With twelve locations set to open in November, Barnes & Noble has revised its expected number of new stores for 2024 to more than 60. Previously the company had expected to open around 50 new stores this year.

Included among the November openings are new stores in Schererville, Ind., Wichita, Kan., Fresno, Calif., Murray, Utah, Seabrook, N.H., and Mount Kisco, N.Y. The Schererville, Wichita, Fresno, and Murray stores will open on Wednesday, November 13, while the Seabrook and Mount Kisco stores will open on Saturday, November 16.

Located at 124 U.S. Hwy. 41, the Schererville store will open with a ribbon cutting and signing featuring author Amber Clement. The store features an updated B&N Cafe.

The Wichita store, which resides in the NewMarket Square at 2441 N. Maize Rd., will open to the public at 9 a.m. It too features an updated B&N Cafe.

Found at 639 East Shaw Ave. in the Fresno Fashion Fair mall, the new Fresno store will open at 10 a.m.

The new store in Murray, Utah, will open with a ribbon cutting and signing featuring author Shannon Hale. It resides in the Fashion Plaza shopping center at 132 E. Winchester St. and will feature an updated B&N Cafe.

The opening for the Seabrook store will feature a ribbon cutting and signing with authors Maddie Day and Marty Skovlund Jr. It is located in Seabrook Commons at 700 Lafayette Rd.

And in Mount Kisco, the new location will celebrate its opening with a ribbon cutting and signing featuring author Kat Ashmore. It features an updated B&N Cafe and its address is 55-59 S. Moger Ave.

The Fallen Acorn Bookshop opened earlier this fall at 421 A Prince George St. in Williamsburg, Va., the Flat Hat reported, adding that the location used to house Mermaid Books, which closed in 2020. 

Owner Shea Cintron previously worked as a midwife and owned a birth center and home birth practice in Jacksonville, Fla. She and her family relocated to Williamsburg in 2020. Originally intending to open another birth center, Cintron instead made a long-term dream of hers a reality.

"I had a midwife partner, and her and I, when we retired--we're both readers--we always made jokes that we were going to open a bookstore, and they're not going to wake us up at night when we're tired and grumpy," she recalled. 

Cintron also noted: "Some people walk down like, 'We were intrigued that there's these stairs, we weren't sure what we were going to open the door to.' Other people know Mermaid Books, and it's funny, those people, I'm getting mixed reactions from them. Some people want it to be Mermaid, and it's not. It's very different."

Comprehensive physical renovations to the space were required, including ripping out large, old book-holding cubbies, replacing asbestos floors with tile, and adding an AC system.

To connect with the community, Cintron has prioritized spotlighting local authors and hopes to host live author events in the future, as well as form book clubs to expand the store's community.  

"You can see real readers when they come in, because they're just really excited, and they stay, and they talk and they want to talk to me about books," she said. "I hope to build a community of readers--because readers are my people--and a place that people feel safe and people see themselves seen in the characters and the writers."

Lara Heimert has been promoted to president and publisher of the Hachette's Basic Books Group, which includes Basic Books, Seal Press, PublicAffairs, Bold Type Books, and two new imprints: Basic Venture, focusing on business and economics, and Basic Liberty, a conservative imprint.

Lara Heimart

Heimert joined Basic Books in 2005 from Yale University Press, and became v-p and publisher of the imprint in 2012. In 2019, Heimert went on to lead Seal Press. In 2023, she became senior v-p and publisher of the Basic Books Group, responsible for PublicAffairs and Bold Type Books. An accomplished editor, she has published numerous award-winning and best-selling books.

Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley said, "The Basic Books Group has seen fantastic growth and success in recent years. They know their readership incredibly well and are able to serve their desire for serious non-fiction publishing by the leading authors in their fields across a range of different topics. Lara has grown and steered the group with incredible vision and precision; her promotion, and the investments we're making with the two new imprints and other promotions and hires, are testament to the further potential for growth we see in this space and with this skilled team."

Basic Venture, the new business and economics imprint, will build upon PublicAffairs' two decades of business publishing and is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations who want to change the way they do business. The imprint will be led by editorial director Colleen Lawrie and executive editor Emily Taber.

Basic Liberty, the new conservative imprint, will represent a range of conservative perspectives, focusing on topics of enduring cultural, social, and political interest rather than transitory political concerns. Thomas Spence is joining the company to head Basic Liberty. He is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Institute, holds a JD from the University of Chicago, a Master of Arts in Medieval Studies from Harvard University, and formerly was president and publisher of Regnery.

In addition, Brian Distelberg is being promoted to associate publisher of the Basic Books Group, adding to his current title of editor in chief, Basic Books. He will oversee the editorial direction of Basic Venture alongside Basic Books, Seal Press, and PublicAffairs (including the hiring of a new editorial director for the PublicAffairs imprint). Heimert will oversee the editorial direction of Bold Type Books and Basic Liberty.

Heimert said, "I am grateful to David Shelley for his support as we reimagine the Basic Books Group. As I have learned from working at Basic Books for 20 years, imprints with strong focus and category dominance are destined to succeed. In Thomas, Colleen, and Emily, we have editors with deep expertise in their respective areas of acquisition. And in Brian, we have a leader whose intellectual rigor and high standards for excellence will help me steer all six of the imprints towards greater success and profitability."

Revenues in the first quarter ended September 30 for News Corp.--owner of HarperCollins, Dow Jones, newspapers around the world, digital real estate services, and more--rose 3%, to $2.58 billion, and net income more than doubled, to $144 million, from $58 million.

The company noted the book publishing revenues grew 4% in the quarter, and segment EBITDA increased 25%, "driven by record digital book sales, which grew 15%, and strong backlist performance."

Mike Shatzkin, one of the most knowledgeable, entertaining, supportive, and opinionated people in the book world, died yesterday, November 7, at age 77.

Mike Shatzkin

Shatzkin worked in the book business for more than 50 years, starting on the sales floor of the new paperback department of Brentano's 5th Avenue bookstore in the summer of 1962, at age 16. For a time he was director of marketing at his family's venture, the Two Continents Publishing Group, and worked with dozens of publishers whose books the company distributed. He quickly became a supply chain expert, digital change leader, and the author of nearly a dozen books. In 1979, he founded and was CEO of the Idea Logical Company (one of our favorite company names) and was a consultant to many companies in the book business, especially about the supply chain and distribution.

In the early 1990s, he began studying book publishing's digital future, working on a series of "Publishing in the 21st Century" conferences and White Papers that were sponsored by VISTA Computer Services.

In 2008, Shatzkin and Publishers Lunch founder Michael Cader created Publishers Launch Conferences, which ran many industry conferences about digital change, and created and hosted the first seven Digital Book World conferences. In 2014, Shatzkin and his Idea Logical colleague Jess Johns teamed up with Peter McCarthy to create the Logical Marketing Agency. The group later founded Optiq.ly, a digital service to optimize discovery and online purchase of books. In 2016, he sold his interest in Optiq.ly to Ingram.

His Shatzkin Files blog was always insightful, and in March 2019, Oxford University Press published The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know, which he co-wrote with the late Robert P. Riger.

Like so many people in the business, we will miss Mike, who was inspiring, challenging, and friendly, all at the same time.

Chris Kerr of Parson Weems remembers Mike Shatzkin:

Mike Shatzkin hired me for my first publishing job in 1975, as a sales representative for the Two Continents Publishing Group in the southeastern states. Eventually, it grew to include any open territory and included Atlanta and Kansas City.

We met in a way that I learned was the Publishing Way: Mike was my sister's fiance's (Larry Gagosian, the art dealer) college roommate at UCLA. Mike had casually asked her if he knew anyone in Washington, D.C. She replied, "My brother knows a lot of people." I had just seen my job as a trade magazine editor advertised in the Washington Post classifieds so I knew that my tenure on K Street was to be short lived. And what could be more fun than visiting bookstores and talking about books I had not read?

We hit it off immediately. He was super smart, wildly interested in everything, and keen to get started. We had a sales meeting in a LaGuardia Airport motel and hit the road. I still have the binder we were given. The Shatzkins were the Kings & Queens of Detail. His dad and mom, Len and Elke Shatzkin, and sister Nance owned the distributor, an early iteration of what PGW, IPG, and Consortium were to become, except that TwoCon cherry-picked the titles to be distributed.

I still remember the first list: Man's Body, An Owner's Manual by the Diagram Group, which the Washington Post complained was far too focused on sex and not the brain (it seemed about right to me), a facsimile of Leslie's catalog for the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia, an exhibit of which the Smithsonian Institution was mounting in its original building, The Castle, and my favorite, Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself, a discussion of Custer's Last Stand from the Native American point of view, shepherded into production by Joe Medicine Crow, education chief of the Crow Nation. As it happened, the National Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, was reopening with a Custer exhibit and Joe was invited to give the opening talk to an invited audience of several hundred. I thought that this was the way it was always going to be: greeted by Dillon Ripley, the Smithsonian head, interviewed by Judith Martin, Ms. Manners for the Washington Post. How little I knew.

Mike was a remarkable polymath and an autodidact; he vacuumed you for information and he loved to argue. It could be exhausting. And I grew up in a house where dinner arguments were always on the menu. Everything was under the microscope. Mike was all about family. His, mine, anyone whom he encountered. Parties in his East 50th St. apartment or the family compound in Croton on Hudson were massive, noisy and huge fun. Nance's husband, James, now gone, once rescued our youngest when he fell into the pool. Years later, I would meet people whom I had met at a Shatzkin party.

Once you were a member of the team, no matter where you eventually worked, you were always on the team. A baseball fanatic, Mike considered us all "utility fielders." He once assured me that "we are always looking for a place to put you, Chris," with the confidence that if summoned, I would follow. His last call was to chair a seminar on Today's Bookselling Community for an annual conference he organized. Mike, being Mike, had already picked the panelists, briefed them, and all I needed to do was not embarrass him. We drew about 75 folks, but Mike decided that next year's session would not need this gathering because "bookstores are disappearing." He expressed a similar sentiment when he called me in to consult with a prospective purchaser of Politics & Prose. "I've advised them to not waste their money," he said. "But they really want to be part of the D.C. scene." I was happy to talk with them, but they were outbid by the far more insightful current owners.

I have lost track of his many side ventures. There were a lot of them. He and the family pioneered inventory control systems and worked with Undercover Books, Shaker Heights, Ohio, run by Philip Turner's family, and, later, Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with Ed and Barbara Morrow and their son Chris.

He also championed an updated edition of his Dad's classic, In Cold Type, the only book I have ever sold with a publisher warning on the title page. Years later, I learned that the book was the introductory publishing textbook at a leading U.K. college where a friend taught it. I encountered similar students and teachers in Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. The book was a pied-piper for publishing. The Shatzkins treated publishing as a business and respected the process, which they always had under a microscope. It remains a frame of reference for my entire career; my best bosses respected the process, reveled in its details, and were open to any ways to make it better. This flies in the face of much of the industry's romance with itself.

Mike was also a music entrepreneur. He advised my sister's upstairs neighbor, Sonny Rollins, on his music contracts, he advised a leading U.K. music publisher on his American launch, and he introduced and produced a group, New Zealand's The Drongos.

Mike was also an author. Right out of college, he wrote an essay on the New York Knicks, called The View From Section 111. In my first year in publishing, he gave me Cooking With Grass; it is still on our shelf. He also wrote The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference, which was updated, and The Baseball Fan's Guide to Spring Training. The Shatzkin Files was an annual. I loved the title; it suggested a CIA case officer's revelations. And he was recruited by Ingram to help with their recently published company history. He was also something of a pamphleteer; he could write like a storm. His newsletters were widely read and quoted. He was an exceptionally generous advice-giver. I sent friends to him for counsel, and he was always open and responsive.

It is difficult to think of him as gone. He was a lifelong runner, and, later, a gym rat. When I visited him at Lenox Hill Hospital in September, most of what we talked about was his fitness routine, walking the streets of New York, and the cute hospital staff. He knew them all by name, thanked everyone, and rigorously cross-examined the young doctors. They loved him. He loved to engage; he was engaged. He was in the world, a political citizen who would have been recognized in any gathering as a willing student. And deeply kind. RIP.

Posted on Instagram by Sundrop Books, Denison, Tex.: "Hanging up these butterflies that are made from the pages of damaged books made me seriously giddy, so I HAD to share! I hope they bring you some cheer, too."

"Good night little bookstore," River & Hill Books, Rome, Ga., posted on Instagram: "With the time change, we close when it's dark outside, and yet, the twinkle lights make everything more magical. We hope you have a good book picked out for tonight, and if you don't, we'll be back at it tomorrow at 10 a.m."

Inkwell Books & Threads, Rockton, Ill., shared a photo on Instagram of the shop's sidewalk chalkboard message, "How to be a book burrito": 

1. Find a book.
2. Find a blanket.
3. Get a hot drink.
4. Combine.
5. You are now a book burrito

Audrey Barsella has been promoted to senior communications marketing manager at Sourcebooks.

Nether Station by Kevin J. Anderson (Blackstone Publishing).

Today:
Fresh Air: Jenny Slate, author of Lifeform (Little, Brown, $29, 9780316263931).

Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) and Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy) "are in talks to star" in Emma-Kate Croghan's (Love and Other Catastrophes, Strange Planet) movie The Household Guide to Dying, based on the book by Debra Adelaide, Deadline reported. The film marks Australian director's return to features after a 25-year absence. 

Ellen Wander of Film Bridge International is selling The Household Guide to Dying at this week's American Film Market in Las Vegas. CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are co-repping domestic. The film is being produced by Leesa Kahn (Come Away) and Catriona Hughes (Kokoda: 39th Battalion) of GFN Productions, as well as James Spring (Finding Your Feet) of Fred Films. 

Suad Aldarra won the £8,340 ($10,740) Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, which celebrates an outstanding body of work by an emerging Irish writer under 40 years of age, the Bookseller reported. The award is administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre for Creative Writing in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.

Aldarra is a Syrian-Irish writer and engineer living in Dublin whose memoir, I Don't Want to Talk About Home, was shortlisted for An Post Irish Book Awards Biography of the Year in 2022. In 2021, Aldarra was selected as the Common Currency writer in residence for the Cúirt International Festival and English/Irish PEN. In the same year, she was awarded the Art Councils of Ireland English literature bursary.

The jury praised her book for its "vivid and eloquent account of life as a migrant." Chair of the prize committee Jonathan Williams said: "It is only the second time in the 48-year history of the prize that it has been bestowed on a work of nonfiction.... Suad's account of her life as a Syrian migrant is vivid and eloquent--a narrative of displacement and exile. The six members of the judging panel believe that the memoir promises future impressive books from this gifted writer, thus fulfilling the primary objective of the Rooney Prize."

photo: Asya Sagnak

August Clarke is here and queer, etc. They have been published in PRISM international, Portland Review, and Eidolon, and in the Bury Your Gays and Unfettered Hexes anthologies. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction and an Andre Norton Nebula Award, Locus Award, Dragon Award, and Pushcart nominee. He is the author of the series The Scapegracers, which he writes as H.A. Clarke. Metal from Heaven (Erewhon, October 22, 2024) is for fans of The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth, and is set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change and simmering class warfare.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Pulp psychedelic revenge fantasy by way of stone butch bandit Disco Elysium.

On your nightstand now:

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera and Lote by Shola von Reinhold, both fabulously gorgeous, knock-the-wind-out-of-you type books. I'm savoring them. Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White is next up.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle for transgender reasons or The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner for mischief reasons. Huge influences on the way I think about fantasy writing; I would recommend reading them aloud.

Your top five authors:

Evil impossible question! At least right now, subject to change:

Samuel R. Delany
Ursula K. Le Guin
Kathy Acker
George Bataille
Junji Ito

Book you've faked reading:

Definitely the Grundrisse. I'm a Karl Marx guy; I will tell you to read Capital (at least volume one) and mean it, but man oh man. I am bad at wool equations. My eyes have moved over the pages, but was it reading? No.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, which is a perfect novel--like a flawless execution of the form that is a novel, and the end is exhilarating. Also, Slug and Other Stories by Megan Milks is such a great, nasty, gnarly, lovely short story collection.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook. Red cover, red pages! Red!

Book you hid from your parents:

It's almost cliché at this point, but definitely Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. I was a big Vampire Chronicles guy in high school, and I stumbled upon a copy. Tale as old as time.

Book that changed your life:

I have a lot of insufferable answers to this question, like A Thousand Plateaus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz, and The Political Unconscious by Fredric Jameson, but honestly, I think reading and performing Shakespeare has changed my life more than anything. That's where all my language love comes from.

Favorite line from a book:

Right now, amid the compounding calamities imperialism inflicts on the world, I've been thinking a lot about this classic bit of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower:

"All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God is Change."

Five books you'll never part with:

Right now:

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Margery Kempe by Robert Gluck
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny or Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, both of which I entered expecting quick fun pulp and leaving fully awed and unbelievably moved and excited to talk about genre.

Maggie Su's Blob: A Love Story is a funny and pathos-ridden tale of social awkwardness and self-realization; a modern, delayed coming-of-age. Su's narrative voice is perfectly pitched for her inelegant but deeply sympathetic protagonist.

Vi is a 24-year-old townie and college dropout in a midwestern college town. She works a hotel chain's front desk next to a too-perfect perky blonde named Rachel. Vi is still suffering from a breakup eight months ago, barely slogging through her days. Her Taiwanese father and white mother are well-meaning and supportive, but they have trouble connecting with Vi, who has always been a loner; her older brother can be a pain, but he cares, even when Vi struggles to. Then, on a night she ventures out for the rare social occasion, she stumbles upon something new in the alley behind a bar during a drag show: a shapeless blob with a mouth and two eyes. She carries it home and, under Vi's yearning influence, it grows.

The evolving blob, which Vi will come to call Bob (it starts as a malapropism), is the only fantastical detail in a story otherwise rooted in a very familiar world, featuring the casual racism of Vi's hometown and her awkwardness with social situations. Bob takes in lots of television (and Fruity Pebbles), and after examining the pictures Vi shows him of movie stars like young Hugh Grant and Ryan Gosling, fashions himself into a tall, stunningly handsome white man with a six-pack. Vi presents him as a hookup or boyfriend; the world has trouble assimilating their match. The pairing is, in fact, a strain. "For a while, he seemed happy enough to eat and breathe and exist--the perfect companion. I should've anticipated that molding him into a man would trigger something deeper, some sort of existential awakening. Now he's just like everyone else. He has needs and desires beyond me.... He could leave without me ever knowing why." The fear of being left, of course, is key to Vi's difficulties in navigating the world.

What makes Blob special is its mix of heartrending conflict and silly, self-aware humor. Truly cringy scenes balance sweet ones. Rachel performs off and on as a friend--but Vi scarcely knows how to care for her own problems, let alone anyone else's, and her past attempts at friendship have often ended in unintended cruelty. Su excels with characters who can be significantly flawed but stir the reader's empathy. Even Bob, despite beginning his life as a blob, has a surprising amount of personality. In the end, discomfiting though it may be, Blob makes incisive observations about life for a 20-something trying to make it on her own. Blobs and humans alike may yet find home. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: This quirky, funny, pained novel considers the challenge, for any of us, of becoming fully human.

How about a little good news to end the week? The Booker Prize Foundation recently announced winners of its second Booker Prize Indie Bookshop Spotlight competition, which celebrates indies across the U.K. and Ireland in conjunction with the release of the Booker shortlist as well as next week's winner's announcement. To enter, bookshops were asked to assemble in-store displays of the titles nominated for the prize, posting images of their activity on their social media channels. 

At Bàrd Books, London

The six winning booksellers were the Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh; Fourbears Books, Reading; Bàrd Books, London; the Secret Bookshelf, Carrickfergus; Hold Fast Bookshop, Leeds; and Books Upstairs, Dublin. Bàrd Books, was chosen at random as the overall winner and receives tickets to attend the November 12 Booker Prize ceremony in London.

In interviews, booksellers from each winning shop talked about why indies matter and explained the importance of the Booker Prize to them and their readers. 

At the end of a post-election week here in the U.S. when we've showcased bookshops stepping up to help their patrons negotiate the aftermath, it somehow felt appropriate to highlight the perspective of fellow booksellers across the pond on the crucial role indies play in so many people's lives. 

One of the questions asked of the winners in the interview was: "Why do you think independent bookselling is so important?" 

Alex Forbes, owner of Fourbears Books: "I think Indie bookselling brings something different to the high street. Whether it be promoting lesser-known books and sharing a special read which doesn't have mainstream publicity, or having a conversation with customers about what they want to read rather than relying on algorithms, then that customer returns for their next books. There's an individuality about an indie where no two will be the same, which adds to the magic. We also have many customers who are quite lonely and a bookshop is such a safe space for them to come and chat with someone, even if it's not about books."

Victoria and Chris Bonner, owners of Hold Fast Bookshop: "If there is anything better than chatting about books all day, we have yet to find it and it's such a vital part of independent bookselling. It's great to see the interactions in a bookshop--customers often start chatting to each other about what they have read or enjoyed. That doesn't really happen in other shops--it's as if 'normal rules' don't apply in bookshops and by stepping in you know things will be a little calmer, more chatty and comfortable. It's also so important for readers to see a range of books of all kinds of genres. I think most have more courage and a sense of adventure with their book choices than the dreaded algorithm would ever give them credit for."

Owner Vicki Shenkin Kerr and manager Kristin Griffin of Bàrd Books: "Independent bookselling is integral to a healthy community. After the pandemic, it is important we have these in-person spaces to reconnect. Bookshops are places to give and receive reading recommendations. Whether relying on the expertise of the bookseller who can sharpen our tastes based on what we've enjoyed before or sparking up a conversation with a fellow book lover who can introduce us to something completely new."

Jack Clark, director of the Portobello Bookshop: "I believe independent bookselling and independent bookshops are a vital part of the high street and the wider local community. Indie bookshops, each with its own unique and special identity, provide a haven in which to spend time, separate from home or work, where people can get lost in stories, great conversations, and maybe even make a new friend or two. It's wonderful to see new bookshops opening in towns or villages that previously didn't have one, as they help add so much to a high street and community, and we're proud of how deep our connections with the local community run."

Chris Disley and Jo Zebedee, owners of the Secret Bookshelf: "As an author as well as a bookseller, Jo feels it's important to support the wider author ecosphere than the bestselling authors, only. If independent bookstores don't thrive the midlist authors suffer--and they're our range and home of so many books that we love. But it's also important to our communities, offering a safe space to enjoy books on every subject without judgment."

Louisa Earls, manager of Books Upstairs: "Our philosophy has always been to encourage the circulation of ideas, and we believe that independent bookshops like ours can make a huge difference to the cultural life of a city. Indie bookshops are in a unique position to engage in the social and political concerns that are important to their community. Since our beginnings, we've been committed to the principle of inclusivity. We are proud to have been the first bookshop in Ireland to have stocked queer literature, as well as feminist and other political books which were not easy to find in Ireland of the 1970s and 80s. We hope we've created a safe and welcoming space for all readers."

Final thought for a crazy week: One of my favorite Booker shortlisted novels, Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional, features an epigraph from Elizabeth Hardwick: "This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work of transformed and even distorted memory and lead this life, the one I am leading today."