Yikes. Obviously, I meant, book lover.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
A bopk lover's treat
Booksellers
love this book—for good reason. You will, too. That’s assuming that you love
books and revere independent bookstores.
The Storied Life of AJ Fikry is set on an island (think:Nantucket or
Martha’s Vinyard), where the sole independent bookstore is struggling. Maybe
it’s because so many indys are struggling in our Amazon era. Or maybe it’s
struggling because its owner, AJ Fikry, is often indifferent to customers and
often drunk or hung over. A recent personal tragedy accounts for both. But
Fikry is, in any case, by nature, cantankerous. He doesn’t take kindly to fools
or customers who come looking for mass-market potboilers. And don’t get him
started on e-readers or Amazon.
However,
the arrival of an abandoned toddler begins to thaw this man’s frozen emotions.
A note stuck in the baby’s basket says: "I want her to grow
up to be a reader. I want her to grow up in a place with books and among people
who care about those kinds of things."
Improbably,
Fikry becomes a caring, if inexpert, parent, whose sense of responsibility for
his daughter pushes him toward a more enthusiastic and successful role as
bookseller to the island. No sentimental, goopy stuff here, though: Fikry
remains mildly cranky. And, just as he begins to admit optimism, new obstacles
rattle his happiness.
Musings
on favorite books—in the style of the typical “staff notes”—preface each
chapter. Each is intriguing in its own right, although the composite meaning of
these notes isn’t revealed until the book’s end.
The
author Gabrielle Zevin is better known for her young adult novels and
screenwriting. This novel feels like a breakthrough for her, and the response
in the industry and from reviewers has been uniformly enthusiastic. The Storied Life of AJ Fikry is a modest
tale and wholly engaging. Especially if you love books. (And you wouldn’t be
reading this blog if you didn’t!)
Friday, April 4, 2014
working in a bookstore--the fantasy and the reality
I’m
taking a wild guess here—but I imagine that 90% of all writers have, at one
time, fantasized about working in a bookstore.
You
know the dream: getting to read all those ARCs and discovering the next great
book, chatting up like-minded literary customers, leisurely wandering among all
the stacks, deciding which book to take home to review. Ah, and if your dream
store includes a café, sipping afternoon coffee or tea with a visiting author.
I
hate to burst the bubble. But, as I found out during my one dip into retail
bookselling, it is hard work. Hard physical work—hefting cartons of books up
from the basement, breaking down cardboard boxes and carting them to the
dumpster. Hard mental work—learning a new computer system for checkout and
looking up obscure titles. And hard emotional work (at least for the introverts
among us)—remaining unfailingly polite and helpful even when your feet ache
from hours of standing and you’d really rather catch up on unpacking cartons
than make small talk with yet one more customer who just wants to chat, not
necessarily buy. (And let’s not even talk about the rats who snap photos of
book covers with their smartphones so they can order on Amazon later.)
But
those lessons were all ahead of me when I got the invitation to work part-time
for a couple of months at my local bookstore, McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington
Village near Chapel Hill. A valued employee was taking some family leave, and
they needed someone to fill in over the Christmas holidays. Would I (a fan of
the bookstore and frequent customer) be interested? Would I? You bet!
I
started with enthusiasm, and appreciated the staff’s support and training, from
the incredibly hard-working owner Keebe Fitch (she hoped to turn me into a bookselling
Ninja—alas, I never lived up to that expectation); manager Pete Mock, mystery
guru extraordinaire and, behind his grumpy persona, one of the kindest guys
ever; and Katherine Pinard, who, with great patience and a sense of humor,
showed me the ropes before she left for her brief Sabbatical.
To
be fair to myself, I was pretty good at “hand selling”—encouraging customers to
consider this or that favored book. And I had a good attitude, taking to heart
the store’s mantra of positive customer service. But the computer system
sometimes baffled me, and a couple of sales disappeared into cyberspace
forever. The hard physical work, even for a part-timer, surprised me.
I
came away from my experience with a renewed appreciation for what it takes to
run a successful independent bookstore. The old cliché comes to mind: ducks
appearing to sail serenely on a pond, while paddling madly under the surface of
the water. Considerable work and nonstop attention to books and customers are
critical to an indy’s success. Basically, you have to love what you do to make
it worthwhile.
And
the McIntyre’s team does. And it shows. This month, they celebrate 25 years of
being in business—an impressive achievement for any small bookstore. Hats off
to you, McIntyre’s, for working hard to make it look easy!
http://www.fearrington.com/village-shops/mcintyres-books/
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Two love stories
Wait—don’t hit the delete button!
These are not what you might think from the title. No mo
ros, no heaving bosoms and intense, brooding heroes.
Rather, these are love stories that seem vibrant and real.
The first is The Wind
Is Not a River by Brian Payton. It’s the kind of novel that stirred
tension: I wanted to read it fast, compulsively, because it was so gripping—and
I wanted to slow down to savor the language and to delay reaching the end.
The basic story revolves around the determined efforts of a
journalist to learn more about World War II activity on the Aleutian Islands.
Military efforts to black out any news of the conflict between Americans and
Japanese on American soil—perceived as the possible first step in an invasion
of the United States—stymie but do not deter John Easley. Taking on the
identity of a Canadian airman, he hops a USAF reconnaissance flight to learn
more about action in the Aleutians.
The plane crashes, he parachutes to safety on the beach—although
safety is only an illusion. Japanese soldiers are camped nearby, but the
greater danger is starvation, bitter cold, and mind-alerting isolation.
Determination also describes John’s wife, Helen, who sloughs
off her passive mode waiting for John to return. Despite having no background
in song and dance, she manages to join a USO group heading to Alaska to
entertain American troops. Her real intention is to find her husband, who is
missing and may be a prisoner of war or dead.
The ways in which these two people fight their own battles,
physical and emotional, testify to their impressive strength of character and
devotion to each other. It’s hard not to root for these two decent people to
overcome obstacles and reunite.
The second book is Still
Life with Crumbs, Anna Quindlen’s latest novel. She gives us a heroine who
is too rarely depicted in fiction: a late middle-aged, long-divorced woman,
strong and creative, yet dogged by worries of plummeting income and, even more
worrisome, possibly disappearing artistic skills.
There’s an unlikely love interest, a man who draws Rebecca
Winter into a welcome friendship after she moves to a small town to reduce her
living costs. She begins as an outsider, isolating herself by choice and circumstance,
but she discovers, over time, that the bonds of community enrich rather than constrain
her life. And although the slow-evolving romance is central to this story, the
more gripping tale is Rebecca’s rediscovery of her well of creativity.
The novel’s tone is wry and honest—no treacly feel-good stuff
here. Instead, Still Life depicts an
honest, winning portrayal of a woman plagued with money worries and self-doubt,
full of flaws. As readers, we worry about her and cheer her success in love and
art.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
E-books--a grudging appreciation
Usually, I’m the curmudgeon who grumps about e-books, but
I’m coming around to the view that they do have their advantages—especially for
writers.
One example: Jim Conaway, a fine writer who excels in both
fiction and nonfiction, recently released most of his work online. He explains:
“E-books are satisfying for a writer because they open up a past thought
dead and, well, published. In fact, these stories were just waiting to be
re-discovered, also the inspiration, the places, the characters, even the paper
trails leading to their creation.”
Jim is a friend from my college days. After studying a year at Stanford
as a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellow in the early 1960s, he took up journalism,
first, as a newspaper reporter in New Orleans, later as a freelance writer
based in Europe, and then as wine critic for The Washington Post. In recent years, he’s concentrated on long-form
journalism, writing for The National
Geographic, The New York Times,
Harpers, and Gourmet. In addition
to three novels, he’s published nine books of nonfiction and a memoir about
growing up in his hometown of Memphis in the 1950s.
My favorite of his nonfiction work is Vanishing
American: In Search of Our Elusive Landscape, essays he describes as being
about “lost culture and landscape.”
But perhaps Jim’s best-known book is Napa: The Story of an American Eden,
which stirred both controversy and admiration. It, and its sequel, The Far Side of Eden: Old Land, New Money,
and the Battle for Napa Valley, are required reading for anyone interested
in the real story of American viticulture. Jim’s latest foray into this country
is Nose, a satiric novel that
punctures the pretentiousness of Napa culture and celebrates the innovators who
make fine wine and also protect the environment.
Jim began a blog in 2012, musing on wine, winemakers, and a few other
things that catch his attention. Recognizing how powerful the Internet was in
reaching readers, he recentely decided to harness its power by releasing some
of his books, long out of print, online. Collectively, his books are an
impressive body of work, and the online versions invite new readers to dip into
his writing. Check out his blog and the site for his work:
In another example of the benefits of ebooks, my brother, Mike Cavender
just self-published, at age 68, his first novel through the CreateSpace
platform (a division of Amazon).
Although Mike also started out as a newspaper reporter, his career has
been less linearly literary. He’s embraced the natural world as a fly fishing
guide and as director of a land trust in the North Carolina mountains. But the
urge to tell stories burbled up, and he’s been working on short stories and
novels for a few years now.
Impatient to get his first novel out, after years of revising and
polishing and learning, he decided to skip the time-consuming, and possibly
fruitless, search for an agent. So, he self-published his novel, Revenge on the Fly, and has been working
hard to build his audience—which is small, but growing, mostly through
word-of-mouth and strong reviews on Amazon. He’s learned, to his chagrin, that
many independent bookstores won’t take the book, because of its association
with Amazon, indy bookstores’ natural enemy. A few—notably FlyLeaf Books in
Chapel Hill and Park Road Books in Charlotte—have liked the book and taken a
chance on it. But Mike’s main outlet is Amazon, where his sales are running
about 1:3 ebooks and print books. For more, check Mike’s Amazon listing and his
blog on politics and writing:
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
The Real Ann Patchett
OK, I have to admit it: Ann Patchett intimidates me.
She is a prolific writer (six novels, two nonfiction books), successful
(PEN/Faulkner award, Orange award, glowing reviews), and she owns an
independent bookstore (surely the fantasy of most readers and maybe a few
writers).
Now, she’s gone and published a terrific collection
of nonfiction pieces—essays that reveal her to be brave, vulnerable, funny,
generous, compassionate, and hardworking.
The intriguingly declarative title, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage,
might lead you to expect a treacly memoir. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Yes, she does tell you about her winding path to meeting Mr. Right
(actually, Dr. Right) and resisting him for years before she finally agrees to
marriage—an institution she’s always regarded as dangerous. (She explains her
reluctance: “I figured that if I never got married, I’d never get divorced.”).
Most of the essays were previously published in
magazines like Granta, Harper’s, Bark, Vogue, and the New
York Times Magazine, which give you an idea of her professional stature.
Patchett is perhaps best known for her novels, but this collection of
nonfiction shows the range of her work and style.
She writes about topics that could veer toward the
sentimental—her deep love for her dog, Rose, her compassionate caretaking of
her grandmother who’s sinking into dementia—but her economy of style and
open-heartedness pack an emotional wallop.
Patchett travels for magazine assignments and book
tours, but her heart is in Nashville—the very place she longed to escape in her
youth. Now, it’s home. So, it’s only natural that, when the remaining two
bookstores in the city close their doors, she decides that Nashville needs an
independent bookstore—and she’s the one to make it happen. “The Bookstore
Strikes Back,” Patchett’ tale of opening Parnassus Books (with co-owner Karen
Hayes), will gratify readers and indy bookstore fans everywhere.
Moreover, in promoting Parnassus, Patchett discovers
that she has, inadvertently, assumed the role as spokesperson for independent
book stores everywhere. Through interviews, appearances on television shows
like The Colbert Report, talking to readers, she is adamant on the subject:
bookstores are not dead. She writes:
“Now that we could order any book at any hour without having to leave the
screen in front of us, we realized what we had lost: the community center, the
human interaction, the recommendations of a smart reader rather than a computer
algorithm… I promised whomever was listening that from those very ashes, the
small, independent bookstore would rise again.” And so it does. See
http://www.parnassusbooks.net
So, actually, now that I think about it, Ann
Patchett isn’t intimidating—she’s impressive, yes, and famous. But through this
collection of articles, she reveals herself to be a warm, witty, and thoughtful
person—and very real.
(And can she write! But that’s a topic for the next
post.)
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