favorite author visit from the book, I’ll send you a tree sapling a year from now when they are okay to ship." He added that the arborist has quite a few white pines from Emerson and Thoreau, catalpa from Rachel Carson, live oak from Henry Miller and a few redbuds from Faulkner.

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The New York Public Library is cooking up a tasty idea. Ben Vershbow, manager of the library's digital labs, and culinary librarian Rebecca Federman are in the "process of transcribing the 10,000 menus in the library’s online gallery to turn it into a fully searchable database that can be browsed by dish, beverage or price as well as name and date," the New York Times reported.

Their effort, called--What's on the Menu?--has rallied thousands of participants. "The ferocity of the response we've had is amazing," said Vershbow, adding that the crowd-sourced effort was sparked "solely through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Metafilter. Collectively, volunteers have typed in 65,182 dishes from 887 menus since the site went up last Monday," the Times noted.

"For people who love food, typing up the contents of an old menu is a weird thrill," Vershbow said, "and I think people jump at an opportunity to commune with the past."

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The New York Times reported that Harper Lee issued a statement yesterday through her sister’s law firm saying she had nothing to do with The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, a forthcoming book by Marja Mills. On Tuesday, Penguin announced that it had acquired the memoir "written with direct access to Harper and Alice Lee and their friends and family."

Miriam Altshuler, Mills's literary agent, told the Times that the book's author "has the written support of Alice Lee and a lifelong family friend, and prior to Harper Lee's stroke in 2007, she had the verbal support of Harper Lee."

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Spenser and Jesse Stone are on the job once more. Robert B. Parker's estate announced that Michael Brandman will write the first Stone novel under the title Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues, Deadline.com reported. The novel will be published September 13. Brandman was co-writer and producer of CBS's Stone movies featuring Tom Selleck, as well as producer of three Spenser novel adaptations for A&E.

Ace Atkins, whose novels include White Shadow, Infamous and Wicked City, will write the first new Spenser novel, to be released in the spring of 2012. Sixkill, Parker's final Spenser novel, will be released by Putnam in May.

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Flavorwire recommended the "Best Books for the Armchair Traveler," noting that "if you aren’t able to throw down a couple hundred bucks for a last-minute plane ticket around the world, you can still travel from the comfort of your home by living vicariously through the new wave of travel books growing in popularity."

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NPR's What We're Reading series this week includes Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball by Adrian Burgos Jr., Birds, Beasts, And Seas: Nature Poems From New Directions, edited by Jeffrey Yang; Tender: A Cook And His Vegetable Patch by Nigel Slater and My Mom, Style Icon by Piper Weiss

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The art of the bookplate. The Guardian featured samples of this "highly imaginative form of miniature art" culled from the British Museum's upcoming book Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates.  

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"Shopping vintage isn't just a smart move for the planet; it can also be great design inspiration," according to Re-Nest, which showcased the Bookscans project, "a visual catalog of all (yes, all) vintage American paperbacks but especially those printed before 1960 and those having a 25¢ or 35¢ cover price. And all the images are public domain (free) so they can be used in whatever way your inspiration dictates--artwork, art projects, paint color palettes... you name it!"

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Book trailer of the day: Marry or Burn: Stories by Valerie Trueblood (Counterpoint). The trailer is by Tucker Capps, a young writer and filmmaker.

 


Inner Traditions: Deck the Stacks with the Best Holiday & Gift Books for Self-Transformation! Claim your samples now!


Cool Idea of the Day: 'WORD Tells You What to Read'

Gothamist has introduced "Staff Picks," a new weekly column "in which we ask the staffers at our favorite book, music, and movie stores around to town to share with us what they're reading, listening to, and watching this week. We figure they're good people to ask."

To "kick things off," Gothamist turned to Brooklyn's WORD, "whom we typically trust in all things reading-related." Store manager Stephanie Anderson recommended The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Brons (Europa Editions).

Below Stephanie's great handsell of the novel, Gothamist added words that should warm the hearts of indies everywhere: "The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is available at WORD for $15."

 


BINC: Your donation can help rebuild lives and businesses in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and beyond. Donate Today!


Lonely Planet on BEA: Free NYC, Part 2

Seeing the bulk of New York City's biggest attractions can mean spending a hefty chunk of a trip's budget on tickets. Empire State Building? $20. The Met? $20. The Guggenheim and Whitney go for $18 each. Even the Frick is $15. But there's plenty of fun to be had in the city without handing over a cent. Here, courtesy of Lonely Planet, are 40 free things to do and places to see (1-15 have appeared here already):


16. Hispanic Society of America Museum & Library

The largest collection of Spanish art outside Spain fills the ornate Beaux Arts space of the Hispanic Society of America Museum & Library on the serene Audubon Terrace in far north Manhattan. Broadway & 155th St., Washington Heights.

17. Japan Society

The films and lectures usually involve a ticket, but the gallery exhibits at the Japan Society (focusing on Japanese art) are always free. 333 E. 47 St., between First & Second Aves., Midtown East.

18. National Museum of the American Indian

This Smithsonian ex-pat, just off historic Bowling Green and Battery Park, is located in the spectacular former U.S. Customs House (1907). The National Museum of the American Indian is one of the country's finest collections of Native American art. The focus is on culture, not history, and it does so with many of its million-plus items. 1 Bowling Green, Lower Manhattan.

19. New York Earth Room

Now for something completely different: the Earth Room, Walter De Maria's 1977 art installation, a single room filled with 280,000 pounds of dirt, combines the framework of an ordinary office with the scent of a wet forest. 141 Wooster St., SoHo

20. New York Public Library

The New York Public Library (aka the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building), the grand Beaux Arts icon east of Times Square, turns 100 this year. It's fronted by marble lions named "Patience" and "Fortitude," and is full of jaw-dropping spaces, particularly the reading room and its original Carre-and-Hastings lamps. There are exhibits too, including a copy of the original Declaration of Independence, a Gutenburg Bible, plus 431,000 old maps. There are free tours at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday to Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Fifth Ave. at 42nd St., Midtown East.

21. Old Stone House

A Breuckelen legacy from Brooklyn's Dutch origins and a survivor from the ill-fated Battle of Brooklyn, the Old Stone House features a small exhibit on the battle. Its upstairs is sometimes rented out for the likes of sample sales. Fifth Ave., between 3th & 4th Sts., Park Slope, Brooklyn.

22. Public boathouse kayaking

Kayak for free from public boathouses such as the Downtown Boathouse and Long Island Community Boathouse in Queens.

23. Rockefeller Center Public Art

Built in the 1930s, the 22-acre Rockefeller Center is more than the setting for NBC's Today Show and a giant Christmas tree in December (not to mention $19 NBC tours or $21 trips to the observatory deck!). See the slew of art commissioned under the theme of "Man at the Crossroads Looks Uncertainly But Hopefully at the Future." A bit wordy, but the pieces pack a big punch, such as the statue of Promethus overlooking the skating rink, or Atlas holding the world at 630 Fifth Ave. Jose Maria Sert's murals in the (main) GE Building include the likes of Abe Lincoln and replaced the original "Communist imagery" (e.g., Vladimir Lenin) in Diego Rivera's work. Between Fifth & Sixth Aves., around 49th & 50th Sts., Midtown.

24. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Part of the city's library system, the Schomburg Center has the country's largest collection of documents, books, recordings and photographs related to the African-American experience. Free exhibits, too. 515 Malcolm X Blvd at 135th St, Harlem.

25. Socrates Sculpture Park

On the East River, overlooking Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side, the Socrates Sculpture Park, a former dump site, now has interesting art installations, light shows and movies on Wednesdays in summer. Broadway at Vernon Blvd., Astoria, Queens.

26. Staten Island Ferry

The Staten Island Ferry, connecting Manhattan and Staten Island, cuts across New York Harbor and is absolutely free. Includes great views of the Statue of Liberty. Around since 1905, the ferry carries 19 million peope across the harbor each year. It never gets old. East end of Battery Park, Lower Manhattan.

FREE ATTRACTIONS AT SCHEDULED TIMES:

27. American Museum of Natural History

Free its last hour (4:45-5:45pm). Central Park West & 79th St., Upper West Side.

28. Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Free Tuesday, and 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. Eastern Parkway at Washington Ave., Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

29. Brooklyn Museum

Free first Saturday of the month, when there's wine-sipping, DJ parties that draw half the neighborhood. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Washington Ave., Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

30. Bronx Zoo

Pay what you wish on Wednesday. 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx.

31. El Museo del Barrio

Free the third Saturday of the month. 1230 Fifth Ave. between 104th & 105th Sts., Spanish Harlem.

32. Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum

Pay what you wish on the first Friday of the month. 9-01 33rd Rd, Astoria, Queens.

33. Museum of Modern Art

Entry is free 4-8 p.m. on Friday. Gets busy. 11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth & Sixth Aves., Midtown West.

34. Museum of the Moving Image

Free 4-8 p.m. on Friday. 35th Ave., at 36th St., Astoria, Queens.

35. Neue Galerie

Free 6-8 p.m. the first Friday of the month. 1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th St.

36. New York Botanical Garden

Free Wednesday and 10 a.m.-noon, Saturday. Bronx River Pkwy. & Fordham Rd., Bronx.

37. New-York Historical Society

Pay what you wish on Fridays, 6-8 p.m. 2 W. 77th St. at Central Park West.

38. South Street Seaport Museum

Free the third Friday of every month. 207 Front St., Lower Manhattan.

39. Studio Museum in Harlem

Free on Sundays. 144 W. 125th St. at Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., Harlem.

40. Wave Hill

Free 9 a.m. to noon, Tuesdays and Saturdays. W. 249th St. at Independence Ave., Riverdale, Bronx.

 


G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
Be the first to have an advance copy!
Ordinary Time:
Lessons Learned While Staying Put
by Annie B. Jones
GLOW: HarperOne: Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put by Annie B. Jones

In Ordinary Time, indie bookstore owner and podcaster Annie B. Jones shares tender wisdom and lessons learned while living in a small Southern town for more than 30 years. "Annie is one of us," says Angela Guzman, senior editor at HarperOne. "If you have ever dreamed, if you've ever questioned whether you've made the right choices for your life, or if you have ever wanted more... this book is for you." Watching others move away and move on, Jones wraps readers in a comforting narrative woven like a beautiful quilt, composed of passionate, personal stories rooted in themes of love, marriage, family, faith, and friendship. The day-to-day, small-town moments she shares will undoubtedly inspire others to find meaning, joy, and purpose in life no matter where they live. --Kathleen Gerard

(HarperOne, $26.99 hardcover, 9780063411272, April 22, 2025)

CLICK TO ENTER


#ShelfGLOW
Shelf vetted, publisher supported

Media and Movies

Media Heat: Steven Tyler on Dateline Sunday

Sunday on Dateline: Steven Tyler, author of Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir (Ecco, $27.99, 9780061767890).

 


This Weekend on Book TV: L.A. Times Festival of Books

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, April 30

8 a.m. Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S., talks about his book The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them (Morrow, $26.99, 9780061969782). (Re-airs Saturday at 8 p.m.)

11:15 a.m. in an event hosted by Books on the Square, Providence, R.I., Bradford Martin, author of The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan (Hill and Wang, $26, 9780809074617), suggests that throughout the decade activists were focused on maintaining the progress made in previous years against an ascendant conservative movement. (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

2 p.m. Book TV presents live coverage from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books from the University of Southern California. Programming will include events, author interviews and viewer call-in segments. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m.)
    
10 p.m. After Words. Nicole Lee interviews Peter Godwin, author of The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe (Little, Brown, $26.99, 9780316051736). Godwin returned to his native Zimbabwe immediately following the first election lost by Mugabe. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.)

Sunday, May 1

9 a.m. Larry Schweikart, author of What Would the Founders Say?: A Patriot's Answers to America's Most Pressing Problems (Sentinel, $26.95, 9781595230744), examines 10 current political and social issues. (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

12 p.m. In Depth. Tibor Machan, author of 29 books--including, most recently, The Promise of Liberty: A  Non-Utopian Vision (Lexington Books, $80, 9780739130742), joins Book TV for a live interview. Viewers can participate in the discussion by calling in during the program or submitting questions to booktv@c-span.org or via Twitter. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

3:30 p.m. Book TV's live coverage from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books continues, featuring events, author interviews and viewer call-in segments. (Re-airs Monday at 3 a.m.)

 


Movies: Think Like a Man

Screen Gems has chosen Tim Story (Fantastic Four, Barbershop) to direct Think Like a Man, based on Steve Harvey's bestselling book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Deadline.com reported that the movie, starring Kevin Hart as "a self-professed relationship expert who is quick to give advice to his crew of friends, even as his own marriage heads toward divorce," will begin production in July.

 



Books & Authors

Awards: IPA Freedom to Publish; Kraszna-Krausz Foundation

Bui Chat, founder of Giay Vun Publishing in Vietnam, was named the recipient of this year's International Publishers Association Freedom to Publish Prize "for his exemplary courage in upholding freedom to publish." Giay Vun is devoted to printing and publishing of the works of Vietnam's "pavement poets." The award was presented Monday by IPA president YoungSuk Chi during a ceremony hosted by the 37th Buenos Aires Book Fair, as part of the Buenos Aires World Book Capital program.

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Winners of this year's Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Awards, which honor books published in the fields of photography and the moving image (including film, television and new media), were announced yesterday at the Sony World Photography Awards in London.

Winner of the best photography book award was a special edition volume of David Goldblatt’s TJ: Images of Johannesburg Shot Over Forty Years, which is accompanied by Ivan Vladislaviċ's novel Double Negative. The judges said the "ambitious project explores the relationship between text and image. A highly effective pairing of fiction and photography, this innovative collaboration redefines the possibilities for writing on and about photography."
 
Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the 20th Century by Matthew Solomon won the best moving image book award. The judges called it a "fascinating enquiry into the early history of film, especially as it involved magicians and magic tricks. Matthew Solomon explores spiritualism and suspension of disbelief in a compelling investigation of the integration of cinema into mainstream entertainment."
 
Publisher Gerhard Steidl received the outstanding contribution to publishing award.

 


Shelf Starter: Daniel O'Thunder

Daniel O'Thunder by Ian Weir (Douglas & McIntyre/PGW,  $16.95 trade paper, 9781553654353, April 15, 2011)

Opening lines from a book we want to read, about a prize fighter turned evangelist in 1851 London, and a fight with the Devil himself:

Night has fallen as the Devil emerges from his lodgings in Mayfair, lingers for a moment in the baleful sputter of a gas-lamp, and then limps away through the London fog towards regent Street. He has been awake since late afternoon; or rather, he has been awake all along, for the Devil does not sleep. Instead he reclines for periods of malevolent immobility, in which he broods upon ancient hatreds and marshals his energy for reprisal. At such times his eyes glow crimson with the fires within, and wisps of smoke issue from the neck of his shirt, causing whosoever might be lying alongside of him--such as an actress, or a half-guinea whore from Mother Clatterballock, or just the crumpled ruination of a flower-girl--to utter exclamations agonizing to our Saviour and leap to her feet, clutching her smock in consternation.

Afterwards he sits before the mirror with his pencils and his paints, preparing himself. This may take an hour and more, for the Devil is ancient, and lined, and vain as a fading tragedian. –selected by Marilyn Dahl

 


Book Review

Book Review: The Sentimentalists

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud (W.W. Norton & Company, $23.95 hardcover, 208p., 9780393082517, May 2, 2011)

Only now published in the United States after its surprise selection as the winner of the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Johanna Skibsrud's uneven first novel explores the uncertainty of memory, the weight of family secrets and the fierce bond of loyalty between father and daughter.

Much of The Sentimentalists is set in the small Ontario town of Casablanca, where Napoleon Haskell, an alcoholic dying of cancer, is joined by his daughter, the novel's unnamed narrator, who's fleeing the breakup of her relationship. The Haskells share a house with Henry Carey, Napoleon's friend, paralyzed as a young man in an automobile accident. The long-ago flooding of the original town for a dam project serves as a metaphor for the way memories can be extinguished.

The novel ranges episodically over Napoleon's troubled past, from the ramshackle house in Fargo, North Dakota, where he lives for 10 years before the narrator and her sister transport him to Canada, to an unfinished boat-building project. At the core of the book is the account of his unit's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam in 1967 (based on Skibsrud's father's own service in that war). The novel shifts from first to third person to tell that story from Napoleon's point of view, and its epilogue consists of the transcript of his testimony at an inquiry into those events. The latter device recalls Tim O'Brien's novel In the Lake of the Woods, the story of a politician whose career is destroyed when his participation in a similar event is exposed, where it was employed more tellingly.

Skibsrud, whose previous books were two collections of poetry, draws on that talent to offer striking descriptions, like the one of "a sadness that would make you, when you saw it, want to pull the edges of your own life up around you, and stay there, carefully inside." But as satisfying as her prose can be, the absence of a more coherent narrative structure contributes to frustration at the novel's elusiveness. Skibsrud is on more solid ground portraying the friendship between Napoleon and Henry, and she excels in the depiction of a daughter's tenacious emotional attachment to a man who abandoned his family and whose behavior, even allowing for his deteriorating physical condition, tests her resolve to love him in his final days.

The Giller Prize has propelled Skibsrud into the spotlight of Canadian literature, and that success will expose her to a wider audience in the United States. Her talent is evident and yet it seems fair to say her best work lies ahead of her. --Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud's first novel explores the uncertainty of memory, the weight of family secrets and the fierce bond of loyalty between daughter and father.

 


The Bestsellers

Top-Selling Titles in Chicagoland and Milwaukee Last Week

The following were the bestselling books at independent bookstores in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas during the week ended Sunday, April 23:

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey
2. Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
3. Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
5. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
7. Pale King by David Foster Wallace
8. Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo
9. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
10. Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

Reporting bookstores and their handselling favorites:

Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove: The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
Books & Co., Oconomowoc: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen
Book Cellar, Lincoln Square: Food Trucks by Heather Shouse
Book Stall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka: Bossypants by Tina Fey
Book Table, Oak Park: Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross
Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee: The Great Night by Chris Adrian
57th Street Books, Chicago
Lake Forest Books
Next Chapter, Mequon: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen
Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Seminary Co-op, Chicago
Women and Children First, Chicago: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]

 


Top-Selling Titles in Florida Last Week

The bestselling books at independent bookstores in Florida during the week ended Sunday, April 23:

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
3. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
4. The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
5. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
6. Bossypants by Tina Fey
7. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
8. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
9. Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford and Joe Matthews
10. World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky

Reporting bookstores and their handselling favorites:

Book Mark, Neptune Beach: World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky
Books & Books, Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Bal Harbour: Bossypants by Tina Fey
Inkwood Books, Tampa: Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell.
Vero Beach Book Center: A Turn in the Road by Debbie Macomber

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]

 


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