Notes: A Rare Shop; Charlotte Bookstores and the Economy
Dragon Books, Bel Air, Calif., is "the kind of place you'd never expect to find in a strip mall--a lavishly decorated, uniquely-stocked rare books store," according to the Examiner. "Whether you're a collector looking to add to your stash or simply curious to see what a bookstore not named Borders or Barnes & Noble looks like, Dragon Books is an unexpected and inspirational experience."
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Charlotte Creative Loafing sounded out booksellers in the North Carolina city about the current business climate and found that while they are struggling, those offering used books are faring somewhat better.
David Friese, co-owner of the Bookmark, said business is "crummy, and that's putting it mildly. . . . Things have to turn around. They might not have to turn
around tomorrow, but they have to turn around soon. We certainly can't
hold out for two more years. I don't know if we can hold out a year."
"These are the toughest economic times I've ever been through," said Sally Brewster, co-owner of Park Road Books. "It was a little rough after 9/11, but nothing like what's happened this time around, because this affected every aspect of the industry. The credit crunch has hit everybody." Brewster, who has hired an additional staff person for the holiday season, believes great service will help the shop succeed: "At our store, you know that people have selected the books, they know the books, and they're more than willing to give recommendations. Sometimes you have to shut us up, in fact. We're not just clerks ringing up an item." She also offered high praise for the city, saying, "Charlotte's been wonderful to us, and we want to stay here."
For used booksellers, however, the news is a bit less dire. "When times get a little hard, people come here rather than going to Borders," said Richard Rathers of Book Buyers. "So we're almost recession-proof. I've heard that, and our sales basically support that."
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Operating on the theory that "reading a book starts with a single page," Charles Chatmon is chasing his dream of opening a bookshop by taking his mobile bookstore to the farmers market in downtown Vallejo, Calif., every Saturday, the Times-Herald reported.
"We want a permanent space for book discussions and workshops," said Chatmon, "We just want it to be exciting in Vallejo."
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Barnes & Noble has signed a lease agreement to open a new location, in the Christiana Mall in Newark, Del. The store is expected to open in November 2009.
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The art of naming your celebrity child:
Seen by intrepid reporter Jenn Risko: in the US magazine with President-elect Obama and his wife on the cover, "the new celeb baby name of the week" is Enzo.
Congratulations to the parents--and Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, Enzo's story.
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A "huge election bounce" has given President-elect Barack Obama's two books new life on the bestseller lists, according to USA Today, which reported that "Brookings Institution analyst Stephen Hess can't think of another president-elect to hit the bestseller list."
"Obama's books, especially his memoir, stand apart," said Hess. "Books by candidates usually have a short political life, not a literary life."
USA Today's bestseller list, which will be published in Thursday's edition, shows:
- The Audacity of Hope, his 2006 book on politics and faith, is No. 8, up from No. 43.
- Dreams From My Father, Obama's 1995 memoir, reissued in 2004, is No. 9, up from No. 56.
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John Addiego was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area among a large, extended Italian-American family. He's spent most of his adult years in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where he lives now with his wife, Ellen, and daughter, Emily, where he went to school--at the University of Oregon--and where he teaches high school students with special needs. His novel, The Islands of Divine Music, is being published on October 28 by Unbridled Books.
This could be the most stunning book of horse photography available: 200 full-color illustrations, ranging from photographs taken in the wild to studio settings, of familiar breeds like the Arabian or Appaloosa to the more exotic, like the Rajasthani Marwari--known as the warrior horse, its lyre- or scimitar-shaped ears can rotate more than 180 degrees. The blond and caramel Austrian Haflinger is photographed against Tyrolean clouds and peaks, looking mythical and starkly romantic. The Norwegian Fjords, whose brush-cut silver manes are marked with a center dark streak, forage in belly-deep snow. A close-up of a French Poitou donkey grooming her shaggy, matted hair looks eerily like a dreadlocked lion. A dark Arabian colt nursing from its snowy mother, an American Paint colt emerging from its placenta, a white-lashed black Arabian eye, horses tossing Rapunzel-like manes, the white-marble sculpture of a Holstein's arched neck with braided mane--the images are powerful, delicate and mysterious.
The subtitle of The Last Polar Bear is Facing the Truth of a Warming World, and the message truly is urgent; scientists say that by the end of this century polar bears will be the first mammals to face extinction due to global warming: with the rapid weakening of edge ice, bears are finding themselves stranded on land or on ice floes miles out to sea. The magnificent photographs are supplemented by text from seven authors and the photographer's journal and include the Arctic panorama of a white arctic fox leaping into the air against lavender-colored snow; Iñupiak hunters on a gray sea; aqua blue pack ice forming a crystalline landscape. But the polar bears dominate, from the first shot of a cub on its back, playing in the peach-colored sunset, to a sow and her cub sliding on the ice in perfect tandem, to bears braving the wind (which "sounds as though the skin of the earth is being pulled off"), to a male guarding his meal of a bowhead whale carcass, beautifully, brutally red in the soft light of a sunrise.
This "rediscovery of an American landscape" was, like The Last Polar Bear, published early in the year, but also deserves a place on your Fall gift book table. Haunting black-and-white photographs of Schoharie County, in central New York, depict an agrarian area that is the oldest continuously farmed community in the state. Much of the area is in decline. The Breakabeen General Store's Greek Revival porch sports an incongruous Corona banner; the 1815 Dutch reformed Church looks close to collapse; magnificent trees with wide branches seem to protect the decaying buildings; an overgrown porch window in Patchin Hollow waits for a ghostly face to pull back a curtain. The evocative black-and-white format gives each picture a stormy, brooding-sky look; even when lit by sunlight, they seem to be negative images. It's the perfect way to capture the melancholy and elegance of the place--in the eloquent words of Jeffrey Lent, "the determined yet weary lines of the houses and barns."--
This holiday season, you can sift through his scrapbook, The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions (Insight Editions, $45, 9781933784670/1933784679), published yesterday. A self-proclaimed pack rat, Mr. Jones allows readers to peek at his report card (nearly all A's) from the Schillinger House in Boston (later renamed the Berklee College of Music), which he attended on scholarship in the 1950s, to sample recording dates and accounting entries from his years as a producer (yes, amounts are included!), and to see the final vocal takes for "We Are the World," with a lyrics sheet marked for who would sing which phrases, as well as a facsimile of an invitation to the 1994 inauguration of Nelson Mandela, autographed by many of the attendees (including then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, Congressman John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Jackson and General Colin Powell). The memorabilia charts his rise from a gifted trumpet player getting his start in Seattle, Wash., to a global humanitarian.