Department of Book Reports: Travel the Whole Earth with Charley

I've always meant to get around to reading Travels with Charley, and this week I jealously clutched a copy before putting it on the shelf. What a delightful road trip!

Mr. Steinbeck & the ever faithful French poodle Charley embark our country's highways in September, 1960 to see the "real America" once more. Between getting lost on the highways, our road warriors eat in diners with identical cellophane wrapped food and occasionally chat with the locals.

 "The best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time to giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost."

 The nightly campsites and reminiscence of the locales give this book it's soul. It is a love story to a countryside that no longer exists, but it's so lovely to linger there a while. There are also quite a lot of politics. This was the time of the JFK election and Mr Kruschev banging his shoe.

We've gotten in a nice copy of a book I haven't seen in decades- The Whole Earth Catalog! For the younger folks in the audience, this is what we looked at before there were internet tubes. Don't believe me?

"When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions." ~Steve Jobs 2005

It's delightful to open this to any page. This copy is "The Last" edition printed in 1972, and since it was stored in an attic for many years, it is surprisingly bright newsprint paper not toned by sunlight. The fragile cover does show some wear, but the pages are still bound in a tight, clean text block.

Department of Book Reports: Chickens

It's getting to be Gardening season again, and I've heard folks talking about adding Chickens. I have stocked up on a few titles (sorry! Barnyard in Your Backyard sold before this post!) Not only will chickens add to your Nitrate content, also, you would have eggs! Chickens in Your Backyard is a very good beginner guide, and Raising Poultry is much more in-depth and technical. My favorite title is Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance, which will charm anyone considering keeping yard birds.

Chickens in Your Backyard has it's own "Stuff Found In Books" entry on the bookstores FB page, and Raising Poultry has some old news clippings tucked in.

Awesome Local Author News: Jeff Billingame has won the NAACP Image Award for his biography of Jesse Owens, I Love to Run (Enslow, $23.95) The book is published by an academic/library press, and I can't find a way to offer it for sale. You'd be best to buy direct from the publisher and not the Evil Empire who wants $28-30 some dollars for it. That's how they roll. It's unfortunate that I cannot carry a local author's book in my store. These situations are like text book sales. Perhaps I might could find you a copy at a greater price than you can get it from the source, but I'd rather you click and help keep that publisher going.

What's on your nightstand this week?

Department of Book Reports: Border Songs

Border Songs, by Jim Lynch (Knopf paper $16) Six foot eight inch Brandon Vanderkool has always stuck out. His dyslexia and attention to the details of the landscape and birds give him a unique perspective as a new Border Patrol officer. Noticing details that others miss as soon gotten him the title of "Shit Magnet" among the rest of the patrol. He mother is slipping more and more into early onset alzheimer's, while his father worries over the condition of his diary cows health, and the boat he has been building in a back barn but may never finish and sail.

This story is set along the once casual border, near the Peace Arch, where lucrative smuggling has lured locals into helping both people and B.C. Bud into America. Brandon's life-long friends and townspeople all seem involved in the now lucrative transportation. Canadian mountains sprout McMansions overlooking what had been diaries, now turned to raspberry farms complete with immigrant workers.

 The job gives Brandon plenty of time to indulge in his daily Bird Counts and his art; patterns in leaves and stones which he compulsively builds. This natural art is compared to Andrews Goldsworthy by a neighbor who puts on an opening for the town on the day the new Casino opens up the road. After I finished reading this, we watched  "Rivers and Tides" which I very much recommend:


Jim Lynch is also the author of the Award-winning YA novel, Highest Tide and the forthcoming Truth Like The Sun, which looks at the 50th Anniversary of  the Seattle World's Fair(!) On April 29th, I'll be selling books at his Westport appearance, sponsored by the Timberland Library. Let me know if you'd like a signed copy then, or your can get unsigned copies from us now.

Department of Book Reports: At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord is one of those mid-20th century novels I've meant to read and never got around to doing so. Well, I've finally read it, and it was well worth the time. Matthiessen can be, at turns, a dense writer, full of metaphor, and flights of reverie, but always interesting.

The novel itself is one of the clash of culture works that abounded then, and still do. The Martin Quarrier family, Martin, Hazel and their son, Billy, are small town fundamentalists who venture to the wilds of South America to convert the Niaruna Indian tribe. who live in a remote area, but an area that the government would very much like to develop and would love to have vacated by the Indians. The Quarriers are aided by another couple, the Hubens, solidly Christian folk. Along the way, the two families encounter two American Ex-Pats, Lewis Moon and his pilot buddy, Wolf, who the local commandante has "hired" to bomb the Indians out of the area. The Quarriers set up their mission which had once been a Catholic outpost, until members of the tribe murdered the missionary priest. What ensues is chaos, clashes and the dissipation of faith.

Matthiessen has richly written characters that are not stereotypes. Each is imagined vividly and all are memorable. Lewis Moon is a "half-breed" Cheyenne, brilliant, and lost. Martin Quarrier falls in love with his environs, and the people while his wife goes slowly mad. Andy Huben, the wife of Leslie, is the object of many a male fantasy. Wolf just wants to go home to his rather beatnik life in San Francisco. All are given compelling stories to share.

Matthiessen, you may recall, is also the author of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, a non-fiction work about Leonard Pelletier, and over which he was sued by an FBi agent for defamation. He was also a founding member of the Paris Review, along with George Plimpton and the poet, Donald Hall. At the time of the magazne's beginning, he was also working for the CIA. He experimented early in the sixties with mind-bending drugs, an experience that lends to a long sequence in the novel when Lewis Moon also partakes and has visions. A very interesting man, indeed.

At Play was adapted to the screen in the early 1990's by Hector Barbenco, director of Kiss of the Spider Women. It received a mixed critical response at the time. I loved it, and not just because I got to see Darryl Hannah naked in it. The cast is terrific, with the aforementioned Ms. Hannah, John Lithgow, Aidan Quinn, Tom Berenger, Kathy Bates and Tom Waits. If you can find the movie, I highly recommend it. The Netflix doesn't seem to have it, though there are a few clips at the Imdb. The movie certainly piqued my interest in reading the book. Both achieve the level of art. Watch and read if and when you can.

Department of Book Reports: Occult America

Occult America, The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz (Bantam, $16) Mitch Horowitz is an editor and author of occult and esoteric topics and here he places out a fine history of their influences in America's history. Starting with the German philosopher Johannes Kelpius' pilgrims arrival in Philadelphia in 1694 and the "Burned-over District" of upstate New York he shows how these early thinkers promoted social progress and individual betterment.Albany and the Hudson Valley became known as The Burned-over District because it was once home to so many prophets and ideologies that burned bright and launched religions across the country. Mother Ann Lee's Shakers settled here and Joesph Smith found his Seeing Stones here. Millerites, or Seventh-day Adventists, the Universal Publick Friend, Masons, Mesmerism, and Transcendentalism all had homes here. Horowitz moves his history through Spiritualism, Seances, Madame Blavatsky's secrets of the Eastern Masters; how these secret or hidden histories influenced the beginnings of the New Age Movement and also William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts and White Supremacy movement. Hoodoo influenced Frederick Douglas, Professor Black Herman, and Marcus Garvey, Ghandi credited Theosophy for his principle of equality of universal brotherhood of man and his non-violent ethics that would later touch Martin Luther King, Jr. Astrology, The Age of Aquarius, and Creative Visualization were the beginnings of Prosperity Philosophies from Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill most recently seen in the popularity of "The Secret". I haven't even managed to mention Rosicrucians, Ouija, Edgar Cayce, Tarot, Wicca or Voodoo. Trust me, it's all covered in this engaging volume. This is a great book for anyone interested in the spiritual evolution of our country. In this day when politicians are compelled to tell us of their personal mission from God, it's good to remember this has always been a nation with a wide spectrum of religious experience. Occult America is available at Jackson Street Books , as well as fine independent bookstores everywhere. ps: sorry about the formatting, Blogger hates me today. Really, I did put spaces between the paragraphs.

Department of Book Reports: A Christmas Carol

It has become our tradition to post this passage from A Christmas Carol every Saturday before Christmas here at the General's place. It remains as relevant today as it was when Dickens first had it published in 1843. This year I will add this passage from the first Stave, as it may have reflected English society then, and may soon again.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir." "Are there no prisons?" "Plenty of prisons..." "And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?" "Both very busy, sir..." "Those who are badly off must go there." "Many can't go there; and many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

The following is, of course, from the climax of Stave Three, as Dickens called it, when Scrooge is abandoned by the Spirit of Christmas Present. Among my English major friends, Charles Dickens is regarded as a rank sentimentalist, and, worse, a writer who achieved popularity with the reading public of his time. At the same time, I argue that he was also one of the most acute social critics of the 19th Century, and a critic that helped transform that world for the better.

The scene below contains one of the most powerful images in English Literature. And it still holds true today.

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. "Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost. They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. "Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more. "They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.

Department of Book Reports: Marshmallows

We're very busy this week, as I'm sure all of your households are too. I hope you find the time to relax with some cocoa and a good book. Perhaps you might even find time to make your own marshmallows for that cocoa. Here's a delightful interview from a book I recently told you about, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter.

Of course, I do urge you to shop locally and Shift your Shopping. You may just discover the perfect gift that will delight its recipient. The folks inside those stores will genuinely be delighted to see you, and I'm sure you will get a much-felt "Thank You!" rather than a bored "have a nice day."

"Our choices of what and where to buy impact not only us and the people we give to, but the prosperity of our community and even our country. Along with helping your neighbors and community, you might find “going local” turns holiday shopping into a far more enjoyable experience." via

Have a wonderful week! What's on your night stand?

Department of Book Reports: Happy War on Christmas

All the talk this week has been about this mornings eclipse, so I thought I'd showcase our Science Bookshelf. Here are a couple fun science lessons I found in my reading this week. In Seattle (and locations at the same latitude)the time of sunset moves up early each day until we get to Winter Solstice. The effect has to do with the tilt of the Earth's axis and you can read more here.
Did anybody get to see the eclipse? We we too cloudy to be able to watch it. At certain latitudes, you might have been able to see the Sun & the Moon in the sky again at the same time (!)

It's been an exciting week in our small town. The local paper, Seniors Sunset Times, ran an front page article about the bookstore and it certainly has gotten us some local notice.


This past Saturday was the First Annual Ho Ho Hoquiam with a cocoa & tree stroll so that folks could vote on the best decorated tree in several categories. I had had the idea of decorating with birds and bird titles, but it was the hand knitted Angry Red Bird that helped me snag the title of "Funniest Tree".









And, finally, if you'd like to keep up with news of the publishing industry and whatever catches his fancy, check out Dan's Book Booth column at thepoliticalcarnival.net

I'll leave you with appropriate Seasonal Salutations. How's your War on Christmas going?

Department of Book Reports: We're Making a List and Checking It Twice

It has come to our attention that the authors you'll find on this list have turned out to be no-good commie rats. I'll bet some of your favorite writers are on this list. I'm shocked! Shocked!

Occupy Writers


And, most assuredly, many of these authors and their books can be found at Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

Today is Take your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the first annual Ho Ho Hoquiam. Here's hoping to see you in a bookstore today, perhaps even ours!

Department of Book Reports: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (Random House, tp $15)I hadn't had a chance to read this back when it came out, and recently a customer was telling me how much her whole book club enjoyed reading it together. Carol was right! This is, as the title says, a bitter sweet love story set in Seattle's Chinatown and Nihonmachi district. Henry Lee has just lost his wife Ethel to cancer in 1986, when he learns that the belongings of 37 families have been discovered in the basement of The Panama Hotel. On the eve of relocating to the Japanese internment camps of WWII, people had stored their possessions in hopes of returning someday to start their lives over again. This part of the story is entirely true, The Panama Hotel stands today, and you can see the trunks and cartons through a piece of plexiglass set into the floor of the renovated Tea Room.

Henry was a scholarship student at an exclusive all-white school in the lead up to Pearl Harbor, and his best friend was the only other Asian "scholarshipping" student, Keiko Okabe. Henry's father hates the Japanese and feels the deportment is "Better them than us", and he makes Henry wear an "I am Chinese" button whenever he goes out. Henry has to hide his friendship and later love of Kieko from his family. Sheldon, a sax playing street busker protects Henry & Kieko from teasing and abuse as they walk to school or sneak into the after hours Jazz clubs along Jackson Street. When Sheldon gets a gig with Oscar Holden at the Black Elks Club, he gets to play on the only recording ever made of the band, and this album will a longlost touchstone for Henry & Keiko. Sheldon will come to help Henry visit Keiko at Minidoka, a very long trip those days in the belly of the big dog (Greyhound). Later, back in Seattle, Henry thinks Keiko has forgotten him, never suspecting his father of intercepting her letters. It won't be until the mid-eighties that Henry & Keiko will hear the Alley Cat song again that Oscar Holden had dedicated to the young couple.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a love story during one of America's most horrible episodes and a touching examination of father and son dynamics, both the staunch autocrat of his father and Henry's relationship with his own most modern son, Marty. The setting is historically accurate as you can see by the links I included above.

The book, of course, is available at Jackson Street Books, as well as other fine independent bookstores.

Department of Book Reports:The Man in The Moon

Children's Literature, I have to admit, is not my strong suit when it comes to bookselling. Oh, I'm acquainted with much of it, for sure. I read voraciously when I was child myself, and when our son came along, I rediscovered much of it. Not that I'm disparaging of KiddieLit; there are some fine authors and great stories out there, that go on beyond Zebra, and make it fun to have fun, though you have to know how. (Also some of the best book people I know are devoted to children's books). But since my maturity (or some would say my lack therof), I've tended to read books meant for adults.

But several years ago, I stumbled across the work of William Joyce. Specifically, I read his book Santa Calls and was enthralled by both his art and his story. Naturally, being the fine father I am, and with my son at an appropriate age, I brought Santa Calls home and read it to him many times. So when William Joyce produces a new book, I will read it, even if my son is no longer at a convenient age to be read to.

So I was excited when in the last month a new book by William Joyce was published. It is called The Man in the Moon (Atheneum $17.99) and it does not disappoint. It is a boldy illustrated tale, the first in a projected series Joyce is writing entitled The Guardians of Childhood. The book (and the other titles to come) explain the origins of some of our best loved symbols of childhood, like the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The Man in the Moon, then, tells the tale of how the Man in the Moon got there, his parentage, his friend, Nightlight and nemesis, Pitch, who is aided by his henchmen, the Nightmare Men.

Joyce has a wonderful sense of what appeals to the young mind and it is no wonder that he has worked with Disney Studios and Pixar on many of their pictures, including Toy Story, as well as the PBS series George Shrinks. Even if you have no taste for children's stories, his illustrations are breath-taking and it is worth having this book and others by him just for the sheer beauty of them. And if you do have a young child in your life, I highly recommend you check out The Man in the Moon. That child will love it.

The Man in the Moon is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores throughout the land, and, perhaps, even on the moon itself. What are some of your favorite books of childhood?

UFO Collides With Author William Joyce from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Department of Book Reports: New to the shelves

It's been an exciting week in Hoquiam's smallest bookstore: we kicked off the week with a Monday night party for the much anticipated release of Christopher Paolini's 4th book, Inheritance, from his Eragon series. The story of these books is remarkable in itself: as a home-schooled student, Christopher wrote the first book and self published it. He had good success locally and Carl Hiassen's son picked up a copy at an indie bookstore while vacationing in Montana. He loved it and told his dad, who was able to present it to his Knopf editor, and the rest is publishing history.

We also have a couple new cookbooks on the shelves. Pacific Feast tells you what to do with fiddle head fern sprouts, nettles, dandelions and many other roots & shoots. I've tangled with nettles in my youth, so I appreciate the author's instructions on how to not be stung, and also not to put the stems into your food processor (the fiber of the stems are so strong that they are used by native tribes to twine into fishing nets and baskets). I'm going to try some of the seaweed recipes soon. Be sure to visit her website for more inspiration.

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter comes from the blogger at The Tipsy Baker. I recommend you bookmark that site for all the recipes she cooks from her collection of thousands of cookbooks. Often opinionated, and constantly delightful, the book examines what you can make at home, and what you really shouldn't.


These books and more are available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th and fine Independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us on Facebook Jackson Street Books.

Department of Book Reports:We Were Stardust

We Were Stardust by Kathrin King Segal (Bucket List, $15.00) Today's book is from a dear Second Life pal, Seacat, whose first novel Wild Again (link to hilarious vid) was published by Dutton way back when I worked for the publisher. (Wild Again is an erotic thriller set in NYC and long out of print, but Kathrin does have some copies available & we can put you in touch with her.)

"I found my grandmother on eBay." Juliette, our young narrator tells of finding bits from her grandmother's life, unknown to her family after she put her baby, Juliette's father up for adoption in 1971. Juliette catalogs her finds for us, the posters, the newspaper clippings, the glossy photos and LPs, and uses them to piece together the years in smoking night clubs and coffee houses. Juliette assures us the story is "mostly true".

We Were Stardust follows a cast of friends as they each try to find their place in the early Rock and Roll years. Julie will dazzle and spin through their lives, her bi-polar depression will spin her further and further from their lives, even as she worries it will be they who abandon her. She is madly in love with Luke, who will go onto the record deals and platinum records. Elliott who wants to be a music producer and finds himself partnered with Mafia, Arlene who will become his dutiful wife, and Rochelle, who ends up being the sensible business woman. Record deals and betrayals will split them up and reunite them in unexpected ways.

The world of music is lovingly re-imagined here, all the major points and places will have you remembering those days from Woodstock to the day Peter Thorkelson mentions he has a call-back from his audition for this new television show just being cast: The Monkees. New York to the L.A. scene, real life events reverberate this novel. Juliette gives us the proof in her eBay purchases, the ticket stubs and forty-fives and their winning bid price.

This is a world Kathrin, a writer, singer, songwriter and actor knows well, her own music and voice grew up in New York and she really did meet the many musicians who flicker across the pages in cameos. Kathrin was part of these early scenes and, as she says: She can remember the 60's! I recommend this as a great read for anyone looking for characters you come to love and a story you really wish wouldn't end. I just hope we don't have to wait another 20 years to read Juliette's story.

Jackson Street Books has signed copies of We Were Stardust, and you can find out more at Kathrin's website and purchase copies of her CDs. Her novel's FB page is here.

Congratulations, Kathrin! We are so happy to see this book in print!

Department of Book Reports: Sick day

My apologies, but a bad cold & a dead computer have made this a difficult week. I'll be back with a great book next week, and here is a preview of the author.


Be well & have a great week!

Department of Book Reports: Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero

Continuing in our biography binge, and with the playoffs being played and the World Series looming, I thought I'd look at Leigh Montville's Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero (Broadway Books $18.00), a book published originally in 2004. It is a fascinating book about a fascinating man.

Williams grew up in San Diego, the son of an unhappily married couple. His mother was a Mexican-American, who devoted her life to the Salvation Army and pretty much neglected both Ted and his brother, Danny. His father seemed to be mostly a non-presence in their lives. Ted early on, with some adult mentors, focussed his life on baseball and especially hitting a baseball. (Danny ended up a ne'er-do-well, whose life was tragic.) Ted seemed to miss getting much in the way of social graces, and throughout his life was loud, brash, and supremely confident in his abilities, whether it was in baseball, or hunting and fishing which he also excelled at. His cockiness probably cost him an extra year in the minor leagues, as the Red Sox management felt he need a year to mature.

Williams won the Triple Crown twice (leading the league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in), but his most famous season in 1941, when he hit .406, the last time any major league player has hit over .400 for the season. It was the year before the United States entered the Second World War; it was also the year that Joe DiMaggio had his 56 game hitting streak. (The naturalist Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay some years back on why no one will ever have a .400 season again; it's likely no one will soon break the Joltin' Joe's record either). Montville has a nice little riff, paraphrasing Robert Creamer, on DiMaggio and Williams. DiMaggio was champagne; Williams was beer; Joe was the New Yorker; Ted was Field and Stream.

Ted was politically conservative, but his life belied whatever political stances he took. He was generous to a fault, especially with children and the Jimmy Fund in Boston was special to him. He was also a soft touch and aghast whenever confronted by abject poverty. And he was one of the primary movers in getting Organized Baseball to take note of the Negro Leagues and the many stars it had. He took the occasion of his induction into Baseball's Hall of Fame to say: "I've been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, and I hope some day the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given a chance."

Williams later managed the Washington Senators and then the Texas Rangers, the first year the franchise was shifted. His later years were complicated by his relationship with his only son, John Henry, who had problems with money. Montville writes with great authority and easy style and without academic pedantry, that makes the book accessible to all, even those with little interest in baseball. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this book, but I'm glad I have. The book is available from Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores. Enjoy.

Department of Book Reports: Autobiographies

We've had a busy week here in our little town. Garth Stein's visit & reading was a lovely evening, enjoyed by all attendees. Many thanks to our wonderful Timberland Regional Library for sponsoring this event.
I finally got the big old Neon sign going Thursday afternoon. I had 2 people in who said I saw the sign! I didn't know there was a bookstore here! On Friday, 4 people came in because they saw those shiny red letters. I want to get some shelving set up so that it is at the top of the window, but it's kinda tricky in such an old building.

Lately, I've been reading memoirs. What I had thought would be a bit of popcorn reading has turned out to actually have timely lessons.
Cecil Beaton was given his first camera at age 11, and preferred to use it the rest of his life. Son of a lumber and coal family fortune, this book could have been way too twee in anyone else's hands. Lavishly illustrated with his iconic photographs, this volume centers on his longtime love of Greta Garbo. His devotion is evident in every sentence.
Charlie Chaplin provides quite a contrast, being born into abject poverty and spent much of his childhood in and out of London's Workhouses before his stage work became popular. He remains acutely aware of class struggles and bristles when introduced to someone with the assurance "he comes from a very good family." Chaplin had no patience for the romanticizing of poverty and resented what he called Somerset Maugham's annoying nonsense. This is a great read, which much insight into old Hollywood. I'm going to track down more of his writings, especially the unexpurgated volumes that were published posthumously. It was his great desire that Hitler be laughed at which gives us this most timeless speech:

Department of Book Reports: The Art of Racing in the Rain in Hoquiam

I've got big news for Hoquiam! Next Wednesday evening, Garth Stein will be in town & will read and sign his books at the 7th Street Theatre at 7pm along with many other events around the county. Timberland Library is hosting Garth for their annual Timberland Reads Together program. Local folks can come meet Garth and get a book from us, and those of you reading along at home can order one & we'll get Garth to personalize it for you! The Holidays will be on us before you know it, and this would be a perfect gift! Just tell us how you'd like it inscribed in the "ask a question of the bookseller" box when you order, or drop us an email. In the 3 years this book has been out, it has become my all-purpose recommend, I have never met anyone who didn't absolutely love it, and I really cannot tel you how many people have come back and made a point to let me know it is now their all time favorite too!

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein (Harper, $24.95) Narrated by the big hearted Enzo, this story reminds us of the grace of everyday, the preciousness of each moment. “In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers into the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life." Enzo, watches everything, the untimely death of Denny's wife and the 3 year battle with his inlaws for custody of their daughter, doing all he can to keep this family intact. Heartbreaking and achingly perfect this book is really impossible to describe. Enzo is a dog who can explain what it is to be human.

This is a book I'm going to be evangelical about! Really. You must read this one. Yes, it's about car racing. Yes, it's narrated by the dog. Trust me here. There is plenty of heart in this novel, and a compelling story with characters that will stay with you long after the read. Don't forget the Kleenex™.

The Northwest Booksellers gave Garth the annual book award for his last novel, How Evan Broke his Head. That's another recommended read.

Garth has been busy since I last talked about his books, this past summer he got 36 authors to co-write a novel over a 4 day period at Hugo House, a Writer's Resource in Seattle. The Novel: LIVE! has some videos you can watch here and was given the finished title Hotel Evangeline.

In case you are wondering what the book with the puppy is about, this is a Young Adult version of the story, so that Garth could address some of the issues for younger readers.
These fine books are available at (Jackson Street) Books On 7th which has been open in Hoquiam for a whole year now!

Department of Book Reports: Banned Books Week

Image via ABFFE

For the past thirty years, the last week of September has been Banned Books Week, a celebration of the Freedom to Read and the First Amendment, and this year is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Experession, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the PEN American Center, among others. Libraries and bookstores across our great land will have displays of the many books that have, at one time or another, been suppressed in some fashion.

What are some of these tomes? Some examples:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has been challenged many times, including in 1980 by the Vernon Verona Sherill New York School District as a "filthy, trashy novel". I've read it a few times, and I guess I missed that part.

Alice Walker's The Color Purple has also been challenged and banned. The Souderton PA School District banned it as "smut" in 1992 as inappropriate 10th grade reading.

Ulysses by James Joyce was banned from the United States, England and Ireland for obscenity during the 1920's and not because it was deemed "too long".

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov was banned as obsecne in France from 1956-1959, England in 1959, and Argentina that same year. Florida's Marion County had its DA office look into the book for ideas of incest and pedophilia.

Even winning Nobel Prize in literature does not keep a writer from censorial minds. Toni Morrison's Beloved has also been challenged many times. In 2007 two parents objected to the use of the book in an AP high school English class because it addressed issues of bestiality, racism and sex. The Principal of the school ordered it replaced by Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which, of course, has nothing to do with sex. Other Nobel Prize winners whose books have been banned include John Steinbeck (both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men); Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls...did the Earth move for you, too?); William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying); and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby).

This past Monday the School Board of Monarch, Kansas voted to end the ban in the school library of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Kind of. The kids cant really check it out, but it is available in certain portion there for their parents to check it out for them. The Vonnegut Library has made an offer to help kids decide for themselves.

These obscene books are available from Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

What are your favorite banned books?

Department of Book Reports: Alcoa's Book of Decorations

Maybe it's the change in the weather, there's no denying Fall is here, after a week or so of summer. Maybe it's the folks who open my door & cackle "is this a Liberry??" Or, demand I find out just what the hell is going on with our shipping department, because Dover Publications has not delivered the book he ordered with that last tear out page in his book... (Turns out, he thinks I'm a subsidiary of the publisher... because I have a Dover rack in the front window.) Lately, the arching Eyebrow of Death just hasn't had it's usual withering power. Maybe you feel like me... In need of a new hat. Well, I have just the book for you!


Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up on Monday. In Second Life, we'll be partying at Redwood Rhiahdra's place. If you are stuck in RL, perhaps this hat would help.







Tin Foil is so versatile, you can fulfill all your childhood fantasies with your very own Pippi hat. Be the Pippi!


Maybe you'd just like to be a Space Cadet.. on your own little world.





Did you hear Henry Winkler got honorarily Knighted for his Hank Zipfer books?








There just isn't any holiday this book can't turn into a nightmare.



I trust I have not infringed on copyright here, but if Alcoa does decide to pursue photo useage, I'm pretty sure Dave vonE can successfully argue it was a bad idea to produce this book in the first place.
I hope that you have found your very own Fall hat here. Which one will you be wearing? Alcoa's Book of Decorations is available at Jackson Street Books. I'm pretty sure the other Fine Independent Bookstores have the good sense not to stock it.

Department of Book Reports: In the Garden of Beasts

In 1933, freshly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt named William Dodds Ambassador to Germany. Dodds was not FDR's first choice. Two other men had turned down the post, as Germany seemed to be to embroiled in becoming a fascist state. Nor was Dodds a typical choice. Most Ambassadors were chosen from America's wealthy elites, usually big political donors to the President's Party. FDR's choice was sneered at by many in the State Department. Dodds was unusual in that he was an Academic, the chair of the History Department at the University of Chicago, who had hoped to use his years in Berlin to write his magnum opus, a history of the Ante-Bellum South.

Erik Larson, who I reported on some years ago when his book Thunderstruck was published, has written a fascinating account of Dodds' years as Ambassador in In the Garden of Beasts: Love,Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Crown Books $26.00). He brings to life the years before World War 2, years when Hitler had many admirers in the United States. Dodds brought his family to Berlin with him, and central to the story is his daughter, Martha, a young woman at the time, who proceeded to take on a number of lovers, including many Nazi officials, as she was initially enthralled by the glitz and the parties. But as the family stayed on, and Hitler's intentions to the Jews became more and more apparent, she reeled from those previous affairs, and eventually aided the Soviets in their espionage against the Fascists. (She continued to take on lovers, notably Thomas Wolfe, author of Look Homeward Angel, as well as Carl Sandburg.) Dodds himself continued to warn his superiors at the State of his concerns, to no avail, and he left Berlin in 1937.

One of Larson's greatest skills is that he has a novelist's eye for telling history. He writes lucidly, develops the characters into flesh and blood, and has knack for keeping the narrative flowing. In the Garden of Beasts (the name of the street near the Ambassador's home) is not only popular history at its best, it is also great story telling. The book, of course, is available at Jackson Street Books, as well as other fine independent bookstores.