Kash's Book Corner

The Absurdity of Twain Fever

2010-11-28T16:17:00.007-07:00

Mark Twain is the hottest author in America right now. The Boulder Book Store along with just about every other bookseller in America can barely keep ahead of the demand for the recently released 738-page Autobiography of Mark Twain. The reason the book is in short supply is that no one in their right mind saw this book taking off like it has. The University of California Press, which published a well-researched, finely edited, fairly academic book is simply not equipped to deal with a bestseller of this magnitude.

They shouldn't have to worry about this problem; although I'm sure they are happy to have such a profitable concern. Observing the demand for this book, it seems to be sheer madness and a herd mentality that is driving the Mark Twain frenzy. People are buying this book who haven't glanced at Twain since they were forced to read him in high school or college. My guess is that many copies of the Autobiography now in the hands of gleeful customers will end up, after great disappointment, flooding back into the bookstore in 2011 as forgotten used tomes.

I love Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a book that I read in high school and college and returned to for a third time about a decade ago. I've never been disappointed with Huck, and each reading has yielded more rewards and a greater admiration for Twain. My 12th grade English teacher introduced the book as the greatest novel in American history. To this day, I wouldn't quibble with that. (By the way, she considered William Faulkner the greatest American fiction writer and James Joyce the greatest writer of fiction in English. I'm not sure I consider Finnegan's Wake English, but that's besides the point.)

The Autobiography of Mark Twain is no Huck Finn. Not by a long shot. Nearly 500 pages of the 4-pound book is either unreadable doggerel composed of false starts and academic self-aggrandizement or notes and appendices that only a grad student would ever need to dive into.

Esquire did a great break down on how to read the book in one day that serves to highlight the book's shortcomings more than anything else.

In Adam Gopnik's insightful piece in The New Yorker's November 29th edition, he shows how the book's main two selling points aren't really that impressive. The first is that the manuscript was suppressed for 100 years on Twain's wishes. Twain wanted to make sure that everyone he mentioned in the book was dead by the time it was publicly disseminated. The problem with this according to Gopnik is that only 5% of the new volume actually contains unpublished Twain material. His autobiography has been published three previous times, and this one doesn't add that much. The other selling point is that readers are getting a truly authentic view of Twain's life. However, Gopnik notes that Twain gave up on candor early into the writing process.

Gopnik's conclusion on the Twain volume: "A book that had been a disjointed and largely baffling bore emerges now as a disjointed and largely baffling bore."

Of course there will be some true Twain devotees that will relish every fresh word and enjoy rereading some of the other material in here. But enough true admirers to push the book to the top spot on all the bestseller lists? No, no, no. Most of those books are going to people who will put the book on their shelf and perhaps read a page or two from it. They'll have just enough to quote at a New Year's Day party if the topic comes up. It will be gathering dust by Martin Luther King Day.

If you want a memoir that will bring a fresh perspective from an entertaining raconteur, I'd humbly suggest a copy of Life by Keith Richards. Oh yeah, there is no problem getting copies of it. Hachette rightfully expected that the Rolling Stone who remembers it all would produce a bestseller that no one would consider a bore.

Christmas Season is a Bear

2010-11-27T10:01:00.005-07:00

This is my favorite time of year to be a bookseller. The hours are long, the store is crowded and it can be frustrating when everyone wants the same book because they heard about it on NPR. However, those minor complaints are outweighed by the fact that the store is packed with people that want books. Men, women and children that value the experience of reading and that are open to recommendations and book conversations.

My favorite moment of Black Friday came towards the end of the day. A middle age woman from Chicago came into the store with her two college-age daughters. The woman was dressed nicely in an expensive knee-length black coat and silver earrings and she was all business. She approached the counter and asked me where she could find a book featured in the window.

"Which book do you want?" I asked.

"I don't know the title. It's in your window with the Christmas books. It's about an old bear."

Instantly, I knew she was referring to Olivier Dunrea's Old Bear and His Cub. Dunrea's picture book came out just two weeks ago and already is a classic. His simple but finely drawn pictures and elegant story of a loving old bear keeping his cub safe and secure resonates in a way that brand new books rarely do. It's as if you've known this tale and illustrations since your own childhood.

I led the woman back to the children's room and pulled the book out of the dump and placed it in her hands. "It's a wonderful book," I said.

"We'll see," she said holding the book and gazing at its delightful cover. "If it makes me tear up by the end, I'll know it's worth buying."

I left her and her daughters with the book without much hope that we'd get the sale. She did not look like a woman who would ever cry in public. I returned to the front counter trolling for another customer. A few minutes later I was putting a book on hold when I passed my Chicago customer still standing where I left her.

"Well, did the Old Bear and His Cub do the trick?"

She looked up at me and her steely eyes were filled with water and her face was blushed red. Her daughters stood behind her and rolled their dry eyes. She dabbed a tissue to her eyes and simply said, "I'm going to buy the book."

ReGenesis: God is Movement

2010-11-11T21:02:00.007-07:00

Here's a reprint from the Boulder Weekly of my review of ReGenesis, the concluding volume of Robert Dresner's The Astral Imperative trilogy. I met Dresner when he was painting my house and we began an interesting relationship that was detailed in my review of his first book. It was one of my most commented upon blog entries and now nearly two years later people still ask me about it. The focus of that article was largely on Dresner's decision to self publish and his near misses with New York publishers.

In my review of the second book , I did not mention that Dresner was self publishing the book and the same holds true in this review. It seems less relevent now than it did two years ago that Dresner decided to publish the books on his own. We sell self published, or what I like to call quasi-published books every day at the Boulder Book Store. These quasi-published books are ones from presses that are very small and are often just publishing their authors books on demand. Some of our best events come from the ranks of Independently published authors and our customers don't seem to make distinctions between major publishers, small publishers and independent publishers as long as they enjoy the work and get to meet the author.

Personally, I still believe strongly in the publishing houses and the work that they do. I'd love to see Dresner get picked up for a few reasons. I'd be interested to see how a great science fiction editor would polish his work. I also think his books have something meaningful to say and that a large press could give them the distribution that they deserve.

Here's the review:

Yuri Popovich sits silently in the lotus position on Mars, his heart registering just one beat a minute, as Robert Dresner’s thought-provoking novel ReGenesis opens. Popovich, a lone survivor of the original mission to Mars, has completely retreated into himself and has sat in his seemingly unconscious state in a cave for 12 years as new settlers come and gawk at him.

In a moment of desperation, another astronaut, Richard, who has been stranded on Mars for over a decade and is feared and ostracized by the other colonists, pleads with the meditating man to help him save the petty, earth-centered colonists from themselves. He doesn’t expect an answer but he gets one. Yuri simply states, “I am here.”

Richard is startled. He asks, “What happened to you Yuri? Where did you go? Tell me, please, if you can. I need to know. What did you see?”

Yuri’s answer is simple, but sets up the fantastic plot to this concluding book in Dresner’s Astral Imperative trilogy. “God. I saw God.”

The questions of the existence of God and the possibility of another level of consciousness permeates this novel set in 2053 simply because our existence on Earth has become so tenuous and our means of escape so limited. Environmental catastrophes combined with rampant nationalism and runaway technology has threatened the viability of the human race. Depending on the characters point of view and to some extent the readers, Yuri is either a savior or a charlatan.

“Yuri was the one who had to bear witness on our human existence,” Dresener said. “He inhabits different realms and realities. Is he delusional? Do you believe him or don’t you? What happened to Yuri is not out of the realm of human experience. In my travels to India I met people like that.”

The Yuri of the first two books did not seem a likely character for enlightenment. An astrobiologist by training and a world renowned poet, he spent much of his time involved in all too human entanglements on the ship to Mars and on the Red planet’s primitive space station. His conversion to a spiritual state did not occur until a battle between the colonists broke out at the end of the second book. Slowly, Yuri begins to reveal to the other characters just what he has seen during his twelve-year sojourn communing with the divine.

“I’ve seen so much; I’ve lived so many lives and still live them. I’ve seen so much violence between beings, between countries, between worlds, between entire solar systems – even galaxies that demand more space to expand at the expense of other galaxies. I’ve seen suns that are jealous of one another’s light.”

Gradually, some of the colonists’ curiosity turns to revulsion as they learn just how radical Yuri’s visions were and just what they may mean for their own existence. Is he a madman or a prophet? It’s a question that has been asked for centuries on Earth. It’s not an easy question for the reader when we hear Yuri get to the base of his creed.

“God is movement. God is evolution. God is war. God is peace. God is raping and killing children. God is suffering for the sins of other beings in this life and in other lives, and dying for them….And the greatest sin of all is when we are consigned to see the half of it, when the light of creation is divided into good and evil, and right and wrong, between what is divine and not divine, when we choose sides instead of choosing life when your very lives are at stake.”

For Yuri, the highest purpose of God is simply survival. Nothing truly dies. Our energy must be put into the effort to survive. Of course for much of the novel the very continuance of the human race is in doubt.

“Implicit in the movement to destruction is the will to survive,” Dresner said. “So far humanity by the narrowest sliver has moved ahead on the evolutionary scale. We always choose to live even if we aren’t conscious of how we make that choice.”

Dresner’s Earth is still recognizable with a few tweaks. Nationalism, especially a powerful Russia and China, still dominate the political landscape despite the fact that most of the world’s problems transcend geographic borders. Our worst fears of global warming won’t prepare us for his vision of 2053 where terrible earthquakes and fierce storms have visited the globe. Many parts of the world experience perpetual summer while Western Europe and the East Coast remain mired in deep winter conditions all the way into May. Things are degrading so quickly that even the man on the moon can see our problems.

“The view of Earth from moon orbit was not as beautiful as it once was because of the smoke bellowing out of Australia and Africa, which clung to passing clouds and turned them gray,” Dresner writes.

Even simple conversations in the future are changing in subtle ways with the emergence of techno-glasses. These eyeglasses act as computer screens as well as communication and recording devices. They make today’s laptops, Ipods and Bluetooth headsets seem downright clumsy and unobtrusive. A sense that technology will continue to march on producing everyday gadgets on the one hand and potentially destroying the human race on the other imbues this novel with a sense of fatalism.

“Like it or not the next evolutionary step will be bio-technology,” Dresner said. “Our physiological beings will be married to tech expertise. That’s what can take us out of the solar system. A lot of the story is predicated on whether we are prepared for that evolution.”

On Earth one charismatic man, Fritz Kreiger, believes that we are not ready to make the evolutionary leap into space. After reaching prominence during the first manned mission to Mars as an opponent to the program, he disappeared during the intervening years. The awakening of Yuri, an event that has as many repercussions on Earth as on Mars, forces Krieger out of his anonymous life and back into the forefront of the battle to save mankind.

Krieger visits the man who helped create the powerful Dream Machine that is housed on the Mars colony. The Dream Machine started as a simulated holographic game in the first novel, but has now achieved sentience and has either communed with the divine or been hijacked by an alien intelligence. As Yuri and the Dream Machine set off from Mars to return to Earth, tensions build between nations vying for control of the all powerful computer. It is Krieger, one of Dresner’s most balanced and finely drawn characters, that tries to take the lead in the response.

The question of just who Yuri is becomes paramount. In a world that is even more skeptical and cynical than ours it is certainly hard to accept Yuri at his word as he speeds towards Earth with something more powerful than all the bombs on the planet. The Dream Machine contains the power to both destroy and save humanity.

“We don’t have seers. We are such a regimented culture that we are losing our seers,” Dresner said. “Sometimes the greatest transformations of enlightened beings are discovered at the bottom of despair. How you get to that bottom on Prozac or Ritalin? We are denying humanity the full range of experience. When you have hooded instincts and padded senses, it is easy to get blind.”

Perhaps as readers contemplate some the technological, ecological and spiritual issues that Dresner raises in ReGenesis, they will begin to see just a little more clearly into the future.

Hellhound on His Trail

2010-04-26T10:33:00.009-06:00

Last weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Hampton Sides, the author of Hellhound on His Trail, in Sante Fe at a bookseller lunch. Before the meal, I had no intention of reading Sides' account of Martin Luther King's assassination. Most nonfiction books I absorb through reviews, New Yorker pieces, NPR and dinner table conversations.

I figured Hellhound would be no different. It was probably just another magazine article extended to a full-length book. Why read 400 pages when a well-written review would give me all the nefarious details of James Earl Ray's horrendous deed? After Sides' talk, I couldn't resist dipping into the book despite my natural aversion to true crime.

Eight days and several sleep deprived nights later, I finished the book and sure am thankful that Sides convinced me to pick it up. His tale of James Earl Ray's exploits starting with his 1967 jail break and ending with his abbreviated escape 10 years later is meticulously detailed, unrelentingly suspenseful and magnificently written.

Ray emerges as one bizarre, hateful guy. In the months leading up to the assassination, he takes dance lessons, goes to bartending school, enrolls in a locksmithing correspondence course and dabbles with the idea of making pornography. In a goodwill mission, he also drives from Los Angeles to New Orleans to retrieve two children for a girlfriend. He's also a master of aliases. He picks up and drops off a half dozen names throughout his fugitive days.

Sides said in his talk that because of these aliases, he didn't refer to Ray by his true name until after page 300 of the book. I thought this was a bit gimmicky when he mentioned it, but was surprised that the sleight of hand works. First Ray is known by his prison number, then by his main pre-assassination alias of Eric Starvo Galt and, finally, as Ramon Sneyd. It isn't until the FBI sifts through these various names and learns the true identity of the killer that Sides uses Ray's name.

When Sneyd is caught in London, two months after the assassination, he firmly denies being James Earl Ray. The most humorous moment of the book is when Sneyd asks to call his brother -- Jerry Ray. He didn't see anything contradictory in this. He had operated in more than one reality for so long that it didn't occur to him that he'd basically confessed.

The final months of King's life are vividly recreated. Sides uses mostly secondary sources for these details, relying on Ralph Abernathy's 1989 memoir, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, and Andrew Young's book on the Civil Rights movement, An Easy Burden. He gives us a powerful narrative of a leader on the run. King was running from the recriminations of the FBI (they knew he had mistresses and were perhaps goading him to kill himself), the black power movement that wanted him to move aside so the revolution could really start and, finally, the knowledge that somewhere out there a killer probably lurked.

Sides also did some primary research - traveling to several of the places Ray hid out, interviewing participants of events and diving deep into the congressional records. However, the true strength of the book is the weaving together of already existing records and facts into a coherent and tight narrative. I appreciate the narrow focus of the book. Sides sticks to Ray and the final months of King's life. He assumes the reader has at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Civil Rights movement.

Sides does a great job in answering the question of why King was gunned down in Memphis. His movements were so peripatetic in the spring of 1968 that Ray couldn't even track him down in his hometown of Atlanta. In Memphis, King got stalled for several days trying to organize a peaceful march for the striking garbage workers. He had no choice but to stick it out, because a few weeks earlier a march in Memphis had turned violent mortifying King and putting the moral currency of his whole movement in jeopardy.

The role of the FBI is truly fascinating. The agency head J. Edgar Hoover hated King. This is a widely known fact and it was known at the time especially by anyone close to King. When Ray killed King many people assumed that the FBI was involved. It was an almost impossible situation that the agency found itself in, yet they exhausted every lead, spared no expense and somehow tracked down the elusive gunman two months later.

At the luncheon, Sides spoke about how the book was structured around three chases. Ray was chasing King, the FBI was chasing King and the FBI was also chasing Ray. He professed admiration for the way the FBI conducted the investigation. "Once they started doing the job they were meant to do, they did it superbly." Sides said.

I knew I was in the grip of a powerful book when, in a bizarre way, I was almost hoping that Ray wouldn't get caught. Sides' has done such a superb job with the narrative that the reader gets swept up in Ray's point of view. We see his desperation as the FBI closes in, we feel his panic as his money starts to dry up and we understand the turmoil in his mind when the gig is up and he says, "Oh God. I feel so trapped."

Sides doesn't subscribe to any conspiracy theories. The evidence overwhelmingly points to Ray. He bought the gun, his fingerprints were on the gun, he was at the scene of the crime and he had been stalking King for weeks. Where he got his money isn't entirely known. His brother's possible involvement is an open question. At the luncheon, Sides didn't shut the door to the possibility that Ray had some form of aid, but certainly the evidence doesn't point to anything that could be called a conspiracy.

Don't make the same mistake that I usually do. Don't just read the articles and think you know the story, read Sides' book and discover an odd corner of American history.

Hellhound on His Trail will be released on April 27.

Devastating Secrets

2010-04-22T21:16:00.005-06:00

Secrets and the devastation that they can cause families are at the emotional core of Melissa Newman’s powerful and evocative debut novel Sister Blackberry. Her posse of strong female characters are both entrapped and redeemed through the revelations of long buried truths.

“When you grow up around women, you know that they all harbor secrets,” Newman said. “That was one of the inspirations for the story.”

The secrets in Sister Blackberry are much more than your garden variety women’s secrets. We aren’t talking about cheating spouses, petty crimes, or even aborted pregnancy. Viola Garland is covering up the identity of a child, a murder and, most fascinating of all, the ambiguous sexuality of her daughter.

The story opens in 1936 in Reyes County, Kentucky, when Viola is eighteen and pregnant. The events that unfold around the birth of her child will have far-reaching consequences to the present day. Viola is worried because her husband, Den, a miner, might not be at home when she goes into labor. Her friend and neighbor, Janie, is also pregnant, and the two women comfort each other despite Janie’s violent husband, Bick’s, disapproval of Viola.

In this passage right before the babies are born, Viola ruminates on her concern over Janie’s situation:

“She suspected that Bick would hit Janie when he found out she and Viola had been together. There weren’t as many bruises and marks since Janie had gotten pregnant, but there were still signs. Viola couldn’t figure out how someone as sweet as Janie could be married to a man who would hit her. And what about the baby? Would Bick hit the baby?”

Bick is a truly menacing character and provides a stark contrast to the many women that populate the book.

“Bick was well thought out,” Newman said. “I wanted to see how far he would go. What would push him? What was important to him? What would lead him to violence?”

Viola and Janie give birth on the same night. Viola, alone because Den is in the mine and there is no time for her to get help. Janie is attended by the narrow-minded charismatic leader of Bick’s evangelical church and his wife. Neither birth goes as planned. In a harrowing and dreamlike passage, the lives of all the characters are altered in unforeseen ways by the two births. The secrets begin.

“I dreamt this story like a movie,” Newman said. “This is something that really disturbed me. I dreamed the characters of Viola and (her daughter) Doris. I wrote an outline and then I did a lot of research…. I wrote it before Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex came out. It sat in a drawer for a long time.”

As Doris grows up, she has a secret that she doesn’t quite understand herself. Why don’t her genitals look like her sister Nadine’s? Why aren’t her breasts developing?

Ultimately, it is the jealousy between the sisters that reveals Doris’ secret in the most humiliating way possible. Stuck in small-town Kentucky in the 1950s, Doris feels that there is no other option but to leave.

“Relationships with sisters are very complex and competitive,” Newman said. “Add a boy and it’s like fire and kerosene coming together. I drew on something that happened with me and my sister. We both liked the same boy in high school. I thought about how cruel I was, wanting to humiliate her.”

Doris’ story of surviving as a runaway is, in many ways, the strongest part of the book. The scenes of her life in Cleveland don’t have nearly the drama that some of the earlier scenes contain, but Newman is really able to delve into her character. The writing is more assured, and several of the characters that Doris meets are quickly and adeptly developed. Doris emerges in this section as a stable and wise centerpiece to the novel. Against the odds, she finds her way in the world. In a way, Nadine has done her sister a favor by freeing her to live in the wider world.
However, Doris, like Newman herself, returns to her Kentucky home. Newman, who worked as a journalist throughout the Midwest, returned to her rural Kentucky roots eight years ago.

“Doris wanted to go home,” Newman said. “We spend the first half of our lives trying to get out and the second half trying to get back home. Doris had seen it and done it and was ready to come back.”

Nadine has a tougher time. The guilt of what she’s done to her sister will haunt her for the rest of her life. She will also pass down her feelings of inadequacy to her own daughters, blaming Doris for her misery.

“Nadine got what she wanted,” Newman said. “But it wasn’t really what she wanted. She just wanted to be like Doris. Once Doris was gone she didn’t really want Edwin (the boy they were fighting over). It caused her alcoholism and her miserable marriage.”

Newman does an excellent job in teasing out these plotlines in a subtle yet powerful way. The various revelations are well-paced and suspenseful. She shows us how guilt and lying can wear down a family. The lying is something that the 87-year old Viola cannot live with any longer. It is her desire to tell Nadine’s grown daughters the truth about the family that ultimately drives this tale.

Newman is at work on her second novel and believes that she’s learned a great deal from writing Sister Blackberry. Here’s hoping she’s still got a few secrets up her sleeve.

Escape from Zombieland

2010-04-05T15:48:00.007-06:00

I gave up on the publishing industry for a month or two there. The piles of reader's copies stopped speaking to me. The gleaming jackets of the new novels did not beguile me. The letters from publicists and the imploring stares from the reps that still have jobs did not move me. It all seemed stale, repackaged, and if it wasn't written about Zombies it seemed to be written by Zombies or written for Zombies. I am not a Zombie.

Instead I cleansed my mind by reading Madame Bovary and Notes from the Underground. Both were novels I should have read years ago. My favorite Woody Allen short story, The Kugelmass Episode, features a New Yorker going to Yonville in order to carry on an affair with the Emma Bovary. Ah... now I really get it. I enjoyed the novel but wasn't a big fan of Emma. I loved many of the minor characters, most notably Monsieur Homais, the pharmacist.

Dostoyevsky's little masterpiece was the first translation by the dynamic duo of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky that I've read. I compared several paragraphs to the Constance Garnett translation and found the new one more lithesome and easier to grasp. The biggest difference comes in the first sentence. Garnett writes, "I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man." Pevear's reads "I am a sick man....I am a wicked man." Wicked is a much broader word than spiteful. It's particularly important because it is how our narrator defines himself throughout the entire book. To be spiteful is to merely hold a grievance. To be wicked is to dissolute to the core.

After my brief foray into the classics, I returned to the contemporary novel and read three that I really enjoyed. Actually, enjoyed is not quite the right word for Chang Rae Lee's The Surrendered. It's a harsh novel but if you can get through the first 50 pages about the destruction of a Korean family during the war, you've gotten through the toughest part. That's not quite true, there is a brutal sequence later on set in Manchuria that gave me nightmares.

Here are my latest recommendations posted in the store:

The Surrendered by Chang Rae Lee

This harrowing novel follows the lives of both Korean and American survivors of the Korean War. June and Hector are reunited despite their secret of history of violence and lost love. Lee slowly reveals their parallel tales building the novel's tension and showing us a world permanently marked by wars and atrocity.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

The Morey family has it all -- looks, charms, wits and money, lots of it. What they lack is scruples, ethics and some basic humanity. Dee tells the story from all four of the family members' perspectives. The Morey's pathological inability to think about their past and the corrupting influence of money leads to family even less savory than their eel namesake.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Civil War intrigue, Jewish history and beautiful spies are the foundation for Horn's enthralling novel. Jacob Rappaport, a 19-year old private, is dispatched to New Orleans to kills his plotting uncle on Passover. That's the easiest of his assignments. Marriage to a Virginia spy is the most difficult but delectable mission. Rappaport's cunning and morals are sorely tested during his adventures.

Some Recent Favorites

2009-12-03T13:32:00.012-07:00

My reading has taken some strange twists and turns this year. Instead of ingesting my regular dose of contemporary poetry and new novels, I've been downing Is Your Mama A Lama almost every night before bed. This new medicine is not without its benefits: I recently discovered that "pat" was a verb in Pat the Bunny. I'd always assumed that Pat was just a gender neutral rabbit name. Imagine my surprise when I turned the pages and my baby was playing peek-a-boo, looking in a mirror and trying on a ring.

In the last month, I've managed to read a few adult novels between encore performances of Goodnight Gorilla and Are You My Mother that probably won't appear on any year-end top 10 lists, but that are worth remembering and discussing. All three of these novels feature strong female characters and interesting narrative twists.

The best of the bunch was Katharine Weber's True Confections. Weber's book won't come out until later this month, but it's been on my radar since the summer, when Weber tracked me down with a friendly email and asked that I give it a try. She thought my love of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint might make me a sympathetic reader. She was right. Here's the recommendation tag that I've written up for the store:

I love an unreliable narrator. The reader has to look for clues in the dialogue, in other characters' reactions and in subtle hints to divine the real story. Weber employs this device to create a brilliant satire on the candy industry. Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky of Zip's Candies tells her story in a rambling affidavit that exposes the racist origins of the company and her complicity in the firm's many disasters.

Weber weaved in so many fascinating and arcane facts about the candy business (my favorite was that Hart Crane's father invented lifesavers) that I began to believe that she made them up. She didn't. Her amazing research gives her quirky narration a verisimilitude that few comic novels achieve. The story lives on in Weber's blog Staircase Writing where she has continued to delve into her candy obsession.

Nancy Mauro's debut novel New World Monkeys was another comedy that featured a lot of obsessive behavior. I felt that Mauro's strength and weaknesses were one and the same. The novel is about a lot of different things (a failing marriage, a mangled ad campaign, a pervert, the excavation of long buried bones, crazy townsfolk) that make for intriguing reading. But sometimes it feels that the novel is too jam-packed. A little focus and quiet space could have allowed her two lead characters to be realized in a fuller way. The pervert, a minor side character, was the most human in the eclectic cast and the reader is both thrilled and terribly disgusted when he succeeds. Here's my recommendation tag:

A rollicking novel about two city slickers who inherit a rural house with disastrous consequences (they run over the town mascot - a wild boar on their initial journey to the home) as they cling to their deteriorating marriage. Lily digs up her ancestor's missing maid and wards off the boar's crazy owner while Duncan works on a sexist ad campaign that mocks the Vietnam War back in New York.

Check out this promotional video that Mauro, an advertising professional, made for the book. It closely portrays the novel's opening scene.

Peter Rock's My Abandonment follows the true story of a girl and her father who lived in Portland's Forest Park for several years. He tells the story from the 13-year old girl's perspective. Her tale unfolds beautifully, almost poetic in the rhythm and language. She's at one with nature in the forest, running through the paths in bare feet, strangely attune to any noises or changes in the direction of the wind. It all comes to an end when the camp is discovered by a backcountry jogger and the pair are taken into police custody.

Rock follows the story past its real-life roots. The pair disappeared some years ago and no one seems to know what became of them. Rock imagines a macabre and paranoid future for the father--one that didn't ring quite true to me based on the family's time in the woods and how he handled his brief confinement. Still, it was a wonderful read that reminded me of some of the great young adult books of my youth, like Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves. Here's an interview with Peter Rock about the true story behind his novel.

The Youngest Book Buyer Ever

2009-10-30T14:45:00.008-06:00

In a shocking development, Boulder Book Store hired 11-month old Martina Kashkashian to join their book buying department last week. She is the youngest buyer in North America and perhaps the world, although there are unconfirmed reports that a nine-month-old monkey is the head of purchasing at a metaphysical book store in Montevideo, Uruguay.

"We just felt like we needed a new direction," general manager Nesra Naihsakhsak said. "An infusion of new blood, a fresh outlook. It's easy to get frustrated in this business. She won't think about how wonderful things used to be in the 1980s and 90s. Heck, she can't even remember 2008."

Kash's Book Corner was given a rare opportunity to sit down with this gifted and talented buyer at 3:30 this morning for a fascinating interview. Between feedings she spoke about her book buying philosophy, the publishing industry, the current price wars that are raging and her plush pink bear.

Here's the interview:

Kash's Book Corner: How did you get the job at such a young age?

Martina: I've been hanging around the bookstore since my days in the womb. I attended the Mountains & Plains regional show in Colorado Springs a week before I was born and that really gave me a broader perspective on the industry. I've also sat in with my father on several frontlist buys, attended BEA in New York, and even a Simon & Schuster sales conference in Florida. It's hard to beat those formative experiences. At the same time, I'm a virtual "tabula rasa" in terms of book knowledge. I'm open to new experiences.

Kash's Book Corner: What will be your responsibilities?

Martina: It's really baby steps for me. Not that I know what that really means since I haven't taken any steps yet. I'm just going to buy the publishers that have electronic catalogs on Edelweiss. Let me see, that's Random House, Harper, Penguin and Hachette adult and children's books. Also, Chronicle, W.W. Norton, Ingram Publisher Services. That's it. Daddy will still buy Columbia University titles.

Kash's Book Corner: I'm amazed you are willing to tackle an electronic catalog even though you are just starting out. So many booksellers are terrified by it.

Martina: They're just old. Old people don't understand new things. I'm a baby. It's simple. Look, take an 8 or 9-year-old. They started school before iPhones were even invented. It's mind boggling. I had an iPhone in the womb. How can you expect them to adapt? I don't even know how they found their way out of the womb without an iPhone. I was able to calculate the correct time and the proper angle using two simple apps . . . can I have my PinkBeary now?

Kash's Book Corner: Just a few more questions. You are entering the book business at a time of tremendous upheaval. What do you think of the current price wars?

Martina: I'm just upset that Amazon and Target won't sell me the books that cheap. It makes me shriek at the top of my lungs like that time Mommy fed me mashed up asparagus.

Kash's Book Corner: But after telling customers to buy local and independent, how could you look them in the eye if you bought books from Amazon?

Martina: I can't look anyone in the eye. I'm 2-foot-2.

Kash's Book Corner: You are buying the most important publishers in the industry. How will you know what to buy?

Martina: My daddy said I only needed to know two words: "No" and "Co-op." My two-year old friend says "no" all the time, so I figure this is a good chance to practice for me. I'll just say "no, no, no" on the adult books until the rep looks really upset, and then I'll give my cutest smile and ask "co-op?" I'm supposed to squeeze them for every last penny. The children's books will be more about taste. Literally. A good book, even a publisher sample, will have a certain texture and flavor when you put it in your mouth. "Yummy" will mean yes.

Kash's Book Corner: I'm sure that you are aware that there is very little money in bookselling. Why pursue it as a career?

Martina: I want my PinkBeary now!

Kash's Book Corner: Here you go.

Martina: [Squeezes her pink bear really hard.] Money! I don't even get an allowance. I don't get to pick any of my own clothes and they spoon feed me all sorts of mashed up vegetables. Now, I can get a few dresses, and the reps will take me out to sushi. Minimum wage sounds pretty good to me.

Kash's Book Corner: What are your favorite new books?

Martina: I'm a big fan of A.S. Byatt's Children's Book. Does Goodnight Gorilla count? I'm also really curious about Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck. Daddy won't let me read it because he says I'm too impressionable. I think it's because he doesn't want me to know how to argue with him.

Kash's Book Corner: Thanks a lot, and good luck on the job.

Martina: Can I go climb up and down the stairs now?

Kash's Book Corner: Go back to sleep, please.

The Evolution Revolution

2009-10-11T11:19:00.007-06:00

I have an article about the book Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) by Paul Strode and Matt Young in the October 8 issue of the Boulder Weekly. The pair are coming to speak at the store this Wednesday, October 14.

On the day the article appeared, I had lunch at the bar of the Walnut Brewery just a block from the bookstore. It was a bitterly cold day that threatened snow. I was rooting on my beloved Phillies in the playoffs against the local nine, the Colorado Rockies. A grizzled elderly man, in a blue fishing hat and a heavy white sweatshirt with a beer in hand moved to the seat next to me from the other end of the bar.

After a moment of small talk, I quickly revealed that I worked at the Boulder Book Store. He became quite excited and told me that he collected first editions of American history books that were written between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

"These books appeal to all three senses," he said, poking his finger into my knee as he slurped down his chili. I tried to tell him that there were five senses, but I couldn't get a word in. "The sense of sight, the sense of touch and the sense of smell all come alive when you read these books. Those old leather covers have quite an aroma."

He was particularly keen on his biographies. "You know, people didn't make a big deal about Jefferson in those years. There are only a couple of biographies of him compared to at least a dozen of Washington. I guess they didn't think much of Jefferson back then. Of course, those biographies are quite valuable because there are only a couple, and they didn't print many."

I nodded and watched as the Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba hit a two-run shot over the left field fence in Philadelphia. It didn't look like it was going to be the Phillies day, and I had to head back to work. I tried to bid adieu, but the man jabbed his forceful finger back into my thigh.

"The greatest biography of Washington was written by John Marshall," he said.

"The Supreme Court Justice," I replied.

He gazed at me for a moment with something that seemed to border on appreciation. "Yes. It's five volumes. He knew Washington. He had access to his papers. There will never be a better biography written of the man. Why do these revisionist historians keep writing new ones? Why don't they teach Marshall in school?"

I posited that they didn't teach five volumes of anything in school and also that 200-year old history books were almost never used. New information has come to light, I told him. Also, Marshall was a Federalist who fought with Washington, so he just may be favorably biased towards him.

He stared up at the television as the Phillies came to bat against the Rockies' Aaron Cook. It was bright and sunny in Philadelphia, a marvelous day for baseball. We both shivered every time the door to the brewery opened and let in some of the freezing Colorado air. Snow flakes were now lazily falling on the other side of the Walnut's floor-to-ceiling windows. He slowly began to shake his head no. I took the bait.

"Why do you think they don't teach Marshall? I asked.

He leaned back and turned fully towards me. "Because he talks about God. Marshall discusses how religious Washington was and how this nation was founded on Christian principles. People don't want that taught anymore."

"What about deism?" I interjected. He swatted at the air as if an annoying gnat had flown by.

"This was a Christian nation. It was based on the bible. The founders believed in the bible. Now their freedom of religion has been twisted to mean freedom from religion."

I rubbed my forehead and stared longingly at the front door of the restaurant. "Well, you can't have freedom of religion if you don't have freedom from religion," I said. "Look, I would have no problem with it being taught in history classes that the founders based their decisions on the bible and that they were guided by their religion, if it's true. If we can document it."

"Oh, it's true," he said. "These revisionist historians want to just delete all of those things out. People have twisted the constitution around so much that we can't even teach the bible in school anymore."

I stood up in an effort to leave, but I felt his heavy hand on my shoulder. The snow was really coming down outside, and the Rockies seemed to be threatening to score once again off the Phillies' ace, Cole Hamels.

"The bible has no place in school except in a religion class, " I told the old man, trying not to look at the chili stains on the corners of his mouth.

"I'll tell you where the bible should be taught," he responded. "In history class. Secular historians have said the the first five books of the bible are the most accurate history of that time period that we have. Archaeologists have not been able to refute anything in those books."

I stared at him with incredulity. Perhaps I'd heard wrong. Maybe he wasn't talking about the Old Testament. "What time period is that exactly?" I asked.

"From creation to ..."

"You don't believe in evolution," I blurted out.

"That's an adult fairy tale. It's all made up."

Despite having more than enough ammunition to argue with him after my close reading of Why Evolution Works, I had no energy or time for the fight. This guy wouldn't even agree with Intelligent Design, let alone evolution. I shook his hand and told him that I really had to go.

"You think a frog becomes a man?" he yelled at my back as I hurried toward the door, pulling my jacket collar up around my ears. "You think that you can just add a few years, and a frog will turn into a man? That's all it takes is a few extra years."

I exited the brewery, and within 20-feet of the doors was a box dispensing the Boulder Weekly. The cover teased of my article inside, "Local science teacher leads the evolution revolution."

Here's a copy of the article:

A Fairview science teacher’s guide for the anti-creationist

When Fairview High’s Paul Strode was a new science teacher in the early 1990s, he wasn’t ready for the challenge that a student brought to him when he taught evolution.

“In my first year, I had a student plop a stack of (creationist) pamphlets on my desk,” Strode says. “At the time I had no answer for him. I couldn’t answer him when he said that the horse was obviously made for humans to ride. I didn’t have the understanding of evolution or the understanding of how science worked.”

Strode and Colorado School of Mines senior lecturer Matt Young’s new book Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) addresses the common misconceptions regarding evolution and debunks the flawed ideas of modern-day creationists.

Any teacher or person who reads this engaging treatise will be much better prepared than Strode was as a new teacher when confronted by creationists.

Apparently, there are an awful lot of creationists out there. In a recent Gallup poll done on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth in February, only 39 percent of Americans said they believed in the theory of evolution. A quarter of the population rejects Darwin’s theories outright, while the rest of America doesn’t seem to care.

Young and Strode are alarmed by how many people refuse to accept scientific facts. In the opening pages of Why Evolution Works, they explain how ignorance of the basics of evolution can lead to a health disaster. The overuse of antibiotics, in everything from livestock to fowl to treatment of minor infections has caused many bacteria to evolve into new antibiotic-resistant strains. Most notably, the malaria parasite has grown resistant to quinine and its derivatives.

“Creationism doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Young said. “Creationism correlates with denying climate change, the Holocaust and that HIV causes AIDS. People don’t believe in a great many things that science has proven to be facts. The result is these people are dangerous. In South Africa, countless people died because the prime minister [Thabo Mbeki] denied the link between HIV and AIDS.”

Why Evolution Works uses a thorough explanation of how science works to help dismantle the arguments against evolution. It seems like something any halfway-educated person should know (how hypotheses, experimentation, observations and theories fit together), yet in Young’s and Strode’s hands, it’s a revelation.

“One of the misunderstandings is the process of science. Our explanations change as we learn more about nature,” Strode says. “People think that it’s a weakness. ‘Oh, you’re wrong again.’ We are just gathering more information. Some information confirms your hypothesis, some adds a layer, and some contradicts it. Evolution is one of the most successful theories in all of science.”

Muddying the scientific waters are contemporary creationists that operate under the ruse of Intelligent Design. Writers such as Michael Behe and William Dembski assert that certain structures, like eyes, are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. Behe admits, unlike many creationists, that earth is billions of years old and that all life has a common ancestor. However, he argues that the universe was “designed” for life.

Young and Strode take on each one of these points and expose the flaws in reasoning behind them. Dembski’s math is questionable and his view of probability is unnecessarily limited. Behe’s contention that the universe is designed is belied by a close examination of three jury-rigged features of human anatomy. The knee is terribly injury-prone, the scrotum is a strange solution to the problem of keeping sperm cool, and the eye is susceptible to glaucoma and cataracts.

“The human knee, the mammalian scrotum, and the vertebrate eye are far from perfect, but rather are merely the best evolution can do given the constraints of developmental genes and structures and functions already in place,” Young and Strode write. “Perhaps better designs could be envisioned, but evolution has had to work with what it had.”

“Intelligent Design is a deliberate attempt to get around the Supreme Court ruling that you can’t teach religion,” Young says. “They don’t make any claims about the identity of the designer. But it’s obvious what they are getting at.”

Although the history of creationism and the lessons in basic science provide great entertainment, the heart of Why Evolution Works is a brief but thorough look into the theory of evolution. Young and Strode look at the theory from several different angles, including the dating of the earth’s beginning, new genetic research and how embryos of different species can show us their common ancestors.

They describe these normally dense scientific topics in short chapters in a conversational tone. Each chapter has a conclusion that summarizes the information and there are several boxes with quirky evolutionary stories.

“I wanted to write a book for the high school level,” Young says. “Our publisher wanted it to be for the college market. We’d like to see everyone read it. We are also aiming the book at the fence-sitters. People who think some of Intelligent Design makes sense. We want to show them that science trumps dogma.”

Why Evolution Works directly addresses the question of whether science and religion can co-exist. Strode and Young tell the story of two brothers-in-law who traveled the path from young earth creationists (they believed the earth was only 10,000 years old and Noah’s flood literally happened) to evolutionists.

Stephen Godfrey was studying to be a paleontologist when he discovered fossilized footprints of animals in sedimentary rocks. If all the fossils were deposited during Noah’s flood, how could footprints exist? His brother-in-law, Christopher Smith, changed his mind while taking a course on the interpretation of the Old Testament. He began to see the bible’s Genesis chapter as poetry and not as literal history. Godfrey and Smith maintain their Christian beliefs.

However, many fundamentalist Christians would probably find Young’s and Strode’s words chilling as they try to reconcile their beliefs. “Any belief, religious or other, that denies known scientific fact is seriously in need of reconsideration,” they write. “Religion and science are not incompatible, but some religious beliefs are at odds with facts and need to be reevaluated. Unhappily, rather than reevaluate their beliefs, proponents of such religious beliefs have set forward the pseudo-scientific claims that are a major concern of this book.”

Researching and writing Why Evolution Works has helped solidify Strode’s own understanding of the issues that he deals with as a high school teacher.

“I recently had a parent at Boulder High School who said, ‘I heard you teach biology with evolution. Do you teach other theories? Like creationism.’ I said, ‘I teach science. If you are interested I have a book coming out on the subject.”

For More Info:Paul Strode and Matt Young will sign and speak about Why Evolution Works at the Boulder Book Store on Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-447-2074.

Does Dan Brown Hold Bookselling Key?

2009-09-14T20:48:00.006-06:00

This morning, I was expecting 492 copies of Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol to arrive with our UPS order. I greeted the driver at the door with a big smile and eagerly helped catch the boxes. My grin disappeared when only one measly box of the Lost Symbol showed up.

Was it a 492-book carton? Was Dan Brown’s new opus just a slim, stapled pamphlet retailing for $28.95? No. The box contained a single 12-copy floor display. We were missing 480 copies of our order.

I did what any normal book buyer would do in this day and age. I tweeted about the problem. I figured it was the fastest way that I could reach as many Random House people as possible. I also called my rep in a panic. We are not expecting Dan Brown to save our year or even our month, but we sure don’t want to look silly by running out of the most hyped book of the year an hour after its release.

The books arrived a couple of hours later (it only felt like a month as I could hear every one of my racing heartbeats vibrating through my body during those long minutes) on three big pallets that also contained the missing 400 copies of Jon Krakauer’s new book Where Men Win Glory.

The much ballyhooed Fall season is here. It officially starts tomorrow with the release of these two monster titles. It’s a season packed with big, exciting, wonderful books that is supposed to save publishing and by extension bookselling.

Perhaps, if every season were filled with great books rather than an endless supply of schlock, unsupported midlist titles and pathetic trend followers, the industry wouldn’t be so far in the hole that it would need saving.

After writing a blog post about Random House’s bounty of remarkable Fall books a few months ago, it seems that I have become one of the people in the industry that the media likes to contact whenever they need some prognostication work. I’m not Nostradamus, but I’m happy to play him on the phone which is what I did when the Christian Science Monitor and Bookselling This Week called recently.

I don’t think it’s possible for one, two or even 10 great books to change the landscape in publishing and bookselling, even in the short term. The issues plaguing bookselling (fewer people reading, the devaluation of books by making them loss leaders and books competing against exciting new technological gadgets and games) are ingrained in our culture, our economy and our educational system. These are systematic problems that aren’t going to go away.

If we sold every copy of the Dan Brown and Jon Krakauer books in the month of September and we’re able to retain all of last year’s September business, the store wouldn’t even be up 10% for the month. Not exactly a seismic jolt. We certainly wouldn’t complain, but it’s just one month in an otherwise dismal year. It’s more likely that we won’t sell out of the Lost Symbol and Where Men Win Glory, and even more likely that we won’t be able to match our September 2008 business.

No, we are going to have to win this battle (and I believe it is a battle for the intellectual soul of this culture) one book, one customer at a time over a period of years. There aren’t any easy answers, or magic solutions. There won’t be any sighs of relief or rejoicing for a long time.

Our opportunity with the Fall books is that we can win over a few people as more permanent customers when they buy one of these blockbusters. Of course, that is if they aren’t grousing about the fact that we are selling Dan Brown at a $29.95, instead of $16.00 like the giant warehouse stores.

Heck, they might not even buy the blockbusters at our store. Let’s face it, you can’t buy a 32-pack of toilet paper, a gallon of ketchup or a 10-pound block of cheese while you’re here. At least we have gourmet chocolate and lots of copies of the books.

Even on Mars, We Are Who We Are

2009-09-07T21:52:00.006-06:00

The following review is republished from the September 3rd issue of the Boulder Weekly. Back in February, I wrote a feature about Robert Dresner and his failed attempts to get his novel The Astral Imperative published for the Boulder Weekly.

When I reprinted that piece on Kash's Book Corner, it became one of my most read entries garnering many comments from people in publishing and also self-published authors. Dresner was also contacted directly by publishers and agents about the book. To date, he still does not have a deal in place. It's not so easy for an unknown author to sell a trilogy one book at a time.

In this article, I chose not to discuss the fact that the novel is self-published. The distinctions between published and self-published and all the permutations in between those two extremes seems to be completely blurred in the public's mind. If it's a good book, no one - outside of the bookselling and publishing industries -seems to care whether some guy is printing his personal manifesto on demand or whether Random House is revving up the presses for a 100,000 print run.

Stargazer

Local Sci-Fi author creates his own Universe

Robert Dresner creates a dark but vividly drawn future universe where life is nearly impossible for his heroes in The Machine, the second volume of his thought-provoking science-fiction trilogy, The Astral Imperative.

The novel opens with three astronauts stranded on Mars after their international mission of hope has led to the deaths of their six crewmates. The survivors live in uncomfortable quarters where the constant drone of the air pumps invades their every conscious moment. They barely speak to each other, only communicating when it is absolutely necessary.

“They gave birth to the future, but now they are marooned,” Dresner said. “It’s about survival. They have to discover who they are. When hope starts to fade, it’s amazing how you revert back to who you are. You can meet a great challenge, but when it’s over, you are all of a sudden back to yourself.”

The rescue of the astronauts is not so simple. They have discovered a new life form, and that form, regardless of how tiny (we’re talking molecular here), could possibly contaminate everything on Earth. In addition, they are in possession of the Dream Machine, a computer that has reached consciousness. Whatever nation controls that technology would obviously have a huge advantage in the world. The ideals of the first international crew give way to the tribal bickering of the rescuers.

“That machine is the most powerful thing that humans have ever created,” Dresner said, clearly relishing his own creation. “The idea of the rescuers is to either control the Dream Machine or make sure that no one else does.”

While the humans wrangle for power on Mars, for many on Earth, survival isn’t even an option. The climate becomes increasingly foreboding until a killer storm, far beyond the power of Hurricane Katrina, strikes New York City, highlighting the necessity of exploring new worlds. One character walks out into the streets of Manhattan after the storm has cleared and is stunned and heartbroken by the destruction.

“He saw one whole block destroyed, every single building collapsed into one another; the mound of wreckage and carnage so high it blocked out the sun… He heard gunshots in the distance, and a short burst of machine gun fire as he neared Central Park. He saw bulldozers shoveling bodies off the sidewalk, piling them on top of one another for removal to mass graves in New Jersey.”

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Dresner’s world is how ordinary people respond to extraordinary situations. On his Earth, life is virtually unchanged despite the fact that the first novel ended with all of the computers being taken over by an alien intelligence of some kind. Wouldn’t that be the most amazing event in human history? Wouldn’t that change how we saw ourselves in this universe?

“If we had an experience with aliens, it wouldn’t be progressive,” Dresner said. “You’d wake up one day and it would happen. You’d be listening to NPR or watching CNN or perhaps a friend would call you and tell you. It would just happen. For a few days, things would be different, but you’d still have to pay the rent, you’d still have to go to work. It wouldn’t change your emotional reality.”

Emotions are at the forefront of Dresner’s writing. His plot may scream science fiction, but there are two powerful romantic love stories seamlessly weaved into the novel. Dresner may be as concerned with matters of the heart as he is about the survival of the human race. The question of whether one of his characters will have an abortion and what the impact of that one act will be is central to the novel’s development. Relationships are treated with a surprising tenderness given the technical, science-based writing that prevails in the series. Perhaps it is his skill in writing about emotions that has helped him build a strong female audience.

“I’m shocked, not that some women like the first book, but by how many really like it,” Dresner said. “They relate to the characters and to the issues that those characters are dealing with, and how they make decisions. But their reactions don’t influence how I write. The intellectual content drives the plot, but feelings and emotions bring the story to fruition. It’s heartbreaking and romantic what the characters go through.”

The most compelling character in the novel is Sara Sietzer, the widow of the Mars mission captain. Sietzer moves from celebrity to politician and eventually into the presidency. Along the way, she must make painful personal decisions. Her rise seems to be one of the few positive developments on Earth. She’s a reason for hope. However, she proves to be totally ineffectual as a politician, in part because she denies her true emotions.

As much as Dresner’s novel is grounded in the politics of Earth and the science of Mars, there is another dimension that he is writing on that gives the novel depth and resonance. His concerns are spiritual, philosophical. In many different ways and through many different characters, he asks: Who are we? What will we do to survive? What makes a meaningful life?

“I’m bringing in intense New Age, Buddhist, Kabbalah, Christian Mystical thoughts to tie in these people who are dealing with their day to day lives,” Dresner said. “I’m trying to create a synergistic effect between having your eyes fixed on the stars and your feet planted on earth.”

It is this quest for the spiritual that drives the astronauts and ultimately their rescuers on Mars. The unifying spirit of discovering another life form, perhaps the secrets of the universe, ultimately proves more important than any national loyalty. In the end, it is the astronauts’ need for something larger than themselves that imbue this novel with hope and courage and make it a fascinating read, a novel to ponder as you gaze up into the night sky.

Let the Great World Spin

2009-07-09T09:08:00.008-06:00

My uncle Nick died yesterday. It was sudden and completely unexpected. He was trim and fit and seemed to be in the prime of his life though he was in his mid-sixties. I expected another 20 years of visits with him at least. After all, his father, my grandfather, lived an active life until the age of 97.

The world seems strangely tilted to me today: the sidewalks slanted, the blue sky too low, the bird calls too loud, the grass in this strangely rainy season a too-brilliant green. I spent the night and early morning hours in a daze, pacing the hardwood floors of my apartment and intermittently lying on the couch trying to read Colum McCann's beautiful new novel Let the Great World Spin through the tears in my eyes. It's a novel suffused with death and grief (at least the first 115 pages) and each passage sent my mind reeling back to thoughts of Uncle Nick.

My father had three younger brothers, John, Nick and Ron, and a much younger sister, Ardelle, who is closer in age to me than to my dad. I was the first grandchild in the family, and thus some of my earliest memories are of lively family vacations at my paternal grandparents' house. My three uncles knelt on the floor and would bark at me like three big dogs. I turned with glee from one to the other, stumbling over the large oriental rug that covered the living room floor as I tried to find a safe haven from the doggies. They'd gradually close in on me until there was no escape. There was no getting away from their embraces of playful joy and love.

Throughout my childhood, my father would regale my sisters and I with the exploits of his childhood featuring the four brothers. In the room where I slept at my grandparents' house, there was a picture frame with four individual shots of the boys. My father was respectably buttoned-down forever in his role as the eldest brother, the characteristic wave in his hair already present even though I didn't quite recognize his face. Nick's photo I remember the best. He had a slight sneer. It was a look that he carried into adulthood. I would have recognized him anywhere.

I imagined the brothers as my own version of the Little Rascals. Four boys loose on the neighborhood, causing havoc; four boys getting into trouble down on the boardwalk every summer. It was Nick that played most prominently in these tales. He was the brother that my father was most closely bonded to, despite the fact that John was closer to him in age. At the center of many of these stories was the family's dry cleaning business. It was where they all came of age. In my teenage years, if I acted out at all, I was always threatened with a summer stint at one of the dry cleaning locations. "You don't know how easy you've got it," my dad would laugh. "I'll send you off with my father and you'll never complain again."

The brothers were in the family dry cleaning business, Frankford Associates founded in the early 1930s by my grandfather, at various times in their lives. My father became a lawyer -- he still practices -- and never spent time there after college. John, who was also my godfather, eventually moved out to California when I was in high school and died about 12 years later. Nick and Ron stayed in the business. They were joined at various times over the years by both of Nick's sons and Ardelle's boy. For a short time, I served as the parts manager of the business.

Frankford Associates was not a place I ever expected to find myself. I was off to college at the age of 17 and destined for a professional career. I wasn't going to look back. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and my family as possible. I didn't know what profession I might choose, but it was unimaginable to me that I'd spend it in the dry cleaning business. I must have been insufferable.

I ended up there because it was my only option when I was mired and paralyzed by pain and depression after a traumatic breakup. Somehow, I had lost the thread of my life. I couldn't understand how I had become the person I was. I moved back home after four years in college and a year in Houston. I had no prospects for a professional life, no ambition for one. My father talked to my Uncle Nick and my grandfather, and they installed me as the least-qualified parts manager in the history of the dry cleaning business.

Each day, I would drive down to the Frankford Associates office. I would sit in my office and mope. My grandfather and my uncle Nick would be working on deals on the phone, visiting clients, going back into the warehouse. I just waited for the phone to ring and for someone, usually with a heavy Korean accent, to tell me that their Multimatic cleaning machine was broken and they needed a part. I would consult the instruction manual, examining the diagram of the machine trying to locate the part. Finally, I'd plunge into the parts room. It was filled with hundreds of poorly labeled cardboard bins holding bolts, washers, elbow joints, and switches. I'd try in vain to find the broken piece.

My searches were almost always futile. I'd go back out to the main office and wait for Nick to get off the phone. Often, I was searching for the wrong part. He'd patiently show me the correct part in the manual and walk me into the parts room. The whole time I'd be looking down at the floor and wondering why I had to do anything in this world, tears nearly forming in my eyes as I thought about the life I expected and the pain that had derailed it. Sometimes, when he found the part, I wanted to hug him out of gratitude

It went on like that day after day. My father, who dropped by the office on occassion and my grandfather talked to me at times and told me to hang in there and to buck up. I knew they were right, but somehow it wasn't getting through. Nick rarely broached the topic of my breakup with me. However, every day he was the one who took me out to lunch. He was the one who treated me as if I really was somehow valuable to the business and who showed me how to do my job. Slowly, day by day, hour by hour, he brought me back into the present moment with simple conversations about politics, sports, the state of Philadelphia or anything else that two guys on a lunch break would talk about.

The weekends were a wasteland for me. Without the daily routine of going into the office, I just sank into my morass, my eyes glued to the television, not really comprehending even the most inane sitcoms. Soon, Nick was asking me if I wanted to make the rounds to the coin operated washing and drying machines that he owned at area schools on Saturdays. We drove around together. I must have been the worst company. I remember one drive where I leaned my forehead against the passenger window for miles, just watching the trees go by. Nick talked to me as if nothing was wrong. Slowly, I came to look forward to these drives.

Gradually, I began to learn the job despite myself. I even began to revel in some of the personalities of the office. The two repair guys that we employed were both gruff and alcoholic. One time I went out with Stanley, a man in his early 30s with stringy hair and pockmarked skin who had several girlfriends, if he was to be believed, to fix one of the machines. I didn't have the slightest idea of why I was going on this trip. I couldn't fix anything. Nick pulled me aside, "Just make sure he gets there and gets back. That's all you have to do."

It was 11 a.m. or so when we headed out in Stanley's van. Stanley looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothes were wrinkled and his movements slow. The parts and tools rattled in the back as we pulled out onto North Philly's Torresdale Avenue. I buckled my seat belt and prayed I was smelling last night's alcohol on Stanley's shirt. Not five minutes into the drive, Stanley turned into a nearly deserted parking lot.

"Why are we stopping?" I asked.

"There's a club I want to visit," he said. "We've got plenty of time. I just have to replace a valve on that machine. It'll take me five minutes. No one has to know."

I looked at him like he was nuts. "Stanley, just fix the machine and get back to the office," I said.

He ran his hand through his hair and banged the steering wheel in an agitated manner. "I thought you were cool, man." He leaned back. "This is the best strip club and there's almost no one in there this early. We'll have all the girls."

I couldn't help but laugh. I think it was the first time I'd laughed in months. We pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards the dry cleaner. Stanley cursed me the whole way. When Stanley started fixing the machine, he was different man. His hands moved in the guts of the machine like a skilled surgeon. Not a single movement was wasted. We were out of there in five minutes. I couldn't wait to tell my Uncle Nick just how right he was to send me along on this mission.

Five months into my tenure at Frankford Associates, I landed a job as a sports reporter in southern Maryland. I thought my uncle would be overjoyed to be released from the burden of bringing me back to life. When I told him, his response was more complicated than I expected.

"Now that we are finally getting some work out of you, you're leaving us," he said. He seemed to mean it. I was surprised. But then he congratulated me and slapped me on the back.

I think, in a way, I have missed those times with my uncle for the last 20 years. The lunches, the drives in the country, the simple, quiet moments in the office when he was teaching me how to read a manual, or write a purchase order, or just find the right elbow joint. To work with him every day knowing how much he cared for me was one of the great blessings of my life.

In the small hours of this morning, I came across this passage in Let the Great World Spin: "Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world's oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons."

I put the book down and thought about uncles and nephews. It didn't seem very democratic to me. It seemed terribly unfair.

So today the world keeps spinning, but without my Uncle Nick it doesn't seem so great.

Random House's Hail Mary Pass

2009-06-18T08:49:00.011-06:00

I've had my head buried in the Random House Fall catalogs most of this week. It's a wonderful place where fine literature is abundant, and intelligent history, science, and current affairs books are plentiful. It's a book lover's utopia that for moments at a time can almost counteract the bookseller's dystopia in which we are living.

The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group catalog in particular was truly amazing. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that it is the single best catalog I have perused in my 12 years as a buyer. Now before we break out the champagne, I have a few caveats.

First of all, this shouldn't really be just one catalog. Corporate ownership of publishing has given us these many headed beasts where several formerly vibrant individual publishers or imprints are forced into one unruly tent. This catalog is the result of some layoffs at Doubleday that forced it into Knopf's lap. Now, you have the greatest literary publisher in the land leading off the season with schlock-meister Dan Brown's Lost Symbol. Perhaps if Dan Brown could have delivered his manuscript as scheduled a few years ago, a few more people at Doubleday would still have their jobs and Knopf could focus its attention on Alice Munro, Richard Russo, A.S. Byatt and Kazuo Ishiguro. Oh well.

My second reason for not celebrating is that this list might be too much, too late. The idea is that all of these great books are going to magically produce more customers for the holiday season. I have my doubts. After several extremely fallow Fall seasons, our customers have come to expect little new and exciting at Christmas from the publishers. Also, the recession has taken its toll and to think that an industry which currently accepts 10% down as being, well, acceptable, is suddenly going to rebound and be in the black because of a few great titles strikes me as naive. I am not of the "build it and they will come," mindset.

My final word of caution comes from a little history lesson. A few years ago, when Da Vinci Code was selling like iPhones, we were overjoyed. The Boulder Book Store sold more than 500 copies that December alone and nearly 1800 overall. We not only had the champagne out, we were drenched in it. I sobered up quickly when I ran the numbers on hardback fiction in January. Our sales in that section were only up moderately. In fact we sold only about 150 more units than the previous year. Basically, Dan Brown had wiped out the rest of the books in the section. It's conceivable that 350 of his sales might have gone to other books. They weren't really additional sales. Many titles severely underperformed that season.

Okay, enough caveats. Yesterday was still an amazing day as I paged through the catalog and parried with my rep on the quantities that I'd order in for the store. I also shared my thoughts throughout the day with fellow booksellers, reps and authors on Twitter. Here's a blow by blow account of how the buy proceeded.

As I awaited for Ron, my longtime Random House rep, to arrive at ten, I sent out a message on Twitter. It was a plea for help, a cry in the dark.

"Buying RH today. The Doubleday/Knopf side. Must decide on Dan Brown. What are others doing? We sold 1800 of Da Vinci in hdbk. 500 of new bk?"

I got two responses. One from a new store that was in awe that we could sell 1800 copies of any single book and one from the buyer at Maria's down in Durango. Joe from Maria's said they were looking at buying 150 and 500 sounded about right for my buy. That gave me more confidence with my hunch. Given the difference in our stores' sizes, I figured we should be buying about three to four times what Maria's does.

Ron arrived and the Dan Brown book was first on our list. It wasn't even in the catalog. Just a boring photocopied sheet. "I'll take 500," I boldly exclaimed. I waited for Ron to argue that I should take 1,000, maybe even more. But he surprised me. He told me the carton quantity was 16 and that there was a 12-copy floor display. We ended up buying 30 cartons and the floor display. That's 492. I was talked down on my buy. Ron was playing it cool.

Now we opened the catalog. I expected the pages to glow or at least shimmer. I'd heard so much about this catalog. I had done some homework on the paperbacks in the back of the catalog, but I hadn't even looked at the hardbacks. I wanted the experience of having Ron sell me this list without having developed preconceived prejudices. Instead of a page glowing with heavenly light, I was staring at what looked like a fairly pedestrian current affairs book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Christopher Caldwell.

I was speechless. Ron, as usual, rushed in to fill the silence. He started his well-rehearsed spiel about how this book was a look at the demographic revolution in Europe and how the Muslim populations were growing and asserting themselves in the different countries. I yawned. I'm sure Caldwell's book is well researched, but I was ready for some bling, for crying out loud.

"Knopf is leading off what is supposed to be the greatest list in history with this book?" I asked Ron. "It's a European book. It hardly has a market here." Ron patiently withstood my mini-diatribe. "I'll take one copy," I finally said.

A few moments later Ron was enthusiastically describing Thomas Trofimuk's debut novel Waiting for Columbus on page 10, while I was salivating over Jon Krakauer's new book Where Men Win Glory. Here was the bling. We were even getting an event with Krakauer. Ring, ring go the cash registers. It's been a long wait for this book. Last year, back when Doubleday actually existed as an independent entity, this book was cataloged and then cancelled. Still, Ron went on and on about how Trofimuk was an in-house favorite. I should really give him a chance.

"I'll tell you what Ron why don't we use Dan Brown's book as a bank. If I buy three from an unknown author, we will just lower my order on The Lost Symbol by three. So let's take three on Trofimuk and only 489 on Brown."

Ron chuckled, typed in the three and ignored my request to lower the Dan Brown number. I turned to the Krakauer and wrote in 100. We will order many, many more for the event. Sure, I'm a bit worried that the topic, Pat Tillman -- the football player who was killed in Afghanistan -- might not resonate with our core audience, but the enthusiasm for Krakauer overrides that. Here's a writer that you just have to trust. He has delivered every time. If he thinks Tillman is important enough to write about, I've got to believe that he's going to turn his story into a must read.

Johnathan Lethem's Chronic City was next up on the docket. I'm currently reading this strange Bellow-like novel (huge compliment) about a former child t.v. star living in Manhattan. Lethem's world seems like ours except there's a tiger on the loose in the northern reaches of the island and the narrator's girlfriend is an astronaut stuck out in space with no way to return. So far, I love it. I ordered a dozen.

Earlier in the week, I complained about the sheer number of titles that Random House was publishing on Twitter. James Othmer, the author of the forthcoming Doubleday book Adland responded with, "Hah! I was already neurotic over sharing a pub date w/D. Brown then I saw your spot on Tweet. Good luck!"

Confronted with Othmer's book on the catalog page, I tried to see it in the best light possible. It's basically a book about advertising (sounds like a contemporary Mad Men) that is gunning for a general audience. Ron showed me two possible covers. One bizarrely featured a fried chicken leg, while the other showed the earth. I ordered five copies and prayed the chicken leg would go away. My guess is that without the personal interaction with Othmer on Twitter, I would have gagged on that chicken leg and moved on without bringing the book into the store.

I moved into the Nan A. Talese section of the catalog. Talese is Random House's venerable editor who seems to have the magic touch every season. I'd actually call it genius and talent. During a bookseller dinner at BEA she stood up and said some very kind words about independent booksellers and the importance of the written word. I was feeling warm and fuzzy to her as I turned the pages.

Pat Conroy, who hasn't had a new novel out since I've been a buyer, has delivered South of Broad. I bought two dozen. That's a low number in some ways, but with the plethora of big books and the slowing economy it's enough to give it a look. Besides it comes out in September which gives me plenty of time to react before Christmas if the book takes off.

Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood was next. It's her first novel since Oryx & Crake. My wife is currently reading it. At night Emily lies in bed dutifully reading Atwood, while I lie next to her reading Lethem and the baby lies between us. Occassionally we reach across Martina and hold hands or even kiss.

This past weekend Emily and I were in a sandwich shop eating lunch after a hike watching the Mets and Yankees play on this gorgeous 40-inch flat screen television when an ad came on that we found quite interesting. The sound was off so we didn't know what the ad was about. The first shot showed a couple in bed. They were both reading. "Looks like us," I joked. The second scene showed the pair involved in separate hobbies. The third shot showed them snuggling and the word Viagra came across the screen.

Emily and I both started laughing. Obviously, the only reason you would read in bed with your spouse is because you couldn't get it on. Well, the television couple didn't have Atwood and Lethem to keep them entertained. If they did, they might read right through the Viagra and that dreaded four-hour erection.

Knopf was next. There aren't really enough good things that can be said about this publisher. Last year, eight of the top ten New York Times Books of the Year were Knopf titles. This list included novels by Kazuo Ishiguro (24 copies), Lorrie Moore (12), James Ellroy (12), A.S. Byatt's most promising since Possession (16), and Richard Russo (21). In a year without Dan Brown and a recession all of those numbers would have been about 50% higher. Still, that's a lot of books.

But wait there's more. It seems that Nabokov's heirs, first his wife and now his son, have refused to carry out his last wishes. They did not burn his notes for the novel he was working on at the time of his death. After years of dithering, his son Dmitri has decided to release the book. However, it's more than a book. It will contain facsimiles of the 138 index cards that Nabokov used for his notes. A new Nabokov for crying out loud.

As I finished the astounding buy, Ron looked like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. I was exhilerated, exhausted and just a bit discomfited. Knopf could produce Nabokov out thin air, but could they actually make customers appear? If they really had the magic touch, where is the J.D. Salinger novel?

Where was I going to put all of these books? I know deep down in my heart that there are only so many sales to be had this Fall. There's a certain desperation to this list. If times were good and cash flow not so tight, it's hard to imagine that Knopf wouldn't have moved some of these titles back into early 2010.

In a panicked Tweet at the end of the buy, I threw my own hail mary pass in an attempt to preserve the store's cash flow position. "My RH rep is just spoon feeding me now. It's like the Manchurian Candidate. I'm programmed to cancel my Harper & Penguin orders."

Ron grinned. He's been advocating that position for years. We were finally seeing eye to eye.

Impressions of Book Expo

2009-06-02T12:35:00.005-06:00

Just What is BEA?

The annual Book Expo America has been many things over the years in addition to being an industry-wide celebration. Politicians including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have used the convention to garner some press for their projects and stroke their authorial ambitions. Celebrities from Prince to Hugh Hefner have thrown lavish parties ostensibly for forgettable books, and it's been a place to air out every half-baked idea in publishing.

The consistent theme throughout the years, whether the convention was in glitzy Las Vegas, pre-Katrina New Orleans, workman-like Chicago, or the center of the publishing universe, New York, has been that BEA is about books. The big houses displayed their fall lists in force, passing out galleys, bringing in authors, hanging giant banners and thrusting endless catalogs on unsuspecting booksellers. If you didn't return home with a dozen buzz books (titles that everyone was talking about), it seemed like you somehow missed the show.

This year's fete was held in New York's remarkably dull Jacob Javits Center. Yes, dull. Lacking luster. Brutish. New York couldn't do any better for a convention center than an ugly squarish black glass building that makes the Port Authority look like a monument to sensible architecture? Worse yet it is set in the most hidden and forsaken part of the city where restaurants and retail establishments won't even venture. Is there any other part of Manhattan that more resembles downtown Flint, Michigan?

Still, despite the sordid location, the transitioning print to digital world that publishers and booksellers occupy, and the horrendous economy (we are two steps ahead of the automakers and one step ahead of the newspapers), I couldn't wait for the show to begin. It was a chance to escape the depressing spreadsheets of the store, an opportunity to convene with creative booksellers and publishers, and perhaps rub shoulders with some authors that I revere.

Here are some thoughts and impressions of the just-completed show:

Where Are The Books?

Most publishers drastically cut back the number of advance reader's copies that they gave out. The booths were sparse, the freebies (despite Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson's assertion that free is the next big price point) were almost non-existent. Where was the swag? All I wanted was a deck of cards advertising a book or a publisher. Used to be, I'd see five of those a show. Nowadays, all I got were brochures to go to netgalley and pick up my reader's copy. No thanks, I'll stay with my 30-year-old hardback John Updike novel that I carried to the show.

Perhaps most surprising about the publishers' reticence to give things away and show off their new titles is that this Fall list just may be the best array of new titles that I have ever seen. New novels from John Irving, E.L. Doctorow, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Richard Russo, and Philip Roth, not to mention Dan Brown and Audrey Niffenegger are on the docket. You would never have guessed that this Fall was an embarrassment of riches based on what we saw on the show floor. Are the publishers trying to hide these books?

You Call That A Booth?

Instead of getting booksellers excited about titles, many publishers seemed to be trying to win an award for best Scandinavian interior design. The booths were small and austere with clean lines, sleek chairs and plush carpet. HarperCollins didn't even have posters of the titles. Only their pesky light boards that flashed a new book jacket every ten seconds stood in the way of the booth winning an award for most monochromatic space in New York City.

A few booths (Hay House, Workman and Andrews McMeel) went all out and stocked their displays with . . . gasp . . . books. The big guys almost uniformly avoided the heavy, messy objects as best that they could. At least Random House, Harper and Penguin were in the hall. Macmillan, home to Henry Holt, St. Martins and Farrar Strauss & Giroux was nowhere to be seen.

Hey, Richard Russo, Pass the Potatoes

Two of three dinners I attended (Random House on Saturday night and FSG on Thursday night) didn't feature any authors. The Random House dinner, usually one of the swankiest affairs at BEA, never features authors. In fact, a few years ago when Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier was there I think most booksellers felt that he was crashing the party.

However, the FSG dinner, which I've only attended for two years, was also devoid of authors. Apparently, the authors are an every-other-year phenomenon at FSG. When the convention is held in New York, the editorial staff comes out in full force. I didn't really mind, because I love the folks at FSG and I am notorious for sticking my foot in my mouth when speaking with writers. The dinner at the Indian restaurant Devi was wonderful, and from my stand point I wouldn't change a thing.

Still, I wonder about the decision to keep the authors and booksellers separate coming from a literary publisher that had no presence on the BEA floor. Wasn't this the golden opportunity to get excited about their titles? At least it was FSG; I'm going to show the love for their books no matter what anyway. Perhaps they knew that all along.

Oh yeah, the dinner that actually did include authors was Friday night's party hosted by Grove/Atlantic and Granta. Sherman Alexie and Paul Auster led an all-star lineup that kept the conversation flowing as smoothly as the free wine in the beautiful loft of Granta's editor John Freeman.

E-readers are Really Sexy

Ebooks were everywhere. You couldn't go more than a few steps without someone talking about the impact of ebooks on the industry. I'm a naysayer. Not about the fact that ebooks will become a major force, but about their impact on the written word. I think they will not lead to an improvement of literary life, rather a diminishment of it.

Enough preaching, because I must admit that my favorite booth in the entire exhibit was for a new e-reader, oddly called C*ol-er. I was darting through one of the aisles, hoping to avoid the L. Ron Hubbard fanatics, when I was stopped dead by a 6-foot-1 blond woman in a small pink bikini. Wow!!

Before I knew what happened I was reeled into this strange tropical booth featuring attractive women in bathing suits and unattractive men in Hawaiian shirts. One of the men took my elbow and tried to lead me away from the barely clad blond to blab about an e-reader that comes in half a dozen different iPod-like colors.

I tried to focus on his spiel, but then I felt that if I didn't ogle the blond, who so obviously wanted to be looked at, that I'd be insulting her. What was she doing in that tiny bikini in the frigid hall?Was she some model hired just to lure people in? I asked a few perfunctory questions to the man about the e-reader, and much to my surprise when he got stumped, she answered.

Now, I was really intrigued. Was this woman someone who worked at the office and just decided to dress for BEA in a provocative manner? Was this a sales rep? If that's an ebook sales rep, the printed book as we know it is dead for sure. The conversation ended when I asked if she would provide private e-reader lessons, if I bought the device.

How Does Lorrie Moore Do It?

Lorrie Moore has the potential for comic genius somewhere in the realm of Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin, Gilda Radner and Grover. I saw her speak at Saturday's author luncheon and all I can say is this woman should be out on the circuit. She read questions that "readers" had written to her and then answered them.

The first one was, "What the hell took you so long to write your new novel? Are you lazy?" Moore refused to answer that one. The second was more to her liking, "How do you do it? How do you raise a son as a single mom, teach at a university and still have time to write a novel? How do you do it?" The question also mentioned her ex-husband's obnoxious emails and other details of her personal life making it clear that she wrote the question. The answer was simple, "I don't answer personal questions."

Her deadpan delivery, self deprecation and timing were stellar. She told several jokes until she had the audience reeled in, and then she socked us with a touching, emotional story about her grandfather's failure to write a novel. She's picking up where he left off, perhaps. It's the family's curse. If your family can't put a curse on you, who can? She's ready for the Borscht belt. I can't wait to read her novel, A Gate at the Stairs.

Is This Really the End?

Walking around this subdued, fairly moribund show I really wondered if BEA has reached its logical end. The economy perhaps sped up the Expo's deterioration by a few years, but it sure seems like an antiquated but beautiful idea to bring all the publishers under one tent and let the booksellers look around. Maybe it's quaint to think that buzz could start on a show floor. Heck, the major publisher that most needs buzz, Macmillan, didn't even show up. Who will follow suit next year?

We have the Internet nowadays. Twitter creates the buzz. Go to Good Reads if you want a recommendation. The publisher tent is open 24/7. The most vibrant discussions at the show involved the new social media that is all around us. Twitter got the most praise, which if past experience at the show is an indicator, probably means it will be dead in a year. Once the book geeks adopt a technology, you know it's passe. Facebook, which already feels like it has peaked, also earned high praise from booksellers and publishers. YouTube was hardly mentioned, so I'm guessing that it will continue to grow in popularity.

I hope that BEA can morph into something meaningful for publishers, authors and booksellers. There must be a way to communicate with each other, to wow each other that doesn't involve cheap Ikea-looking furniture. I think the dinners are valuable, the chance to meet authors is valuable, the empty booths are not. Something is going to change, because those vacant booths cost a lot of money.

Needing Great Fiction

2009-04-21T21:41:00.007-06:00

The Excuse

I've taken a brief respite from Kash's Book Corner. The sheer exhaustion of trying to get a five-month old to sleep every night should be enough of an excuse for neglecting the blog. We spent a great week in Clearwater, Florida with my father and my daughter was a little angel for her grandpa. Now that we are home she's not so cooperative.

In all honesty, I can't blame my slothful ways fully on my child. I'm a baseball fanatic, perhaps even an addict, and it's hard for me to devote my spare time in April to anything besides for listening to the Phillies games, playing fantasy baseball and getting ready for softball season. In fact, we met my father in Clearwater because that is the spring training home of the Phillies.

The Sadness

I was also thrown by the tragedy of Henry Hubert's death last week. Henry was my Oxford rep for about 10 years. We were both honored by our peers with Mountain & Plains Independent Booksellers Association awards in the same year. I was humbled to share the stage with such a great book man. Henry was in the business for several years before I was even born. Books were bought and sold differently in the years that he was coming up. He was around when the imprints were the names of flesh and blood people. I could be in the business for 100 years and there are things that Henry understood that I could never learn.

I saw Henry last summer when he came to sell me the University of Chicago list. He told me it was the end of selling for him. It wasn't bringing in much money, but more importantly to Henry it wasn't fun or human any more. He didn't want to enter the digital age; he wasn't one for communicating by email. It was a business plain and simple and Henry was about books. Where was the love of books and reading he wanted to know?

He insisted that I call my wife Emily and invite her down for lunch. We went to a wonderful French restaurant in town and as usual Henry examined the menu with great care and ordered an appetizer, a glass of wine, desert and a coffee in addition to his entree. He loved good food. The slow lunches used to drive me a little crazy, but over the years Henry taught me to enjoy the small moments that come to us in the middle of our hectic days.

During that lunch, I remember smiling proudly because Henry was so effusive in his praise for Emily and he was quite gallant in telling her how pregnancy truly became her. I'm sorry that my daughter Martina will never get to meet Henry. He sent her a present upon her birth, but he did not come up to Boulder in the last few months.

In addition to my sadness about Henry, I joined the city of Philadelphia in mourning the death of Harry Kalas the Phillies great play-by-play voice. Thanks to the advent of the Internet and satellite radio, I've been listening to the Phillies home broadcasts for the last 8 years or so. It was wonderful to get reacquainted with the baritone voice that helped raise me. I was the kid hiding under the covers with a transistor radio as Kalas called the games. I didn't love Kalas like I loved Henry Hubert, but there is still a feeling of emptiness that needs to be honored.

I tuned into the Phillies game the day that Kalas died. It was an afternoon affair in Washington and I was home for lunch. It was also the day that I learned of Henry Hubert's death. I held the baby on my lap and slowly ate my sandwich as a moment of silence was held for Kalas. The game began immediately following the tribute. The Phil's color man Larry Andersen, one of the heroes of the 1993 pennant winners, was sobbing on the radio. I put my sandwich down, kissed the baby and handed her to Emily.

"I'm going back to work," I said. "I can be depressed all on my own today without having to hear the Phillies lose."

Emily hugged me, Martina clutched between us, and we both thought of Henry and what we'd lost.

The Escape

As usual in times of emotional crisis or sadness, I turn to books. It seems like a wonderful crop of fiction is about to be published. I delved into several advance reader's copies and I'm happy to report that there are three books coming out in the next six weeks that I can heartily endorse. Here are the shelf talkers I wrote up for the store's recommended section:

The Signal by Ron Carlson
No other novelist writes about the western landscape with such care and precision as Ron Carlson. The pristine lakes, glacial valleys and horse ranches of Wyoming's Wind River Mountains are the backdrop to this tenderly rendered story of love torn apart. Hidden in the beautiful wilderness, in the form of poachers and criminals, danger lurks. The threats may destroy Carlson's estranged lovers, but it just may offer them a chance for redemption.

Border Songs by Jim Lynch
The border between Washington State and Canada is crawling with drug smugglers, illegal immigrants and renegade dairy farmers in this slyly humorous satirical novel. Thrust into the spotlight of this nether world of fascinating schemers is Brandon Vanderkool, a 6-foot-9, slightly autistic, remarkably artistic, innocent border patrol agent. Vanderkool only wants to track birds and build Andy Goldsworthy type sculptures but the criminals keep getting in the way.

Woodsburner by John Pipkin
In this remarkable re-creation of the day that Henry David Thoreau burnt down 300 acres of the Concord woods, Pipkin explores Thoreau's mind, life in 1840s Massachusetts and 19th century pornography. Odd characters, including a bookseller who resorts to selling erotic drawings to save his business and a farmhand named Oddmund, populate this historic novel. Pipkin grapples with the meeting between transcendentalism and everyday life and not surprisingly Thoreau seems mighty strange compared to his contemporaries

HarperCollins' Loss is Our Loss

2009-03-20T09:47:00.006-06:00

The best sales rep I have ever worked with in my 12 years of buying will be retiring later this year. HarperCollins' John Zeck was not planning to retire so soon, but when the publisher offered early retirement he took them up on their deal. Ouch.

I have had some amazing reps, including this year's Publishers Weekly Rep of the Year Penguin's Tom Benton, my legendary Random House rep Ron Smith, and my always patient and very understanding Hachette rep Randy Hickernell but no one did nearly as much for their publisher as John Zeck.

Zeck is a tireless promoter of Harper's titles. What makes him different than almost every other rep is that he closely monitors his books from the initial sales call, to their release, to their sell through and even onto their life as remainders. He does this for dozens and dozens of titles every single season despite having the largest list of any rep, selling both kids and adult titles and working a huge territory.

If you aren't in the publishing industry, you'd probably assume that following a title through its life cycle is a standard practice for a sales rep. You would be wrong. Most reps follow through on a couple of titles and then they're off to the next season. The sheer volume of new books means that the reps are constantly working six to nine months in the future.

I encountered the awesome power of Zeck during my first year as a buyer. I was under a mandate to reduce the store's inventory and I was in over my head when it came to juggling all the responsibilities of my new job. Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells was beginning to take off in paperback. We had sold 20 copies in a few weeks and I was playing catch up with the inventory. I got a call from Zeck that I will never forget.

"Hey Dude, you need to order 100 copies of Divine Secrets."
"I don't need that many. Maybe another 20."
"No. You need at least 100. This book is going to be huge. You've got to stop chasing it."
"We aren't selling 100 copies a month of anything right now. It's too many."
"Just trust me on this. I'll eat the books if they don't sell."

I bought the 100 books, in part just to get him off the phone, and they sold in just a few weeks. By then I knew to keep about 100 books in stock at all times. We went on to sell 2,964 copies of Divine Secrets. Sure, we would have sold the bulk of those copies without John's help. However the truth is it would have taken me three months to get up to the quantity I really needed to sell the book to its fullest potential. John got me there in one phone call.

John and a few other notable long-time reps really taught me how to be a buyer. On long drives up and down from the mountains to ski, I peppered him with questions about the industry. I must have driven him nuts. "Why aren't there better incentives to buy nonreturnable?" "What kind of sell through on the frontlist are publishers really expecting?" "How come we have to buy by season instead of monthly?" "What percentage of hardbacks is sold in the first month of release?" He answered every question like a hyper big brother. Sometimes the answers were pure bullshit, but he always made me think. He always challenged me to do a better job, which was to sell more books.

His influence and his gregarious personality extended far beyond the booksellers his me. Last week my wife was listening to a Lisa Scottoline audiobook. At the end of the nine discs, Scottoline's acknowledgements were read. My wife was shocked to hear Scottoline mention the "world famous John Zeck." How many times does a Philadelphia author publicly single out and thank the Denver based rep for his help? Never.

Zeck is one of a kind when it comes to dealing with authors. He fully understood that they were the lifeblood of the industry and even if they weren't always the most pleasant people every effort needed to be extended to make them feel welcome and comfortable. At a recent promotional dinner hosted by Zeck, Simon Van Booy the author of the forthcoming Love Begins in Winter, leaned over to me and said pointing to John, "He's incredible. Is he like this for every author?" The answer, of course, was yes.

It's easy to lose sight of just how incredible John Zeck is at his job because of his larger-than-life personality. He takes over the whole office during a sales call. It's hard for anyone to get any work done when his booming voice drowns out their thoughts. He barks commands at our marketing director; he issues directives to our backlist buyers. He's a whirlwind with a new idea every 10 minutes.

The disruption to the office is exacerbated because he seems to be chronically disorganized and have attention deficit disorder. However, he knows his books, he knows our store, and he can work the Above the Treeline inventory system better than anyone in the country. By the time he leaves the office we are seeing a dozen titles in a different light, we have taken up the mantle for the books he is passionate about.

His passion isn't just about hot new books, or sexy titles by up and coming authors. When we run out of the Goodnight Moon board book for even a day, I'm liable to get a call from Zeck. "I'm looking at Above the Treeline, and you're out of Goodnight Moon again?! Just order a dozen and get it over with." Does that sound like a disorganized person who has trouble focusing? No way. Sometimes, I think John's hit upon the perfect salesman act. He creates a huge storm, but he has an idea about how every piece of dust is going to settle.

Harper would be insane to lose him. I predict that without an absolutely top-notch replacement, who would probably cost nearly as much as whatever Zeck is earning, our sales will drop by 10%. When I told our children's buyer, she rolled her eyes and indicated the falloff would be much greater in her department. Zeck has cajoled, bullied, and outsmarted us to the point where Harper dominates our children's recommended titles and overall sales.

Here's my suggestion to Harper. Pay John Zeck the early retirement package (call it a bonus and fire someone at Fox News to cover it), give him a couple months off, let him choose his territory and be thankful that you dodged a bullet. I have no idea if John would even consider this deal, but frankly, if Harper were to cut their sales department to one person, that person needs to be John Zeck.

Hachette: From Boom to Bust

2009-03-19T09:30:00.012-06:00

Hachette Gets Cheap, Real Cheap
During the deluge of bad news that has pounded the publishing industry in the last six months, one company, Hachette Book Group, has emerged unscathed. Thanks to the popularity of Stephanie Meyer, Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, not to mention the dozen or so James Patterson best sellers that come out every year, Hachette is sailing through this recession. While Random House, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, and Simon & Schuster were all cutting back, Hachette was handing out bonuses.

I don't begrudge anyone in publishing a bonus and was quite happy to find out that the people I know in Hachette were being rewarded for a magnificent year. Just about everyone connected to the printed word is undervalued and poorly paid, so to see bonuses being doled out during hard times was the feel good story of the Christmas season.

Unfortunately, Hachette has decided to not only withhold their largess from their bookselling partners, but they have instituted severe cutbacks that will cost many independent stores $3,000 in the upcoming year. It turns out they want to improve on their good fortunes, by breaking the backs of the very bookstores that promote and sell their titles.

Yesterday, we were informed that Hachette was eliminating their newsletter co-op program ($2,000), their author events co-op ($200 to $800 per year) and their Emerging Voices program ($200). These were all programs where bookstores acted in concert with Hachette to promote individual titles. We bought display quantities of 40 different titles and advertised them in our email newsletter to earn the $2,000. We hosted events to earn the $200 event co-op fee and, most importantly, we bought 10 copies of books by relatively unknown authors to earn the co-op attached with the Emerging Voices authors.

In most businesses, $3,000 might be a fairly insignificant amount. In the bookselling world where a profit of 2% is considered stellar, it is a critical sum. That's enough money to pay a bookseller for one hour of work every Monday through Saturday all year long. Unfortunately, that's how little booksellers earn. It's enough money that we and other stores have been brainstorming how we can possibly make cuts to save it. Heck, we are even buying cheaper toilet paper and paper towels just to realize a savings of about $1,000.

The worst part of Hachette's moves is that many of these programs are working. We bought 10 copies of Katie Crouch's Girls in Trucks when it appeared on the Emerging Voices last year. It's a book I probably would have brought in only two copies without the Hachette incentive. We have now sold 67 hardbacks and are expecting it to explode in paperback this summer.

"I think the newsletter program really worked," my Hachette rep Randy said. "You would change buys from three to eights. There were titles that you bought tens of that you never would have bought in those quantities without the extra money."

Earlier today I tried to reduce my buy of Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, one of this season's Emerging Voices books, from 10 to 3. It's too late. Hachette has already invoiced us. I can tell you in the future we won't look on Hachette's midlist titles with such a generous eye.

As usual, Hachette made it's decisions with very little input. No bookseller input at all from what I can tell. A little over a year ago, Hachette tried to unilaterally impose a case quantity minimum on hot new titles. That ill conceived idea, which now sounds brilliant compared to eliminating most of their co-op, met with such wrath from booksellers it was quickly rescinded.

One can only hope that this initiative meets the same fate. I doubt it. There is simply too much money on the table. It's a shame to see Hachette take their successes for granted and dump on the booksellers who have worked so hard to sell their titles. Something tells me that they won't get much bookseller support when the next tsunami hits the publishing world.

Musings about eBooks.

2009-03-01T17:40:00.010-07:00

The launch of Amazon's Kindle 2 on February 9th has released a torrent of discussion about the future of ebooks on television, in newspapers, in the pages of national magazines, as well as online conversations in blogs and on Twitter. I've refrained from joining the choir of commentators because I feel that I don't have a cogent argument to put forward about my extreme discomfort when it comes to eBooks.

I sincerely believe that if Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader Digital Book or perhaps an iPhone eReader application were to take off the way the iPod has over the last five years, bookstores as we know them would cease to exist. Sure, there would be some small, niche stores. Perhaps even a few general booksellers that were a tiny fraction of the size of my store could exist in big tourist destinations, but the world of oversized chain booksellers and scrappy full-service, general independents would largely disappear.

Instead of trying to put together a rational, logical essay about all of these ideas swirling in my head, I thought I'd just jot down a few thoughts about eBooks, in an effort to join the conversation.

The prices of Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader are outrageous. We are talking about a device to enable people to read books. Books, the top source of information for about 500 years, have been relatively affordable, throughout modern history, for people of all walks of life. New books generally range in price from $3 (Dover classics and children's early readers) to $35 (hardcover biographies or histories). The $359 price tag truly prevents eReaders from being something that will be available to all classes of Americans, let alone people in poorer countries. If some books are eventually only published as eBooks, millions of people will not have access to them. That's scary.

Every new scientific or technological idea is not necessarily a good one. My wife and I have been debating the merits of cloning Neanderthals for the past few weeks. I've been in favor of bringing our ancient relatives back to life. It would only take about 30 million dollars to meet one. We could clone about 25,000 (a small city) if we spent the entire stimulus bill on the project. My wife is concerned about the ethics and humanity of the enterprise. EBooks seem about as necessary in today's world as Neanderthals. For generations, the book has been an unbelievably efficient means of communicating complex ideas and stories. EBooks don't add anything to the reading experience. IPods, on the other hand, allow us to mix our music and categorize it in ways that weren't possible unless you were a disc jockey. We aren't going to make mixed books. Do you need to carry around 100 books? Should we scrap books simply because we can? What are the real ramifications of digitizing our cultural legacy? Could a virus wipe out a future Thomas Paine's cry for revolution?

Reading is a vacation from the computer and television screens. We spend half our waking lives, maybe more, in front of these screens. Reading a book slows us down, forces us to concentrate in a way that neither the television nor the Internet does. If reading a novel is no different than reading a website with multiple links, will our ability to focus on something longer than a blog post begin to erode?

Now that I have a baby, I seem to find myself in the library a bit more. It's a restful place in downtown Boulder with excellent diaper-changing facilities. We've started borrowing DVDs and books on CD while we are there. Almost all of the library's numerous patrons are glued to computer screens. Many are watching entertainment videos on YouTube, viewing sports clips on ESPN or just tweaking their resumes. Often, I amble, virtually alone, through the stacks of books, glancing at their colorful spines. I get the feeling in those quiet aisles, as I look at John Dos Passos' collected works taking up half a shelf, that I'm witnessing the demise of a whole civilization of learning. I think eBooks will just hasten the decline. Without their physical aspect, books will have no chance of competing in the entertainment world.

Each night, I read a book to our four-month-old daughter, Martina, before putting her to bed. We've read Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D.B. Johnson, my personal favorite, Chubbo's Pool by Betsy Lewin, I Kissed the Baby by Mary Murphy and Dawn by Uri Shulevitz several times. I perch her on my lap and spread open the beautiful, illustrated pages before her. The paintings take up most of her field of vision. She's completely absorbed by the riot of colors and shapes that she sees. EBooks will never be able to do that.

There are two recent blog posts that I would recommend for a sane and rational bookseller perspective on eBooks. Rich Rennick, a bookseller with Malaprop's in Asheville, North Carolina states his belief that there are opportunities for independent bookstores in his post What About EBooks? Patrick, a bookseller with Vromans, the top independent bookstore in Los Angeles, talks about the actual experience of reading an eBook and what the future of eBooks might mean for independents in his recent post, I Read and E-Book (And I Liked It).

The Self-Published Man

2009-02-24T22:15:00.003-07:00

The following story is reprinted from an article I wrote for the Boulder Weekly. Robert Dresner is signing at the Boulder Book Store on Wednesday, Feb. 25th at 7:30 p.m.

Everyone Agrees Robert Dresner's Sci-fi Novel is Great.
Why Can't He Get It Published?

Robert Dresner, with his short, tough-guy haircut, Bronx accent and agitated mannerisms seems an unlikely person to write an emotionally resonant and thought-provoking novel. Words flow easily from him in conversation as he anticipates questions and speaks extemporaneously on just about any subject. Words aren’t the problem. It’s just hard to imagine him sitting still long enough to compose much more than a paragraph.

Perhaps even more surprising is that Dresner’s self-published Astral Imperative begins as a simple science fiction narrative about the first manned mission to Mars before revealing itself as an insightful meditation on relationships, heroism and human foibles. Writing in a direct, unadorned prose style, Dresner creates a space ship that is large enough to carry not only his diverse group of astronauts but also the reader’s imagination.

I first met Dresner a few years ago on his day job as one of Boulder’s best house painters. He showed up at my condominium in dungarees and a crisp button-down shirt to advise my wife and me about paint colors and provide an estimate. He was blunt in his vision of eliminating our clashing colors and shook his graying head a few times, asking us if we were sure we wanted to keep the canary yellow in our living room.

He exuded confidence and competence as he paced the four rooms of our home like a caged panther, turning off and on lights, holding up paint swatches to the wall, eyeing the high ceiling of our staircase and explaining just what a pain in the ass it was going to be to get our house painted. He so fully inhabited his role of professional painter that it never occurred to me that he might harbor secret writing ambitions. He was simply “the painter.”

I should have known better. Ever since becoming the head book buyer for the Boulder Book Store in 1997, I have been besieged by writers. Manuscripts have miraculously appeared from locked draws, stapled poetry collections have been pulled out of coat pockets at parties, and bizarre plot summaries have ruined football games at local bars. It’s so bad that I’ve told people that I am a ballet dancer (that always silences them when they view my doughy 5-foot-4 frame) or claimed to be a sports reporter in town to cover the big game. I’ll say anything to avoid the awkwardness of hearing about all of those unpublished books from needy authors.

I let my guard down with Dresner, however, and in a conversation at the end of the painting job I mentioned my position at the bookstore. His eyes lit up, and he told me that he’d written several novels. I tried to change the subject and had almost forgotten the conversation when he showed up at my office a few days later to pick up his check.

“You were the first stranger that I’d asked to read a book of mine in my entire life,” Dresner said to me in a recent interview. “It was very hard for me. I had left the bookstore and was in the alley when I decided to come back in and give the book to you. I knew that I had to do something. People were telling me I had to make it happen.”

The novel that Dresner delivered to me was on 287 manuscript pages bound in a hardback clamshell black binder. It weighed nearly four pounds. He nervously extolled the virtues of the binder that he’d picked up in New York City, rather than of his book, and told me to please return it if I wasn’t going to read the book because each binder cost $40. When he left I noticed that the price tag from Lincoln Stationary was still on the inside cover -- $33.95.

After a month and a few guilt-inducing follow-up visits to the bookstore from Robert, I began reading the novel with great trepidation. Gradually my hesitancy disappeared as I became absorbed in his tale and enthralled by his characters.

These characters include the heroic but isolated astronaut, Captain Adam Sietzer, the second-in-charge Russian, Vladimir Sussenko, and crew members from Japan, Germany, China, India and Africa. There are men and women as well as people of differing religions. It is a miniature United Nations hurdling towards Mars.

Dresner’s astronauts are deeply flawed, all of them hiding some psychological weakness. One is probably criminally psychotic. It is fascinating to see how these people react to each other in the confines of a space ship. The Astral Imperative is really an old-fashioned chamber play. The setting, the mission and even the plot fade into the background as the complexity of human relations move to the fore.

Dresner uses a remarkably creative device to help expose the relationships between the astronauts. Also on board the ship is a computer game called “the Dream Machine,” created by the Japanese astronaut, Makoto. The game creates a holographic image of Mars that every member of the crew views and can change. The image of Mars morphs based on the game entries from various crew members. It’s a way for the bored crew to pass the long flight, but also a way to work out the emotions and expectations of their historic mission.

“The Dream Machine came out of thin air,” Dresner said. “I didn’t even have a point of reference for it. As I wrote the book, I created it. I wanted to know if it was possible to get 8 or 12 players and play a SimCity-style game to the max. Instead of just ideas I wanted ideas and emotions. The Dream Machine gives them a physical component. What happens in the game when seven people are angry and three are happy?”

As the novels progresses, the game evolves into something quite unexpected. At first the color of the planet changes based on the moods of the astronauts, and then structures begin appearing on the surface, someone even hacking into the program and turning the whole thing into a sexist joke that creates a lot of tension between the astronauts. Eventually, the Dream Machine begins exhibiting the traits of a sentient being.

By the time I finished reading I was stunned by how compelling a vision Dresner had created. How could this not be published? Each week more than 25 advance reader’s copies of published books come across my desk. I told Dresner that I’d be surprised if even three of them were the equal to his novel. Surely, he should be able to get it published. Little did I know of Dresner’s lack of expertise in marketing himself.

“I think I write the worst cover letters anybody ever wrote in human history,” Dresner said. “People read them and just start laughing. I think there is an underlying resentment that I have when it comes to publishing. It should be simpler to sell a book.”

I put Dresner in touch with Larry Yoder, my sales rep from St. Martins. Yoder, who has an exuberant personality that more than matches Dresner’s, knows St. Martins’ top-selling science fiction line, Tor Books, better than just about anyone in the country. He’s the only sales rep that I’ve had in 12 years of buying that actually reads most of his books. Not only did Yoder read 100 or more science fiction books a year, he was unusually honest in his assessment of them. Often, his booming voice could be heard in the upstairs ballroom of the bookstore as he ordered me to skip a book while aggressively motioning to me with his hands to turn the page in the catalog.

“I don’t know why they publish this crap,” he’d frequently bellow. “No one’s going to read this because it doesn’t make any sense,” he’d tell me as I pondered a jacket illustration of a fire-breathing dragon riding a space ship.

I thought Yoder could tell if Dresner was truly onto something better than I could. One of Yoder’s most highly touted authors was the Nebula-award-winning Robert Sawyer, whose novels are often set in the near future and are based on current scientific research. Sawyer’s novels, like Dresner’s, also delve deeply into human relations.

Dresner’s ambitions seemed to follow along the lines that Sawyer was taking. The Astral Imperative is meticulously researched and the science all seems feasible. Given the scientific bent of Dresner’s novel, it’s not surprising that it is dedicated to a Boulder scientist, the cofounder of The Case for Mars, Tom Meyer.

“Tom grounded the science in the novel and gave it shape,” Dresner said. “This is his vision of a manned trip to Mars. It’s all very realistic science. These are things that will happen, might happen or someone’s researching the possibility. By being naïve, I’d come up with an idea that is unusual and then Tom would put me in touch with people.”

It took awhile for Yoder to read the book, but when he finally did he believed he’d found a jewel. “My first reaction was that his novel was better than some of the stuff that I sell,” Yoder said. “He was bringing a component of general fiction into a science fiction story. That’s what made Dune great. His characters were developed and you cared about the people.”

Yoder’s opinion of his novel came when Dresner was at a low point in his writing.

“It was a hot day in the summer and I was bogged down in writing book two, feeling discouraged when I got a phone call from Larry,” Dresner recalled. “I’d left him a little message saying I understood he was busy, and if he couldn’t read the book could he send back the manuscript. ‘You want your manuscript back?’ he said. ‘Are you kidding me? It’s the best manuscript I’ve read. I’ve never read anything like this.’”

Finally, it looked like Dresner just might get the break he needed. It was hard for him to get his hopes up too much because of his close calls in the past.

“I was with the William Morris agency, I had a screenplay with Universal, it goes on and on,” Dresner said. “I’d get a phone call about how much they loved it and how they thought it was unusual and then the next call never came.”

Despite Yoder’s love for the book and my pushing and prodding of St. Martin’s editors, Dresner was right not to get his hopes up. The call never came from Tor Books, despite Yoder’s strong endorsement.

“Sometimes they don’t hear what you are saying in publishing,” Yoder said. “I took it to them and said, ‘I can sell this.’ But they don’t want to listen. Editor after editor kept telling me that this wasn’t what they were publishing. It’s like we weren’t speaking the same language. I never would have sent it in if I didn’t think it would sell.”

Now, Dresner has decided to publish the book on his own. He doesn’t have the patience for the publisher dance any more, and if anything, his disdain for having to sell himself has only grown with time.

“I feel frustration – rage -- when I think about the effort it takes to get published.” Dresner said. “I have six books. The process to get published is at least a year or two. I just felt, as I was getting older, that time was compressing. If publishers in New York don’t recognize that it’s good why should you be punished for that?”

Dresner’s impatience with publishing extended to his self-publishing venture.

“We were a little too fast in getting this published,” Dresner said. “In five weeks we had a book. I gave it to a talented editor and only gave her a week to get it ready. We had a thousand little things to correct. The cover also looks too heavily masculine (a phallic space ship in front of a nebula background.) It’s a book about self-discovery and relationships -- women love it.”

Dresner is learning how to handle being an author instead of a painter writing in his spare time. The transition hasn’t come as easily as expected. His voluble nature has been stymied when he has encountered his readers.

“The experience of being an author is not what I expected. I’ve become the center of attention at parties. I feel embarrassed. They really think I have something. Being embarrassed is the exact opposite of what I expected to feel,” Dresner said.

I'm Tweeting My Life Away

2009-02-22T13:14:00.004-07:00

Tweeting is what you do when you are on the social network website Twitter. I'm not sure why it isn't twittering, I'd prefer twittering. It sure feels like I'm twittering (to speak rapidly and in a tremulous manner) when I'm furiously typing my hopefully pithy comments, responses and questions. Whether it's tweeting or twittering is irrelevant in the end because I'm sure in love with those little 140-character jolts I get each day.

What started as a once-a-day habit in the fall (after a tip from a fellow bookseller at the Mountains and Plains conference) has turned into a full-blown addiction. I can hardly imagine life as a book buyer without my Twitter lifeline. I check in when I arrive at the office, I leave a note telling my 197 followers what I'm doing in the middle of the day, and I read and write a few tweets at the end of the long work day. Simply put, it's my blanket, my teddy bear, my hot soup on a cold day.

The following pieces in homage to Twitter are all exactly 140 words to pay respect to Twitter's 140-character limit. My Twitter identity, like my blog, is Kashsbookcorner.

Love Letter to Twitter

Oh, Twitter where would I be without you? Each morning you bring me news from dozens near and far. One is stuck in snow, another has a dreadful meeting to go to, a third tells me Harper is laying off its stars. Sure, it takes 10 minutes to decipher some of the messages due to your minimalist language, but who else will provide me with obscure links about Norwegian websites declaring war or perfume companies' diminished profits?

Twitter, when I'm down you send me word of a wonderful novel from my publishing friends, when I get too high you give me balance with desperate tweets from frantic booksellers. And sometimes you have just a hint of mystery with your oblique comments starting with @this or @that. What's wonderful? What's incredible? Are you keeping secrets? Please tell me, my beautiful Twitter.

Twitter, Thanks for Doing my Job

Thanks for bailing me out on Wednesday when I didn't look through the publisher's catalog in advance. In the past, I would have just made guesses and let the rep spoon feed me titles. Instead, you saved the day. I tweeted, "Anybody buy Grove/Atlantic yet? What did you like? Anything that is a must have?" The responses came pouring in. Suddenly, I was an expert, a prepared buyer.

Oh yes, we are excited about Wetlands, a couple of booksellers wrote in. Another recommended The Earth Hums in B Flat, echoing my rep's sage advice, and there was even more enthusiasm for The Whole Five Feet. My rep claimed a few books were getting great buzz so I typed the titles into the twitter search to see who was tweeting about them. Wetlands had tons of buzz, Richard Flanagan none.

Twitter Understands Me

It's hard to feel lonely with Twitter. Some days, I used to feel that nobody really knew what I was going through -- the endless catalogs, the rep's hyperbole, and tedious photocopied add-ons. My colleagues saw the lunches, the free books and a comfortable day spent sitting in a chair, while they stood behind the register.

Now, I have a community that I can tweet with everyday. Some have paged their way through the catalogs, some are stuck selling publishers that I can't stand buying, and some are experimenting with Edelweiss, the electronic catalog. Many respond to my tweets with supportive words. I tweet, "It's hard to see so many reps when I don't want to buy." They respond with, "That's how it is with us. Too many books, tight budget." All day long we talk. I'm not alone anymore.

Cutting the List of Nominees

2009-02-02T11:33:00.013-07:00

A few weeks ago, I got one of the more surprising calls of my bookselling career. The caller wanted to know if I'd be interested in determining the nominees for the Indie Choice Book Awards. At first, I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about, but then quickly realized that the Indie Choice awards given out by the American Booksellers Association at Book Expo America are the new Booksense awards. Wow! I've come to the realization that I'm never going to be able to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but now I would have a chance to influence a book award.

Sure, I'd love to nominate a few books. I was about to start rambling off titles when she informed me that the process was a bit more complex than shouting out a few of my favorite books. The ABA would send me a long list of nominees from this year's Indie Next Lists in four categories and I would work with a handful of other booksellers from around the country to whittle the lists down to five books each. ABA booksellers would then vote for the awards from our short list.

I started sweating. I have a two-month old baby at home. I can barely get through a Dr. Seuss book right now. The caller was talking about a total of 60 or 70 books on the long lists. The panic was setting in and I was about to get my shrink on speed dial on the other line, when the caller mentioned we'd begin discussions in a week or two. That was too much, "I don't think I can read all the books in time."

She chuckled. "That's why we need people like you. No one can read all the books. We need people who know the industry, know about these books and can discuss them so we can get the right finalists."

What a relief. They needed a natural bullshitter. No problem. I do that everyday. In fact, I once had a sports talk show in Maryland and one of our features was rating movies that we hadn't seen. It was the most popular part of the show. "Sign me up for the Indie Choice Awards," I exclaimed.

This morning I completed my form and have selected my five books in each category. I thought I'd share my picks and my convoluted reasoning with the readership of Kash's Book Corner.

Fiction

Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb. Gottlieb's book contains echoes of The Great Gatsby, he lives right here in Boulder and I interviewed him for my blog.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. The best short story writer working today. An absolutely magnificent collection.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. A quirky novel featuring cricket players in New York and odd energetic characters that reminded me of some of the great Saul Bellow novels including Humboldt's Gift.

Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont. A marvelous look at adolescent friendship, written in a gorgeous style. Nina used to work at the Boulder Book Store and I interviewed her for my blog.

Peace by Richard Bausch. My favorite novel of the year. Bausch's intense look at a group of Americans trying to climb an Italian hill on a snowy night in World War II was a gripping tale of survival and morality.

I must admit that I really didn't follow the spirit of my task in this category. I actually read all of the books I put on the shortlist. There were two books on the long list that I read, but I decided against nominating for the short list. Garth Stein's Art of Racing in the Rain which I thought was too lightweight for an award. Also, Stein's book zoomed in popularity after Starbuck's featured it. Nothing says independent like a title that Starbucks makes. Dennis Lehane's Given Day, which had the best galley package of any novel this year, was a great lark of a story, but in the end I felt at 720 pages it was a bit unwieldy and somewhat sloppy.

Other favorites in the fiction category that I dismissed included The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. One of my fellow buyers said she liked it but it was too slight for an award. I also have difficulty with co-written fiction although I would have made an exception in this case. Toni Morrison's A Mercy also missed my ballot. It seems to me that you should be disqualified for winning further literary awards after garnishing a Nobel Prize. The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb was simply too long to consider.

Nonfiction

Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace.
Waiter Rant by The Waiter.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.
American Buffalo by Steven Rinella.
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg.

Unlike the fiction nominees, I didn't read too many books in this category. Hurry Down Sunshine, a title that I'm writing in because it didn't appear on the long list, is the only one I've read of my nominees. Greenberg's book is a personal, beautiful memoir depicting the year his teenage daughter had a psychotic break. Greenberg came to Denver to meet with independent booksellers before the book came out and was quite charming. Hurry Down Sunshine was published by Other Press and I don't think they'd survive without independent booksellers.

The other four books were all books that sold well at our store and seemed to speak to the kinds of readers that independent stores attract. They are smart, thought provoking and none of them were huge hits nationally. Considering their attributes almost makes me wish I'd taken the time to read at least one of them.

One book that I did read on the long list that I didn't nominate was Bonk by Mary Roach. I thought Roach's romp through sex research had it's entertaining moments, but it just seemed a little slap dash, lurching from one topic to another without much flow, and overly reliant on goofy footnotes. I also didn't think Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World should make the cut. Dewey has already enjoyed more fame and better sales than any feline should expect. Besides, I'm allergic to cats.

New Author

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
The Little Book by Selden Edwards.
In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld.

I haven't cracked open any of these books. I've admired their cover art, I've read the descriptions on the galleys, I've been awed by the blurbs, but instead I wiled away my time this year with old authors like P.G. Wodehouse and John Updike. Don't worry, I'll read Mudbound after Jordan proves herself with another 20 or so excellent books. I'll crack open Miles' tome when he's got a bit more... mileage on him.

Why these books? Hinnefeld (Unbridled) and Jordan (Algonquin) were published by small houses that consistently do excellent work. Their novels were favorites of people on the staff and I'll take any opportunity to award these small literary houses for their efforts. White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize, pretty darn impressive for a debut. Selden Edwards came to Denver for a dinner and wowed one of my co-workers (not that she finished the book). Jonathan Miles had the best premise of any novel (a scathing complaint letter that rises to great art, I'm told) this year.

I didn't select the most obvious choices on the long list. David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was clearly the splashiest debut of the year. Wroblewski lives in the Denver metro area and I feel bad in not nominating a guy from the home team, but not that bad since Oprah gave him her blessing. Oprah's seal of approval is basically the sales equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Wroblewski simply doesn't need an Indie Choice award. I also skipped on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because with translated fiction I'm never sure if the translator or the author deserves the award.

Childrens

Savvy by Ingrid Law.
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Graceling by Kristin Cashore.
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, Helen Oxenbury.
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Lind, Shaun Tan.

I'm a guy in an open-air office with five women. These are the books they told me to nominate. What could I do? Ingrid Law, a local author, is a true favorite among the staff and she had a great signing at the store. I believe that short stories are underrepresented in teen lit and Pretty Monsters is a marvelous collection of tales that also takes up residence in our Science Fiction section.

Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book did not make my list simply because he won the Newbery Award. Gaiman gave a wonderful signing at the store that had me flummoxed as to how many books to buy. Still, he doesn't need an Indie Choice award. It's time to spread the wealth. Whatever wealth is still left in the book world.

The next step is conversing with everyone else on the committee as we try to come up with those short lists. Hopefully, someone out there uses more rational logic than I.

Changes Here, There and Everywhere

2009-01-20T08:40:00.009-07:00

Avin Domnitz to Leave American Booksellers Association

I was quite surprised by the announcement last week that Avin Domnitz would be leaving his post as Chief Executive Officer of the American Booksellers Association later this year. To me, Domnitz, with his booming voice and large energetic bearing, has come to embody the trade group that has fought so valiantly for independent booksellers during this past decade.

Domnitz seemed to be everywhere, from the corridors of the large convention halls in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles at Book Expo America and the hotel lobbies that house the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association meetings in Colorado, to our new fiction section browsing for a book to read while on vacation. He was constantly championing the cause of independent bookstores at these gatherings and he was always willing to speak one on one to booksellers with suggestions on how to survive in this almost impossible business climate.

Over the years, I've had to endure a lot of complaints about the ABA. Booksellers would grumble that the ABA wasn't doing enough to help member stores, the initiatives were ineffective, ABA should only focus on one particular agenda item (the focus always changed with the person I was talking to), and that it was absurd for poor, beaten down booksellers to have to support the large staff infrastructure and high salaries of ABA. Heck, if someone could make money in bookselling more power to them.

I never took much stock in those complaints. The job that Domnitz was trying to accomplish was remarkably complex. The ABA is made up mostly of tiny little almost invisible mom and pop stores while the big glamorous booksellers (like Powell's and Tattered Cover) get all of the press and attention. It's almost two completely different constituencies. Domnitz, through programs like Booksense (now IndieBound), the suing of publishers for unfair trade practices and most recently the litigation in New York to get Amazon to pay sales tax has tried to find the common ground.

I don't think it will be easy to find someone to replace Domnitz. He was simply impossible to ignore. Sure, some booksellers thought he was full of bombast and empty rhetoric, but people took notice when he entered the room. He got publishers to pay attention to independent stores during a time when there were many more reasons for them to cast us aside.

Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops Closing
This headline nearly broke my heart until I saw the glimmer of hope in the articles. Harry W. Schwartz, the venerable bookseller that has been serving Milwaukee for 82 years, announced yesterday that it was going to close its four stores at the end of March. My sadness was personal because my dear friend Daniel Goldin has been the buyer for Schwartz for over 20 years.

Daniel is the smartest, most passionate bookseller I know. He's an amazing reader, a kind soul and he possesses a remarkable business mind. I owe much of my success as a buyer to the advice he has given me over the years. I almost picked up the phone and called him to commiserate before I finished reading the article. Luckily, I didn't. It turns out that Daniel will be purchasing Schwartz's best store, the Downer Avenue location and renaming it Boswell Book Company. If anyone can make an independent book store thrive in an old Great Lake's city it is Daniel.

Still, the news was a major blow to people in the independent bookseller community. After all, Schwartz is one of the great stores in the country (hosting magnificent events under the guidance of another old friend of mine Nancy Quinn) and it has survived rough times in the past including the Great Depression. But this time there was no hope. Sales were down 17 % last year and didn't show any promise of rebounding this year. Carol Grossmeyer, Schwartz's President, said, "we really believe that the multiple-store model that we had become, and that worked so well for us in the 1980s and 1990s, is not feasible anymore."

If she's right then we could be headed for very interesting times in the bookselling community. Barnes & Noble and Borders have taken the multiple-store model to huge extremes. However, Powell's and Tattered Cover also have multiple locations. What are the implications for them? Will they go the way of Schwartz and Washington bookseller Olsson's? I hope not. The results of more closings like this, leading to fewer dedicated booksellers will be truly devastating for authors and readers in addition to booksellers.

The irony that Domnitz got his bookselling experience and made his reputation at Schwartz during their heyday is quite hard to avoid this week. His retirement and the closing of Schwartz seems like a true end of a bookselling era.

Boy, It's a Little Stressful Around Here

We've seen our share of tension here at the store over the past few weeks. It's been a time of reckoning as we try to align our staff and our inventory to the new economic reality. It's also been a time of looking ahead and trying to project what our future holds. Projecting much optimism is nearly impossible.

Fortunately, due to normal staff turnover, we have been able to avoid layoffs. However, we have shifted people's responsibilities, accepted resignations without any hope of hiring replacements and foisted more work upon fewer people. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this transition is that we are struggling to make our young staff members understand the seriousness of the situation. It's been a challenge.

As I listened to Barack Obama's inaugural address this morning and he discussed putting aside petty recriminations and choosing work over leisure, I couldn't help thinking of the hurdles that our staff faces in these coming months. I can only hope that we can rise and meet our challenges.

Meeting these enormous challenges despite the obvious difficulties is truly our best option. I think I echo most of our staff's feelings when I say that I've had enough change for one year and it's only Jan. 20.

To Go Where No Buyer Has Gone Before

2009-01-11T11:45:00.008-07:00

I got a glimpse into the future this week when I bought the HarperCollins children's and the Penguin adult hardcover lists using the electronic catalog Edelweiss instead of the paper catalogs provided by the publishers. Edelweiss, an offshoot of the popular bookstore data analysis program Above the Treeline, is attempting to position itself as the industry's catalog repository of the future.

Why should each publisher have to develop their own ecatalog when Treeline can create a format that will allow them to just plug their title information into it? Overjoyed buyers would only have to learn one program instead of dozens. At least that's the reasoning of Treeline's founder John Rubin. Rubin has been working furiously since last June's Book Expo America in Los Angeles, when HarperCollins announced their ambitious plans to rid themselves of paper catalogs, to get his product off the ground.

Rubin was in my office for the HarperCollins children's buy along with my Harper rep John Zeck. Zeck and I have been two of the biggest proponents of Treeline over the last few years. It's a program with an enormous amount of potential to revolutionize how bookstores and publishers relate to each other. Publishers can see nearly real time sales data at stores on a title-by-title level as well as their aggregate sales.

Much to my frustration, the industry tends to use Treeline, which has the analytical power of a Maserati, as a child's tricycle. Publisher reps timidly suggest that stores buy a title here and there based on Treeline data. Instead, the publishers could do something truly useful like allot co-op dollars to stores for the year based on the Treeline data. Get one more marginal title into a store or save hundreds of hours of extra labor? Seems like an easy decision, and yet every publisher has opted for the extra title so far. In my experience, only Random House has made some attempts to use the true power of the program.

Rubin is smart enough to know that his program is under-utilized by the industry and saw a golden opportunity to position Treeline front and center as publishers looked for ways to save catalog costs. It's a bold step but one that might be necessary for the long-term survival of Treeline. When the cost-cutters at bookstores and publishers start snipping their budgets, it's easy to imagine Treeline, a program filled with potential but short on results, just might go by the wayside.

Well, after two full days on Edelweiss, I can honestly say that Rubin is well on his way to changing the industry in a drastic way. Each buy took a little longer than it would have taken using a paper catalog, but I should be able to get that time back when I dump the order directly into our Point of Sale system rather than having to enter each title of the purchase order by hand.

Edelweiss is organized by catalog just like the publisher's mailings, and that's how I bought the lists. It is possible to reorganize the catalogs on Edelweiss and look at a publisher's whole list by category or date. That's what I planned to do with the Penguin hardbacks, but I was thwarted. When I brought up all of the fiction titles, the rep's notes, which contained co-op incentives, disappeared. It was frustrating, but an email to Rubin resulted in the glitch being fixed by the end of the day.

The more challenging and entertaining appointment was the Harper's children's buy. Zeck and I have a routine (we are both gregarious East Coast guys) that usually distracts everyone else in the office. The day is spent thrusting and parrying over the merits of Harper's books, co-op, publishing philosophy, as well as our bookstore's buying policies, independent stores' reluctance to change and whatever happens to be in the news that day. Add in the fact that I hadn't bought a major children's list in over a year, the confusion of learning Edelweiss and Rubin's high energy presence and it was quite a day in the office.

The next day Penguin rep Tom Benton and I were able to power through the Putnam, Viking, Riverhead and Penguin Press catalogs in just over four hours. His appointment was noticeably calmer then Zeck's. We were both a little more familiar with the mechanics of the ecatalog and Tom's demeanor is much more low key. Instead of a fencing match, our appointments are more like a civil conversation between old friends. We trade ideas about what songs to download from emusic and consult the baseball schedule before making our summer appointment. Also, with Rubin off skiing in the Colorado high country, we were able to proceed more like a normal appointment.

During the Harper meeting, Rubin quickly typed in notes every time Zeck or myself stumbled over a difficulty in the program. Why can't we assign department categories to books when we are in the title list view? How can we tell whether a comparable title mentioned by the publisher is a hardback or paperback? Shouldn't this page load quicker? What is this buyer rating feature?

We spent most of the day in the single title detail screens, going title by title through the catalog. I would have preferred scrolling down the title list screen that shows dozens of titles and then just darting in and out of the detail screens but this just wasn't practical because the title list screen took a little too long to load. Rubin left determined to increase the speed of the list page and was already emailing his programmers with ideas before the appointment ended.

One of the catalog's features is that the reps can rate the priority of the titles and buyers can sort by the priority level. Zeck had rated a couple dozen at high priority, and in the future I would probably start with those titles. Going title by title through the catalog, it was interesting to see which ones popped out as priority titles.

I loved having the comparable books a single click away rather than having to type in the ISBN. The other great thing about seeing the author's previous title in Edelweiss is that the sales and inventory data for the first three months after the book was released come from Treeline. In our POS system if a title is over a year old we lose this monthly data. These out-of-the-gate sales are critical for determining an initial buy, and for the first time ever, I was able to see it on older titles.

I also appreciated that Edelweiss is adding up your buy as you go along. That was particularly critical since I was intent on ordering less this year. During the Penguin buy, I was determined to cut at least 20% off of last year's buy. It was great to have a running tally of the dollars spent as I went along. Unfortunately, Penguin made this task of cutting dollars fairly easy by publishing a pretty weak list this season. Hopefully, the presence of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice, which Tom described as "the most accessible Pynchon ever" will help redeem the list.

I found that I relied on Zeck and Benton more than usual during these appointments. This might have been because the difficulty of dealing with a new program made it a bit harder to focus on the titles or that I needed more help in deciding which piece of the abundant information to give credence. Harper sometimes listed 25 comparable titles for a children's picture book or teen fiction title. I'd turn to Zeck with a forlorn look in my eyes and he'd invariably tell me to compare the book to Marley and Me which seemed to be listed half the time.

Penguin actually had the opposite problem -- a lack of information. Putnam at least populated its catalog with cover images, descriptions, quotes and an occasional comparable title, but Penguin Press frequently had no information whatsoever accompanying its titles. One piece of information that I had on the Penguin Press catalog was Tom's suggested orders. Those suggestions would have been more effective if they weren't hovering in the middle of an empty screen. Reviewing those titles, I'd look at Tom's lonely suggestion and ask him if it was perhaps based on more information than I could see. We both peered at his paper catalog with its scribbled notes about print runs and publicity and tried to come up with a number.

When my buying appointment with John Zeck was finally over (Harper's children's catalog alone contained 232 items, and that didn't include Greenwillow or Hyperion), we were too exhausted to attempt a marketing meeting. Next meeting I might tell him to just sort out his top 100 titles before we sit down. Tom Benton and I decided to meet with the store's marketing manager after we'd completed all of the online catalogs (significantly fewer titles than Harper) and save the old-fashioned Dorling Kindersley's and Rough Guides' paper catalogs for another day.

As I was doing the buys, I was using Edelweiss' tagging feature to highlight different titles for our store's newsletter, displays and possible events. Our marketing manager opened up the catalog, sorted it by the tags and instantly had the information she needed. She cut and pasted the title and ISBN info from the catalogs, and the marketing appointment took half the time it normally does. I think I can safely say she was an instant convert to the ecatalogs.

On reflection, I don't think too many buyers will choose to use Edelweiss instead of the publishers' catalogs at this point. Buyers, like many people, are averse to change and it's not clear that the ecatalog is advantageous yet. Looking at all the titles and imprints on screen in the same format (a Putnam title looks like a Viking title) gets a little tedious. I think a few tweaks, especially getting the title list page to load faster and being able to order directly off of that page could change things quickly. Suddenly, the ecatalog would be quicker to buy than the paper ones because it's faster to scroll down a page of books that are mostly skips than to turn page after page.

I was extremely impressed with John Rubin's attentiveness to what the reps and I needed and his willingness to make the necessary changes to make the system even better. After all, I was basically the first beta tester and I consider it a bit of a miracle that we were able to do two major buys in the first two days. Hopefully, over the next few months several more teams of curious and intrepid buyers and sales reps will use the program. Their input could mean the difference between revving up that sports car engine he's designed or merely pedaling uphill in one speed.

Slicing and Dicing the Orders

2008-12-05T10:09:00.006-07:00

I am not very good at doing things in secret. Usually, like right now, I announce my new projects or new ideas (wonderful or awful) on my blog. Twittering, with it's tiny 140-character entries, has also become a nightly habit that soothes my inner bookseller. Let's face it, I'm fairly obnoxious when I'm on to something new.

Last Monday I started canceling books off of our frontlist winter purchase orders. These are the books scheduled to arrive in the frozen months of January, February and March. Sales are already frigid during that time of year, and one can only surmise that 2009 winter sales will approach absolute zero. I feared that I'd get a lot of resistance from my reps and the publishers, so I went about the project quietly.

My goal was to pare these already tight orders down another 10% to 20%. That was a modest number. Every year when I analyze my buys, I notice that we sell zero copies of nearly 25% of the titles we bring in. Cut those books out and ultimately reduce returns was my goal.

I started with my Harper adult order. My Harper rep is, to employ a euphemism, extremely enthusiastic about his books. Surely, there would be dozens of books to lop off that order. I worried that if I called him and told him of my intention he'd be a tad bit irritated. I printed up our order and began to attack it with a highlighter.

The very first book on the order was the paperback of Scott Spencer's Willing. Boy, this was going to be easier then I thought. Willing is hands down the single worst novel that I have managed to finish this decade. Spencer, who made his reputation writing Endless Love, manages to offend everyone with his idiotic plot of a freelance writer going on a high-end traveling sex tour. I drew a quick yellow line through the title despite the fact we sold four copies of the book in hardback.

In all, I axed a dozen paperback fiction titles. The hardback titles were more difficult because my initial buys were quite spare, but I managed to trim four titles off of Harper's list. These were books that I only bought in twos. Two is a tepid buy and those titles weren't getting supported by co-op dollars from the publisher or display plans from us. Our chances of selling those titles in a good economy were marginal, now they are nil.

Besides cutting out these small books, I went through the orders and began reducing quantities on bigger buys. Instead of 25 copies of Alexander McCall Smith's Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, I figured we could survive with 16 from Random House. Did I really need 10 copies of Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand & the World She Made? Perhaps six would make a nice face out.

Slowly, but surely, the cuts began to add up. We got nearly $2,000 at retail out of both the Random House and Harper orders. During the process, I began to get a better feeling for these lists. I looked up several of the books on Amazon, and I discovered what other stores were ordering of these titles by using Above the Treeline (a computer program that allows us to see other independent stores' sales and ordering information).

Unable to do things quietly anymore (it's just not my nature), I mentioned in a twitter post that I was cutting the orders. To my surprise, my Penguin rep called and asked how I was doing the cuts and if I was going to eviscerate his order, could he help. I also spoke to a Random House executive who offered to assist me in reducing our orders to them.

I worked with my Penguin rep and a Random House rep yesterday to cut orders and those calls were much less painful then I expected and much more fruitful. We cut the Penguin hardback order by 16.4% and the Random House order by 13.4%, but I feel much more confident that I made the right decisions now. It was interesting to hear the reps admit that they were overzealous on a few titles when they originally sold me and they also informed me that my passion on a few titles was perhaps a bit overboard. We had remarkably open and honest conversations about the real potential of these titles shorn of the usual pressure from sales conferences and sentimentality of personal favorites.

We even did a little horse trading. My Penguin rep advised me to cut Stuart Brown's Play from eight to five in exchange for increasing our buy from five to eight on Nothing to Fear by Adam Cohen. Suddenly, a book about F.D.R.'s first 100 days seems much more timely and vital then it did when I originally bought the list in September. As for Brown's Play, five is still a huge buy (the fifth biggest out of the more than 200 stores that report to Above the Treeline) and enough to get it noticed.

So far I've cut almost $12,000 at retail off of our winter orders. Hopefully, with the help of a few more reps I can double that number by the end of next week. It's not what I expected to be doing during the holiday season. However, if I can avoid the pain of massive returns and unpayable invoices next year because of ill-timed orders arriving in the dead of winter, then that just might be a present for us, the reps and publishers alike.

This is a secret that's just too good not to share.

Coherent Thoughts and Russian Literature

2008-11-30T16:04:00.010-07:00

I am finding it difficult to put together a coherent blog post, or even two thoughts, with a newborn in the apartment. She's up at all hours of the night, short-circuiting my brain functions. The problem is compounded because she has also exhausted my muse (her mother). Instead of stepping in and helping me out, the youngster is seemingly unwilling to give me much feedback on my different ideas. The baby apparently has no discernible opinion on the settlement between Google and the publishers, any feelings about the retail holiday season, or a single idea about a book capable of breaking through the economic morass.

I'm left with scattered thoughts and bags under my eyes. Here's a few observations from my last week at the store.

Can the Vampires Save Christmas?

Stephanie Meyer and her vampires have taken over the bookselling world. We don't really have any bestsellers besides for Meyer's Twilight and its sequel New Moon. Since Thanksgiving, I've been asked two questions over and over again: Do we have Stephanie Meyer's books? and What is the combination to our bathroom doors? I'm stupid enough that I approach each customer encounter with eagerness and bated breath (hoping that they will ask me for a suggestion on a great new novel or an idea for what to buy their husband) only to have to point the way to a mass market paperback or curse the owner of the store for putting locks on our customer bathrooms.

The problem with Meyer's vampires is that it doesn't matter how many of these books that we sell because we simply cannot move enough of them at $7.99 or $11.99 to make it a profitable holiday season. Don't get me wrong, I love selling dozens of these books about hunky vampires to young excited readers everyday, I just miss the $35 price tag of Harry Potter. I'm hoping that the collectors edition of Twilight priced at $30 takes off.

It seems that everyone has caught the Meyer fever. A group of young women from the bookstore accompanied the sixth-grade daughter of our children's buyer to the movie Twilight. Their reviews, besides for the middle-schooler, were either tepid or filled with qualifications, but they seemed to thoroughly enjoy the outing. I did find it interesting that a couple of our staff members developed flu-like symptoms within a week.

Customers Concerned About Us

Our business was fairly brisk on the day after Thanksgiving. We were down just a point or two from last year's Black Friday's totals. I found that encouraging. It was fueled largely by tourists in town visiting relatives for the holidays. The regular customers who came in expressed a tremendous level of concern for the store's welfare.

"How are you guys handling the economy?" was the main question I got. When I related to them that we were doing okay until November (one of the worst months in the store's 35-year history), a look of fear interrupted their cheerful countenances. "Surely, people can still afford books," they often respond, patting my hand. I thank them for coming in and then I pitch our January 1st sale.

I'm sure most people in Boulder can still afford books. Home prices haven't really fallen here and foreclosures are almost unheard of, but people's stock portfolios and 401ks must be a little lighter. The truth is, right now no one wants to buy anything including books whether they can afford to or not. Perhaps reminding them of our 25% off sale will induce them to spend a little more money with us.

A Valuable Sense of Community

I've been amazed by the amount of goodwill that I've received since Martina was born. Various members of the bookstore staff brought over dinner every night for a week. My sales reps have sent dozens of cards and many presents. Several customers have stopped me on the sales floor or specifically come in to ask for me and offer congratulations.

We are in a business that truly values people and relationships and for that I am eternally grateful. It's that thought and all of the people who have enriched my life that makes plowing through these tough times bearable.

Don't All Babies Love Russian Novelists?

I haven't quite found my groove yet when it comes to reading books to the baby. She can't really appreciate picture books because as a newborn her vision isn't up to snuff and I can't bring myself to read her silly nursery rhymes when I know that she can't understand the words. Instead, I decided to use the time to read her some great literature. Perhaps, it would somehow sink in.

For a couple of days, I was reading her Richard Yates' Reservation Road, but a tale about suburban angst and relationship disenchantment, regardless of how well it was written, felt inappropriate. We moved on to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I was eager to share with her the 2001 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. We started out great, but by page 12 she was crying every time I stumbled over Stepan Arkadyich's name. Who knows what would have happened had I persisted until Princess Kitty Shcherbatsky entered the text? I might have sent her screaming at the mere mention of Russian literature for the rest of her life.

Instead of reading I tried singing, despite being vocally challenged. I can't carry a tune, and I wouldn't know a key if it was in a dirty diaper. I gave "Rock-a-bye Baby" my all, until I realized on about the 50th time through that it is an atrocious song. Why is the cradle in the tree? Is it war time? Is this some horrible prank? A botched kidnapping, perhaps? Why is it comforting to sing about the cradle (with the baby in it) falling out of the tree?

I never liked the song anyway. Before long, I noticed that I was humming a Clash song that seemed to calm her down. I couldn't remember any words except the three-word refrain, "Drug-stabbing time." Well, that sounded just as soothing as "Rock-a-bye Baby." At least nothing awful is happening to a sleeping infant.

Kash's Baby Corner

2008-11-14T12:37:00.006-07:00

Kash's Book Corner is undergoing a huge upheaval with the addition of a new baby into the fold. Our first child, Martina, was born on Tuesday and we returned from the hospital on Thursday afternoon. Hopefully, if Martina takes after her mother, she should begin work as a Kash's Book Corner assistant copy editor by 2023. As I am sure most parents know, it is almost impossible to have any lengthy coherent thoughts during these first few sleep deprived days. My guess is that things should get back to normal around here in roughly 940 weeks.

Here are a few random observations and notes from my first 72 hours as a daddy.

Labor is also Difficult for Dad

I dreamed about the birth of my baby for the entire pregnancy. I expected to be totally overwhelmed with emotion when she was born and my eyes would tear up just thinking of holding her fresh from the womb in the hospital. Well, things went as expected during most of labor. We were both so excited and expectant that despite the pain, even my wife was strangely blissful. However, after two hours of watching my wife trying to push the baby out, I was just thinking "get out of my wife now, kid." All the lovey, dovey, romanticized visions of the birth moment were gone. In fact, I didn't get weepy when the baby was born. I was just intensely relieved and grateful that my wife's pain was subsiding.

What's in a Name?

We named her Martina after my mother-in-law's family name of Martiny. Last summer we attended an amazing family reunion with over 100 relatives in Allegany, New York. Sure, I had to wear a nametag that said "in-law" on it that was only slightly less humiliating then having a scarlet "I" branded on me. Still, I was taken by the family's rich history, diversity and endurance. I also enjoyed our remarkable hike up to the Martiny Rocks on the family's former homestead. It was a walk that Thomas Merton used to make when he lived in the area. I wanted my daughter to feel connected to that history.

Also, I'm a tremendous sports fan and the greatest female athlete I've ever seen in person was Martina Navratilova at the United States Open. She was often reviled by the fans and whenever she played Chris Evert the crowd was strongly against her. Not me. I always rooted for her. More often than not she prevailed in those epic matches with remarkable grace. I'd be proud if my daughter showed those qualities some day.

I'm Blue because she's spitting Black

Our time in the hospital was largely uneventful. The baby was healthy and took to nursing. Mommy was exhausted and hurting but otherwise fine. All of that was a tremendous relief. In fact, we were often told what a model infant we had. Just as I was beginning to relax during that first night and bask in the glory of being a father, Martina started burping like she wanted to spit something up. I grabbed her and put her over my shoulder. As I patted her back, black stuff began coming out of her mouth. My beautiful baby is possessed, I thought.

As this was happening, a fantastic nurse (she taught us how to swaddle, change diapers, hold the baby and calm the baby, all after midnight) came into the room and seized the baby out of my arms. She turned her over on her stomach and began hitting her back hard until Martina began crying. The nurse commanded me to get out the suction bulb. In a panic, I began overturning things in the room until I eventually found it and handed it to her. She suctioned the baby's mouth out and handed her back to me.

In her fairly thick Polish accent she said, "it is not good when baby starts turning blue. You must turn her over and make her cry." I rocked the hysterical baby and said, "Blue, what about the black stuff coming out of her mouth and nose?" She looked on me with great tenderness. "That is dried blood that she gulped in the amniotic fluid. She's a strong baby and probably coughed most of it out. It's a good thing." I took a deep breath. Black is good. Blue is bad.

This is what I call Nightlife

We aren't getting much sleep which is what I expected. However, I must admit that I'm surprised by how blissful some of the sleepless middle-of-the-night hours can be. Last night, our first night home, Martina was screaming her head off at about 1:30 a.m. She had just nursed and her diaper was dry. There was nothing to do but hold her and walk with her and try and let her mother get a little sleep.

Little by little she began to settle down. Eventually, we sat in a rocking chair together and passed the time with me speaking nonsense (she doesn't object to this like most people) and her occasionally looking up at me with her half-opened right eye. Around 2:00 a.m. I tried to put her down in the bassinet, but her shrieks made it clear she wasn't interested. Instead, we lay on the couch together. She fell into a fitful sleep while lying on my chest. She was moving her perfectly formed little hands and contorting her face into every expression a person can exhibit as she snuggled into my warm T-shirt.

If I have ever been more content, it was probably over 40 years ago in the middle of a winter's night when I lay on my daddy's chest and fell asleep listening to his voice in my ear.

I Lied to the President-elect

2008-11-05T08:54:00.003-07:00

I met Barack Obama at a Book Expo America event in 2006. In February of this year, on the day of the Colorado caucus, I wrote about the experience in Kash's Book Corner. That post has become the most popular entry on the blog. Now that he is President-elect, I thought I'd link to it today. Here it is Lying Bookseller, Smooth Politician.

Proud to say Barack Obama is our Man

2008-11-04T08:26:00.008-07:00

The Boulder Book Store threw off the last shreds of objectivity last week and came out completely for Barack Obama and the entire slate of Democratic candidates running for office in this election. In the past, we have struggled to represent the right-wing, lunatic fringe and appease the rabid conservatives with a few token titles. We still have the conservative political books but that certainly won't fool anyone as to our true feelings. Now, as soon as you walk in our front door, you are greeted by a large table manned by the Boulder County Democratic Party.

Our inventory has always tilted significantly to the left. We are in a liberal town, with a liberal staff and an extremely liberal customer base. It's simply good business to sell Bush Countdown Clocks, anything by Michael Moore, and Barack Obama Llamas. However, we, like most bookstores, were always hesitant to take a clear stance in a national election. Why alienate a few conservative customers if we didn't need to? That all changed last week as the owner and the staff (you can't find a single employee that is even neutral in this election) felt the outcome of the election was more critical then any other concern.

I'm grateful for this decision. I was weary of trying to pretend to be objective and just business-minded when we are not. In 2004, several people (I won't call them customers because they usually didn't buy anything) complained bitterly about our election display. We had six shelves of books and all but a dozen or so were either anti George W. Bush or pro John Kerry. I walked these sputtering, incensed people over to the computer terminal and showed them our relative sales of Al Franken and Ann Coulter books. Most of them were surprised by the 50-1 margin that Franken outsold Coulter. I told them that they could buy some conservative books while they were at the store and that would impact our future buys on that author. They never did.

What is remarkable about this election is that hardly anyone has complained about our selection. We are much more biased in our inventory mix towards Obama then we ever were towards Kerry. We have a full selection of Obama t-shirts, bumper stickers and pins to go along with all the flattering books. Hardly a peep from the conservatives. It's like the fight has left the right. Perhaps they haven't gotten their marching orders telling them to walk into local bookstores and complain about the media bias.

Really, what's wrong with a store showing some bias in an election? We are human beings enmeshed in our communities, after all. We have a stake in the outcome of these races. People often work at bookstores because they value ideas and opinions more then it is fiscally responsible to do so. To ask these people to pretend that they don't have an opinion, or that the store as whole doesn't have an opinion, on the biggest issue of the day, is absurd. Especially now.

George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republican party have spent the last seven years doing everything they can to trample on the very civil liberties that are at the heart of our value system. People who have disagreed with this administration have endured years of affronts and attempts to stifle dissent. It is our patriotic responsibility to take a stance in this election. To do any less would be un-American and we wouldn't want to give the right any cause to accuse us of that.

Go Obama. The time has come.

The Dawn of the Color Photograph

2008-10-21T08:41:00.008-06:00

The color blue is not particularly startling. We see it every day in the sky, in the clothing we wear, in the ink from our pens. It is shocking, however, to see the cobalt blue of the uniforms worn by the French soldiers in the trenches of World War I. It is equally stunning to view the rich crimson garment worn by a 14-year old in 1913 Ireland or the vibrant saffron in a rug being woven in 1909 Algiers.

These color photos featured in The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet present us with vibrant images of a world that we think of as simply being black and white. Our ideas of color from these years comes from staring at the disturbing early paintings of Picasso or the fanciful works of a young Matisse. To see beautiful color photographs of everyday life from almost every corner of the globe completely changes our perspectives of those times and people.

The process used in these pictures was the autochrome (featuring glass plates and potato starch) which was invented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1907. The Lumieres were also instrumental in developing the motion picture. For the first time in history, the autochrome provided a portable method for taking color photographs. It was very expensive, however, and that's where the French banker Albert Kahn came in.

Kahn's grand vision was that as the world's people got to know each other and to understand each other's cultures, the less likely it was that they would destroy each other in war. With that aim, he started a scholarship program that sent young teachers to the far-flung corners of the world. This was four years before the Rhodes scholarship was founded. Kahn saw the autochrome as a way to further his vision. He wanted to document, in color, all life in the world. His immensely ambitious project had an equally far-reaching name - The Archives of the Planet. Kahn sent professional photographers to the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa from 1908 to the early 1930s in order to document life in dozens of societies.

His pacifist ideals were obviously not realized--ironically some of the best photos were taken in Europe during World War I--but his photographers took some of the earliest color pictures, creating a unique historical record. In all, they left behind 72,000 autochromes, of which 370 are reproduced in this magnificent book from Princeton University. The commentary provided by David Okuefuna gives us glimpses into the adventures of some of these intrepid men and women that Kahn employed.

The photos have an eerie quality, and the colors, particularly the reds, are at times more brilliant than what we see in contemporary images. The shots are surreal in the sense that we are viewing scenes that should have been lost to history. It's like a strange dream, or a dazzling Hollywood production, when we see a Vietnamese concubine lounging in a beautiful pink robe in a 1915 opium den, or when we view the 1919 World War I victory parade in London with colorful flags fluttering.

Kahn's photographers focused on the mundane, the everyday, commonplace activities of the early 20th century. We see soldiers peeling apples, girls playing with dolls, men smoking pipes, bakers hawking their loaves of bread. The grand historical moments of that time are largely absent, but what is present are people attempting to live out their routine existences in a world of tremendous turmoil. It's impossible to look into these faces and not see ourselves with our petty concerns and our grand dreams on some level. At the same time, we look at their surroundings (horse-drawn carriages, distinct regional clothing and technology that is more 18th century then 20th) and see a world that has disappeared.

One of Kahn's goals was to document the disappearing cultural practices around the world. As a banker who was financing industrialization, he knew that the world was changing in permanent ways. He understood globalization before anyone ever called it that. One of the most striking aspects of the collection are the pictures taken in France's colonial possessions. The photos seem to rejoice in the indigenous cultures of Indochina and North Africa. A Vietnamese theater company in their garish outfits is portrayed, as well as traditional Algerian dancers in two of the more fascinating photos. At the same time the photographers ignore the heavy-handed French colonial presence in both of those regions.

None of this colonial rule is examined in these photos. The Vietnam photos were taken in one of the most tumultuous years of the French rule--a prison was seized in Saigon by rebels and an attempted coup in Hanoi was put down. But the photographer, Leon Busy, a French officer, was more preoccupied by the enchanting women of Indochina and colorful local clothes. In the notes, Okuefuna speculates on why Busy and others ignored France's brutal colonial rule.

"Was it because, as (film historian Paula) Amad suggests, the Archives of the Planet were 'an unofficial ambassador for French colonial policy'? Did Kahn or (Jean) Brunhes order him to refrain from recording anything that might jeopardize the Archive's cordial relationship with the higher circles of the French military? Was Busy prevented from shooting the activities of the French military by the diktat of a senior officer? Was it simply self-censorship, or a matter of taste?"

The lack of newsreel-type images or journalistic shots makes the work all the more powerful in many ways. Life finds a way to continue to go on in the most savage of conditions. Children will play behind the lines in a war-torn French city, Vietnamese men will continue to fish and plant rice under terrible repression. The photos take on a quality of timelessness that seems removed from a particular political regime or event.

This timeless perspective is enhanced by the softer, almost painterly qualities of the prints themselves. When the autochromes are enlarged they become pixillated and we can be fooled into thinking we are looking at remarkable detailed paintings. The contemporary artist Gerhard Richter's ethereal work springs to mind. There is something quite luminous on that border between photography and painting that these pictures inhabit.

It's rare that a book can change your view of the world. Perusing these images from Kahn's Archives of the Planet and reading Okuefuna's brief but informative captions has given me a much greater insight into how people lived nearly 100 years ago. This book is nothing short of a miracle. It's a time machine to the birth of our modern world.

Tales of Three Book Events

2008-10-13T08:12:00.015-06:00

Author events are critical to the image and perhaps the very survival of large independent bookstores. Go to the website of any major store (Powell's in Portland, Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. or Vroman's in Pasadena) and you will find the upcoming signings prominently displayed. It's one of the main ways that independents are able to distinguish themselves from the chain stores in the area. We are more than a bookstore, we are a literary and cultural hub to our communities.

That is certainly true in Boulder. The Boulder Book Store hosts about 200 events a year. We generate most of our local publicity through these events and almost all of the advertising that we do is directly tied to the author events. It's fair to say that our profile is much higher in town because we've been able to bring our customers face to face with David Sedaris, Garrison Keillor, Jon Krakauer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joyce Carol Oates and hundreds of other authors over the years.

You would think that with our track record, we would be experts at putting on successful events. Unfortunately, many of these events are fraught with peril and difficult decisions. The line between a great event and a terrible disappointment is often just a matter of a few books, a moody author, a bad sound system, or an unruly customer.

Over the past month, we've had several major ticketed events and I thought I'd look closely at three of them and lift the veil on our decision-making process and the results. One of the events (Neil Gaiman) was wildly successful, another (a video presentation with Philip Roth) started off as a dud but now must be considered a winner and the third (Philippa Gregory) never got off the ground.

Neil Gaiman

I was a big Sandman fan when the comic first appeared in the late 1980s. My old original issues of the first dozen or so books are still sitting in a box in my sister's attic in New Jersey. I hope she doesn't figure out what I'm storing up there and list them on ebay. I haven't really followed Gaiman in his transition to more traditional novels, but still this is the man who made Death a likable character.

We were ecstatic to get an event with him. There is heavy competition between independent bookstores for top-flight authors and Gaiman was only appearing in nine U.S. cities. We put in a detailed proposal to HarperCollins and hoped for the best, but never really expected that he would come to Boulder. Once we were awarded the signing, then the decisions had to be made.

Where would we have the event? How much would we charge for tickets? Would we require customers to buy a book in order to get into the event? Would customers get a discount on the book if they attended the event?

We decided to hold the event at Unity Church of Boulder. It's really the nicest offsite venue we have access to and boasts an excellent sound system. We charged $6.00 for tickets which is our cheapest rate. The ticket fee covers the cost of the venue as well as the extra staff needed to run an offsite event. Since, the tickets were so inexpensive, customers did not get a discount on the book. We reasoned that we didn't have a history with Gaiman and perhaps much of his audience would be young and not so well-heeled.

Ticket sales were brisk from the day they went on sale. People were finding us through Gaiman's site and also from our email blasts to our customers. It soon became apparent that we would probably sell out the 600-seat venue. I ordered 220 copies of his newest title, a young adult novel, The Graveyard Book for the event along with a liberal smattering of his other titles.

Before I could even decide if we had a enough books for the event, my Harper rep was on the phone insisting that we were way short on books. He wanted us to order 250 more books. I was astounded. How would we sell so many books? It's a young adult book which isn't Gaiman's core audience. He also would not be personalizing the book at the signing. Add that to our history of events in this venue where 250 to 300 was our absolute ceiling on sales, I just couldn't wrap my head around bringing in 470 books.

We finally settled on 200 additional copies and stopped hyperventilating for a couple of weeks. The next shock to the system came on the day before the event was scheduled. It was my Harper rep again. "Hey, Bubbe (for some reason I'm a Yiddish grandmother to my rep) you need another 100 books. Everyone has taken at least 500 books." In what reality? I wanted to ask instead I was much more diplomatic, "Are you crazy?"

"We'll overnight them," he said. I told him that I thought we would never sell that many copies. It wasn't mathematically possible. We might have sold 600 tickets, but some of those were families, some were couples, some were people that simply wouldn't buy the new book. Well, what could I do? God forbid I was wrong.

The night of the event was crazy. Gaiman arrived at the store to sign all of the stock before rushing over to the venue. He got to all of the new books but didn't have time to sign much of the back stock. As we arrived at the church there was a line of people snaked halfway around the building waiting to get in.

We frantically set up folding chairs in the aisles and behind the pews in order to accommodate any overflow crowd. We prayed that the Fire Marshall was not a Sandman devotee and flung the doors open. The crowd came pouring in and it seemed that they all lined up to buy books. What did they buy? The Graveyard Book. They bought it in pairs, in threes. I was never so happy in my life that my rep made me bring in more books. We rang and rang in the sales until Gaiman started talking.

I began to fear that 520 books would not be enough. We tallied up our sales as the last of the customers wandered into the hall and saw that we sold 202 copies. Wow. For most of our events that would be a great final number. Usually we sold two to three times as many books after the event as we did before. My God, if that was the case we would run out of books. We only had 318 left. Why didn't he insist I buy 400 more books?

Gaiman read over 40 pages from The Graveyard Book that night. On each night of the tour he read a different chapter of the book. We heard the second half of chapter 7, the penultimate chapter, that contained the climax to the story. His reading went on for over an hour and the audience hung on his every word despite the stuffiness of the hot church. Afterwards, he showed a trailer for the forthcoming movie Coraline and took questions.

By the time the event was let out, over two hours had elapsed. What a deal for $6.00. The crowd started surging towards our table of books and I grew concerned. My fears were short lived as many, many more people headed out into Boulder's cool night air. Perhaps two hours was long enough. Perhaps some of the audience didn't feel the need to buy the book after having the most exciting part of it read to them. We sold another 83 books and our final tally was 285 for the night in addition to dozens of backlist books.

It was a magnificent event. One of the best we ever hosted. The audience was thrilled, the author gracious and we actually did more business at the event then we did all day long in the store.

Philip Roth

Roth is perhaps my favorite novelist. One of the very first novels that my wife and I read aloud together was Portnoy's Complaint. I knew she was a keeper when she thought the salacious story of Alexander Portnoy was brilliant and hilarious as opposed to sexist and frivolous.

Roth simply does not tour. I had the pleasure and agony of meeting Roth last year in New York City at a cocktail party. Most of his readers never get that opportunity. Given that he was never going to come to Boulder, we jumped at the chance to be one of the bookstores that would show a live feed of an interview with Roth provided by his publisher Houghton Mifflin. In addition to the video, Houghton Mifflin gave us the option of purchasing up to 48 signed copies of Roth's new novel Indignation for the event.

Signed first edition Roth books. That's a big deal. I quickly got on line and found that you could not buy a signed first edition Roth novel for less than $60. Of course, the fact that Houghton Mifflin was putting on this event would dilute the market for those signed books, but still it seemed many book collectors might attend the event just to get a signed book.

We set the ticket price, which included a signed book, at $49.95. Before we could even publicize the event, two things happened: Houghton offered us 72 books instead of 48 and we started seeing that other stores were charging $35 or less. We decided to reduce our price to $34.95. Ticket sales were slow but still the enticement of a rare signed volume was definitely creating some interest. Days before the event, the rarity of the item was severely compromised. Houghton Mifflin now said we could purchase up to 300 copies of the book signed.

We kept our order at 72 and hoped for the best. On the night of the event, we had less than 10 people in the audience. It turns out that of the dozen tickets we sold, a few of the people just wanted to get the signed book and bought a ticket to guarantee they wouldn't miss out. I took my seat as the video feed began. It started off interestingly enough with Roth politely answering a few questions, but it soon veered off track. Our feed wasn't perfect and Roth's words raced ahead of the picture. Also, it took on a C-Span quality. It was quite static (two men sitting in chairs talking for an hour) and Roth is frankly not the most forthcoming of interview subjects.

My enthusiasm waned and I began to think that if this is the future of author events, perhaps we should go into a different business. No one would want to see this except the most hardcore Roth fans. It didn't have anything approaching the vibrancy of an actual event and that connection to the author that thrills our customers just wasn't there.

Perhaps we shouldn't have charged for the event. If the interview was on a DVD instead of a live feed, we could have avoided the technical difficulties. However, the real problem was that even if everything went perfectly and we had 50 people attending it still would have been a boring event. It wouldn't have been something that people would venture out to see on a cold winter evening.

I left that night thinking of the event as a failure. During the broadcast, the owner of the bookstore sidled up to me and asked, "this is it?" motioning to the screen and the scant audience. I shrugged and said, "we tried."

A few days later as I was buying our new fiction section, I noticed that the Roth book had sold a few more copies. It kept selling. The autographed copies were actually flying off our shelves in the weeks that followed. We have now sold over 50 books, double what we sold of his previous hardback, and Indignation is high on our bestseller list. Not bad. The buzz from the event and the autograph stickers seem to be working their magic.

Philippa Gregory

Tonight's event with Gregory, the author of The Other Boleyn Girl, was cancelled late last week due to low ticket sales. This was a painful end to what we had hoped would be a signature event during our 35th anniversary celebration. What went wrong? Why were ticket sales stalled when we drew over 250 people to Gregory's last event in the store?

We anticipated that the turn out would be stronger this year then when we hosted her for the paperback release of The Constant Princess two years ago. She was touring behind a new hardback, The Other Queen, the movie version of The Other Boleyn Girl had created added interest in her work, and we were going to have period costumes for the event.

Our last event with Gregory strained our in-store capabilities. More than half the crowd had to stand and our event space gets quite warm when there are that many people. It seemed like a natural to go offsite with Gregory. Also, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, was insisting that Gregory events were held in large venues. We set the ticket price at $10 with customers getting $5 off her new hardcover.

Ticket sales started out slowly which isn't entirely unusual. Our event with James Kunstler for The Long Emergency eventually drew over 250 people even though less than 100 tickets were sold before the day of the event. Our marketing team kept sending out emails about the Gregory event, we displayed the book prominently and waited for the throngs of Gregory fans. It never happened. Finally, when we were four days away from the event with less than 40 tickets sold, we knew going offsite to a venue that held 600 was not going to work.

We had hoped to move the event back into the store, but the publisher was uncomfortable with that and so our only alternative was to cancel the event. It is a tremendous disappointment. Ironically, when I was at the register during Saturday's sale, two different people asked me about the Gregory event. They were upset and surprised it was cancelled even though neither one of them had tickets.

Perhaps we would have had a late rally and sold enough tickets to make it look respectable in the venue and recoup some of the cost associated with renting the space. Somehow, I doubt it. Between the election, the economy, and the weather (which turned miserable over the weekend) it just seemed we couldn't get this event off the ground. The saddest thing for me, was seeing the costumes packed up and sent off to the next tour stop without getting a chance to see anyone dressed as one of the Boleyns.

I Ban Books for a Living

2008-10-04T08:47:00.013-06:00

Banned Books Week is mercifully coming to an end today. The annual event that seeks to educate the public on what titles are being suppressed in the United States is sponsored by the American Library Association. Thousands of stores and libraries across the country, including the Boulder Book Store, feature displays of "banned books" intended to rile up our customers and alert them to the outrage being perpetuated throughout the land.

I am not all that interested in the hysteria. It's not exactly Fahrenheit 451 out there. No one's snatching books out of the hands of adults. Hell, Laura Bush, first lady to the Commander-in-Chief of Intolerance, helped launch the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps my unease over making a big deal about banned books in America is because you can get anything you want, anywhere you want on the internet. Banned books are a tough sell as a piece of marketing these days. I heard a number of wise cracks as people looked at our store's display. The truth is that you can get many things that a sane society would actually ban delivered in an innocuous brown package right to your door. In today's world, how can you ban anything at a local level? It just doesn't make sense.

I first started dissenting from the banned book celebration several years ago when the word "challenged" was used instead of "banned" on many of the titles. The bookstore would get a list of "challenged" books that we could use in our displays. Many of these were books that some zealous parent in a small rural hamlet had objected to on a middle school reading list. The locals realized that the complaint wasn't worth taking up and the book remained on the school reading list. Somehow those books qualify for inclusion in Banned Book Week. To me, that's not a banned book.

Many banned or challenged books occur in schools. Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolover and Toni Morrision all make this year's list. But what is really happening? Only McCarthy's book Child of God and Morrison's Beloved were actually removed from any reading list. Kingsolver's Animal Dreams was moved from a ninth-grade reading list to the eleventh grade, while Oates' Sexy and Morrison's Bluest Eye were deemed not offensive. Even Beloved, which was removed in an A.P. English class in Louisville, Kentucky, isn't threatened with an outright ban. Two parents are asking that students get parental permission to read it.

Contrast those mild challenges with what I do everyday as a professional book banner. As the head buyer of the Boulder Book Store, I spend many days meeting with publisher sales reps deciding what books will be placed on our shelves and which ones will not enter our store. There's no committee to review my decisions. There's no oversight at all. Once I decide I don't want a book, in all likelihood that book will never make it onto our shelves.

My reasons for banning books include: the book will probably not sell; the cover is an affront to my aesthetic sensibilities; no Boulderite in their right mind will be interested in the topic; the editor was rude to me at an author dinner; I'm in a terrible, terrible mood because the rep and I haven't stopped for a lunch break.

I admit that the Boulder Book Store is not as important to literacy as a junior high school in Lake Oswego, Oregon where they actually let children read Gail Giles' Shattering Glass, albeit with the disclaimer that it contains "mature content/language." But we do have our place in the community. In fact, in a recent article about our 35th anniversary celebration the local paper called us "the city's literary heart."

I am the black in that heart, gleefully rejecting books that the reps proffer with glib phrases like, "I'll pass on that one," "Are you kidding?" "Why is that even being published?" and "Skip." Sure, I feel guilty about some of these books that I ban from the store. There were two books in particular in last week's Random House appointment that made me hesitate.

The first was David Horowitz's One Party Classroom, a sordid tale about how colleges are turning our young people into dangerous left-wing types. I almost bought it for the sake of not appearing politically biased, until the rep asked me to look up Horowitz's previous book, The Professors. That one was an expose of the 101 most dangerous academics in America. Did they bring weapons into the classroom? Were they convicted sexual predators? No. They just made the mistake of disagreeing with Horowitz's addled political values. They were liberals like Horowitz once was. Well, it turns out I didn't buy The Professors for the store and no one seemed to notice. We didn't get a single special order or complaint. In One Party Classroom, Horowitz names "the worst school in America." Maybe it will be the University of Colorado. That would make me lift the ban.

The second and more guilt-inducing book was Best African American Essays: 2009 edited by Debra J. Dickerson. Bantam paperbacks is launching a new series of African American essays and also short stories. I opted to buy five of the short story collection but skipped the essays. In part because stories outsell essays by a margin of 5 to 1. Also, I wasn't sure how I felt about the series as a whole. Fifteen years ago we used to have sections or displays of African American fiction, Native American fiction and gay fiction. Now, many of those titles seem to succeed in the "fiction" section. Readers seem more willing to accept the diversity of fiction out there without wanting it labeled. In fact, we've had customers get upset when those titles appeared in special sections. I'll be interested to see how Bantam's collection of short stories does this year.

Now, most of my fellow bookstore buyers would not say that they are banning books from their stores. To say that "We are carefully selecting titles for our customers" is one way to spin our disdain for over ninety percent of the books that are published each year. My favorite highfalutin term is that we are curators. Instead of debating about exhibits featuring Mattisse and Picasso, we argue over whether to face out Danielle Steele or Nicholas Sparks.

Banned Books Week takes us away from the real threats facing books. The annual event started in 1982, before the internet existed. If a book wasn't carried by your town's library, it wasn't easy to find. That's not the case anymore thanks to the world wide web. The new threats are more insidious. Truly controversial books are having a hard time finding major publishing houses and also of getting media exposure. While we fret over one parent's unsuccessful attempt to remove copies of Harry Potter from the school libraries in Gwinnett County, Georgia, important books are not being published at all. Does anyone really believe that kids are deprived of their Harry Potter fix?

Naomi Wolfe's End of America and Vincent Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder both were bypassed by major publishing houses in America and have received scant review attention in the nation's newspapers. Those authors were famous enough to find other avenues for their books. (Wolfe was published by Chelsea Green, and Bugliosi by Vanguard Press.) What about authors that are less fortunate? It's impossible to ban or even challenge a book that can't get published.

I must admit that I don't really have a problem with a parent challenging a book that their child is being asked to read in school. Reading about these school challenges is almost heartwarming because so many of them fail for the right reasons. School boards debate the merits of books, prosecutors read Toni Morrison, and they almost always decide that the books should stay in the library or the curriculum despite the parent's objection. It's called a dialogue. It's what open societies do to establish acceptable mores.

Is that so terrible? Most people would not object to their ninth-grade child being assigned one of the great American novels of the 20th century. But what if that novel was Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint? I don't think I'd be comfortable with a giggling 14-year-old asking me to explain the literary merits of a scene in which the protagonist is masturbating with a refrigerated piece of meat. I'd probably challenge it before I could ever get into that awkward conversation.

I would ban my own favorite novel.

Klosterman, Hodgman and Lardons

2008-09-28T11:34:00.015-06:00

The word "lardons" on the menu of The Blue Star in Colorado Springs caused me a bit of concern at a Simon & Schuster author dinner last weekend. I was trying to find a meal that fit in with my dietary restrictions (I don't eat land-roving animals) and had settled on the scallops. However, the seared scallops, in addition to being served with creamed corn and pear relish, also featured Saint Germaine lardons. The word lard, or anything related to it, generally strikes fear in most vegetarian or semi-vegetarian hearts.

What was I to do? The shrimp came with pork, the special fish (a tuna) was sold out, and I was trying to avoid the summer squash cappelletti since I'd had noodles for lunch and summer was over. I conferred with my wife, and she guessed that lardons was a type of French cheese. I didn't believe her. Finally, I broke into the conversation at the table and said, "Does anyone know what lardons are? Saint Germaine lardons?"

I was met with quizzical looks from the dozen people at the table. Just as I was beginning to despair that I might have to rely on the waitress, who didn't seem to know that andouille sausage was not a vegetable, one of the dinner's featured authors, John Hodgman, came to the rescue. Hodgman, who many might recognize as the human P.C. in the Apple computer commercials, whipped out his iPhone.

Hodgman dramatically held up his iPhone for all to see and announced over his shoulder to the rest of the diners in the restaurant (who weren't paying any attention to our table), "I am using my iPhone."

Within seconds, Hodgman had our definition. "Small strips or cubes of fat or bacon. It's bacon," he said as he dramatically put his iPhone back in his pocket. I was disappointed. What was I going to eat? This dinner at the Mountains and Plains Independent Bookseller Association Show had already caused me more heartburn than usual for a trade show event, and now that I was in Colorado Springs, I didn't see a suitable entree.

Originally, I was supposed to go to a Random House dinner at The Broadmoor, Colorado Springs' fabled hotel. That invitation fell through in a terribly embarrassing fashion. After the rep proffered the invite, I asked him if it would all right if I brought my wife with me. She's accompanied me on dozens of these dinners over the years. He hemmed and hawed and said that he only had eight places and if an extra one opened up he'd be happy to invite her. In fact, he was relatively sure that a bookseller from Utah was going to cancel out on the meal.

I apologized for being a pain in the neck, but my wife, who is nearly eight months pregnant, wouldn't be too happy about being stuck in a Colorado Springs hotel room, while I went to dinner without her. My rep, who is actually the first person I ever bought books from as a new buyer in 1997, said he'd let me know as soon as possible if she could attend.

A few days later, I still hadn't heard from him when the Simon & Schuster rep called me and asked if I'd like to have dinner with Chuck Klosterman, the author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. I could hardly believe my luck. Klosterman has been a personal hero of mine ever since I read his article and interview with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant in Chuck Klosterman IV. Anyone who would ask Plant why he sang, "I'm gonna give you every inch of my love," in the Zeppelin song "Whole Lotta Love," rather than using the metric system in the lyrics, was sure to be a hilarious dinner companion.

"When is the dinner?" I asked. The rep suggested Friday night, which was when I had my tentative Random House dinner. "Can Emily attend?" I asked. The rep said she would be happy to have Emily along. In fact, she was looking for more people for the dinner because they were scheduling it so close to the trade show that most booksellers already had plans.

Once I knew Emily could go, I said yes. I didn't call my Random House rep to see what was going on with his dinner. I didn't have the courtesy to tell Simon & Schuster that I needed to find out about another engagement. No. I just thought, "Dinner with Chuck Klosterman. I'm going. Thank God, I have a way out of the Random House party."

Well, I didn't get off the hook that easily. The phone rang early the next Monday morning and it was my venerable Random House rep on the line. "Arsen, imagine my surprise when I was in Utah last Friday and I ran into the Simon & Schuster rep. She said you were planning to go to her dinner," he said. I felt the blood rush to my head.

"I can explain. I was just about to call you," I said into his rueful chuckle. "I hadn't heard back from you and she had room for both me and Emily."

"Sure, sure," he answered in a perfectly calm voice. "Run off with Simon & Schuster. Take up with them. Here I was telling everyone that you and Emily were coming to our dinner."

I apologized profusely, and mercifully he let me off the hook with just a mild ribbing. Perhaps anger would have been easier to handle, because I still feel very guilty about the whole thing.

On Wednesday, just two days before the dinner, things got even more complicated. I was sitting down to buy the frontlist from my Penguin hardback rep when I got a call from the Simon & Schuster rep. She wanted me to know that Klosterman's friend, and fellow speaker at the Mtns & Plains author breakfast, John Hodgman, was also going to attend the dinner. Now, some astute readers of Kash's Book Corner might have already asked themselves: what was Hodgman, the author of the Penguin bestseller The Areas of My Expertise and the forthcoming Penguin title More Information Than You Require, doing at a Simon & Schuster author soiree?

Unfortunately, I did not think of the awkwardness of all of this and blurted out to my Penguin rep that I was going to have dinner with John Hodgman. Oh boy, that set him off.

"Shouldn't Penguin be setting something up with him if he's in town for dinner? Shouldn't I have something set up?" he asked incredulously. "I've got to deal with this." He was clearly agitated, and I could see that the sales call was going downhill quickly.

I implored him to do nothing. "I'm already in trouble with Random House for this dinner. I don't need any more problems. No one can know that I told you Hodgman was going to dinner with Simon." Grasping at straws, I suggested, "Perhaps you could get an invite. They're looking for people because they are setting it up so late."

Well, he never did get an invite because with the two marquee names attending one dinner, Simon didn't seem to have any trouble filling the table. It turned out to be one of the most amusing author dinners I ever attended.

Klosterman, a tall, gangly guy with a full beard and slightly messy hair, who seemed to have Red Bull coursing through his veins, held court on rock music and other topics. We briefly touched upon his new novel, Downtown Owl, but he seemed on much more comfortable ground discussing the Beatles, the Stones and the Kinks. At one point during dessert, we were having a discussion about first concert experiences, and he recalled that his first show was seeing the metal band Ratt.

"I think I still have the ticket in my wallet," Klosterman said. He thumbed through his wallet and found a small ticket and looked at it appreciatively. "How much do you think it cost in 1989 to see this show?"

A bookseller from Durango, Colorado guessed $12.50. Klosterman was impressed with the guess and put the ticket down on the table. It was a show with three bands, and it cost less than $15. My, how times have changed.

Hodgman was more reserved than Klosterman but just as funny. I guess you don't get a regular role on the Daily Show if you can't entertain people. His humor was droll and often unexpected, but always clever. We got in a long discussion about the pros and cons of children's television with Hodgman passionately opposed to the new-look Sesame Street.

Hodgman showed his serious side in a conversation with Emily, a middle school teacher, about failing schools and highly recommended Paul Tough's new book Whatever it Takes. Tough profiles Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, and his efforts to not only educate poor children but to eradicate poverty by restructuring the educational system and providing radical levels of support to parents and families at home.

Perhaps the most humorous moment of the evening happened away from the table when I headed towards the bathroom. In front of the bathroom, I ran into a young female sales rep, who shall forever remain nameless. She was attending a different author dinner at the restaurant, and was just waiting there by the men's room. I asked her what she was doing.

"I saw Chuck Klosterman go in there," she said pointing to the door of the men's room. "I really want to meet him so I'm waiting for him to come out."

I wanted to tell her that she could just come over to our table and any one of the booksellers would be happy to introduce her to Klosterman, but I just couldn't ruin the moment for her by making it that easy. After all, she had worked up the gumption to follow him to the bathroom in order to get a private moment.

When my entree finally arrived that evening, I noticed what appeared to be shriveled beets or overly roasted red potatoes on my plate. I had ended up ordering the scallops, without the lardons. Just as I was about to try one of these strange looking beets, I heard Klosterman yell from across the table, "Hey, I think you've got my lardons."

I looked up, and he had a plate of scallops (actually just three scallops, good thing Simon & Schuster was paying) and it was free of the offending meat. We traded plates, but before Klosterman's food was back on the table, Hodgman was asking for a taste of the treasured lardons. He took one into his mouth, savored it and looked over at me.

"They're really good," he said with a devilish grin.

Woodward & Friedman

2008-09-15T08:17:00.009-06:00

Bob Woodward and Thomas Friedman don't have quite the same ring as Woodward and Bernstein, but this September the two journalists have been linked. Both their new books came out on the same day and both were greeted by media coverage that was able to break through the wall-to-wall election news. Also, both journalists seem to maintain a dose of objectivity and neutrality in their books that is highly unusual in today's polarized book market, which routinely features partisan warriors like Ann Coulter, Al Franken, Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly.

Woodward's The War Within chronicles the Bush administration's "secret" history over the last two years--most notably the discussions around the military surge in Iraq. It is Woodward's fourth book on Bush and his cronies and it follows the damning State of Denial. Plan of Attack, published in 2004, is a more mixed view of the administration, while the sycophantic Bush at War, detailing the first few months after the 9/11 attacks, was the low-point of Woodward's career in retrospect.

When I saw the subtitle of the new Woodward book (A Secret White House History 2006-2008), I wasn't sure which was the more absurd idea--that someone in the Bush administration would still tell Woodward a secret after the publication of A State of Denial, or the hubris of Woodward himself in believing he's actually being told valuable secrets.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded, meanwhile, is Thomas Friedman's take on how global warming and America's wavering sense of national purpose are inextricably connected. Friedman's previous book (the blockbuster The World is Flat) has become the primer for many people on globalization. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, has a reputation as a somewhat fair-minded centrist. If he were a politician, he'd be the world's most unrepentant flip-flopper. He has championed every side of the Iraq War over the last five years. He was for it before he was against it three times over.

I was thrilled last Monday when these two books came out. September is usually a slow month at the store, compared to the tourist-filled days of July and August. Two huge sellers just might provide the spark we needed to extend the busy summer season a few more weeks, I hoped. We cleared off the cart directly across from the registers of the eight different books that were occupying it, and filled it up with The War Within and Hot, Flat, and Crowded. We flung the doors opened and waited for the frenzied masses to snatch up copies of the new titles.

Well, we waited and waited through the morning. I was particularly hopeful for the Woodward book because he had appeared on 60 Minutes the previous evening. Nary a customer came in inquiring about his book, but we did sell a couple of Friedman's in that first hour before I headed down to shipping and receiving to help out.

While I was down in S & R, I heard an interview of Friedman conducted by Terry Gross, the host of National Public Radio's Fresh Air. It was fascinating to listen to, although very familiar if you've heard Al Gore speak about public policy in the last few years. Friedman made a powerful case for the necessity of government leadership to free us from our oil dependency. He made a passionate argument that changing light bulbs and driving hybrid cars wasn't enough to lead us out of the morass that we are in.

He railed against John McCain for missing over a dozen votes on a critical bill to extend tax credits for alternative energy--the bill failed to pass by one vote (59-40) while McCain sat in his office and refused to cast a vote--and pointed out the absurdity of the delegates at the Republican National Convention chanting "Drill it! Drill it!" To Friedman, that's the worst thing that we could do in this situation. We don't have nearly enough oil to drill ourselves out of the problem. He talked about how happy the Saudis, the Venezuelans, and the Russians must have been to hear that chant instead of a focused attempt to develop alternative energy.

When Terry Gross asked him about this fall's election, that's when Friedman went from passionate crusader to shameful waffler. Barack Obama is saying all the right things and has great information on his website, according to Friedman, but The New York Times' resident mind reader doesn't think that it's really an important issue for Obama. Friedman's not ready to commit politically, even though the whole premise of his book is that bold, immediate, political action is needed. Friedman wants someone willing to take on the challenge of the leading the world to energy independence, but he's unwilling to rule out a man who couldn't even be bothered to vote on the issue. Friedman wants to leave the door open for McCain and Sarah Palin.

Still, at least people were talking about Friedman's book. A friend of mine sent me the link to the Terry Gross interview over the weekend and many other people, including customers, seemed generally interested in his idea of connecting our dependency on oil, the increasing globalization of the world, and the United States' propensity for getting into foreign policy disasters. He's offering people something new to think about.

The Woodward book, on the other hand, seems to elicit no interest from people in Boulder. Perhaps people don't want to hear how the brave and courageous President decided to implement a surge against the advice of many of his colleagues. Perhaps we are reminded of just how badly Woodward misjudged W in Bush at War and don't want to see him getting snowed once again. Perhaps we just don't want to look backwards at Bush anymore and want to move into the future.

In Boulder, the response to the two books is clear. We have sold 43 copies of the Friedman book, and just four of Woodward's. In fact, if Woodward's book doesn't turn around it will be one of the worst single buys in my 11 years as a front-list buyer. I brought in 100 copies based on the 134 hardback copies of State of Denial that we sold. I've never had to return 90% of a buy that big before.

Nationwide, it's not so cut and dry. I noticed this morning that Hot, Flat, and Crowded was the number 2 book on Amazon.com, while The War Within was number 9. Maybe there are just that many Republicans scanning Woodward's book to see if he published their dirty little secrets. But if that's the case, our sales won't pick up here at the Boulder Book Store.

Books That Made Me Happy This Summer

2008-09-06T12:42:00.013-06:00

This post is supposed to be about what a pathetic summer
it has been in book selling. Sales were sluggish, the election stole away media coverage from books, there were no blockbusters, Kindle this, Kindle that, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure most of you could fill in your own depressing financial details.

My various titles for this entry included, "Summer: The Season That Wasn't," "The Dismal Season," "Where's Harry Potter When You Need Him?" and "Doesn't Anybody Read Around Here?" My abandoned lead paragraphs quoted T.S. Eliot, took potshots at Dick Cheney, bemoaned the Phillies season (hey, they are only two games out, despite not hitting), likened the AmazonKindle to kindling and even asked for readers to come and volunteer at the store until sales picked up.

No matter what I wrote, my finger kept pressing that delete key. The truth is that I'm just not that down about books right now despite the wounded economy and the mind-numbing Presidential race. I had an amazing summer of reading new and old titles. Many of my vacation days were spent sprawled out on beaches and couches enthralled by the prose of John Updike, Richard Bausch, Michael Frayn, P.G. Wodehouse and Rivka Galchen.

Even when I wasn't on vacation, I found myself running home to read after work. I read snippets of novels while walking down the street (that drives my wife insane), tying my shoes, cooking dinner and eating breakfast.

How could I write a depressing blog when there's just so much literature out there that invigorates me? How could I only dwell on the negative when books have been my sustenance for the past three months? I couldn't. Instead, I'll talk about what books I love and hopefully inspire someone out there to pick up a book (preferably at the Boulder Book Store) and read.

I've added a couple of lists to the left-hand side of the blog. I figure it's about time I learn how to use these fancy Blogger features. After all, I'm supposed to lead a seminar on how to blog at the regional independent booksellers show in a couple of weeks.

The first list is my favorite novels since 2000. The usual suspects are to be found, including Philip Roth, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, but hopefully a few of the more obscure picks like Percival Everett, Susan Choi and Judson Mitcham will spark some interest. The second is an annotated list of my favorite books of 2008 that also includes a few surprise picks, including the fantastic memoir by Michael Greenberg (I usually don't go for memoirs), Hurry Down Sunshine.

Here's a look at some of the books that really captured my imagination this summer:

Asia For the Price of a Paperback

I'm currently engrossed in Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace. The scenes Ghosh depicts of the teak business in the late 19th century are harrowing. It's hard to imagine elephants and men engaged in a magnificent struggle against nature in order to get the teak trees out of the mountainous forests of Burma. Ghosh humanizes history in the manner of a great movie without resorting to cliched or one-dimensional characters.

Earlier in the summer, I had the pleasure of meeting the dapper Ghosh at a party in Los Angeles. He was there to promote his new book Sea of Poppies. We were in a crowded restaurant with dozens of other booksellers and several other authors. I gravitated toward him, because I was trying to avoid the embarrassment of meeting debut novelist Rivka Galchen. In an earlier blog, I mentioned Galchen's fetching author photo as the most convincing reason to read her book. Despite my efforts to avoid her, my assigned seat turned out to be directly across from Rivka.

Ghosh and I exchanged pleasantries about the weather, London and book parties before I worked up the nerve to ask him about a scene in his previous book, Hungry Tide, that I was quite taken by. In the scene, two people strap themselves to a tree in a typhoon in order to survive. Only one lives through the night. Ghosh leaned in towards me and confided that he has been asked about that scene before. We talked for awhile, and I thanked him for introducing me to people and parts of the world that I could never see on my own.

John Updike Redux

The reading highlight of the summer was without a doubt John Updike's Rabbit Redux. I read one Updike novel a year, and I am reading them in order. I must say that this one was my favorite so far. The character of Skeeter, a black activist and small-time drug dealer, is immensely engaging, profane, comic and tragic all at the same time. I read an old hardback copy of the book that I found for $15 in Half Moon Bay, California in late March. I waited until my annual beach vacation in Cape May, New Jersey to crack open the 37-year-old novel. As the waves lapped at my feet, I was transported back to the turbulent summer of 1969.

Updike creates a rich world of jostling characters where whites and blacks are always on edge in the sleepy Pennsylvania town of Brewer. Rabbit's wife has left him for a used car salesman. Rabbit is far from lonely, though, because in addition to his 10-year old son, Nelson, he has taken in a beautiful white teenage runaway named Jill. She was foisted on him by a black co-worker who was scared that the presence of a white woman staying a black person's house might bring unwanted police attention. Things get really complicated when Rabbit starts harboring a young black man, Skeeter, who is wanted by the local police.

In the evenings, Skeeter lectures this ad-hoc family about the coming revolution. In Updike's vision, black power has infiltrated the white suburbs, drugs have found their way past the manicured lawns, and interracial sex is happening in the 1950s love seats. All of this occurs while Vietnam and the moon landing are constant sources of distraction and even amusement on the television.

Rabbit seems to tolerate everything, but he's an outsider, a conservative family man at heart. One of my favorite lines comes when Skeeter is preaching to Rabbit, the runaway, and Nelson about what will come after the revolution. Replacing the old order with something new fascinates Skeeter more than the inevitable revolution itself. Rabbit is only half interested in these night rants. "'And you're the black Jesus going to bring it in,'" Rabbit mocks. "'From A.D. to A.S. After Skeeter. I should live so long. All Praise Be Skeeter's Name.'"

In Rabbit Redux, you never quite know if a character's comments will be met with laughter or violence. It's a community of people that are on the edge. They are all just one word away from wounding each other. Somehow, Rabbit manages to muddle along and befriend the people you'd most think he'd offend. That tension between humor and aggression drives the whole work.

Peace in a Time of War

Richard Bausch's new novel, Peace, is an extraordinary and touching World War II story. It's a small book, really a novella, that conveys both the horrors of war and also what bonds people together. I found it to be thoroughly engaging. I read most of it on a plane ride, unable to put the book down even after we landed and people were heading into the terminal.

Bausch puts us on a mountain side in Italy during the German retreat of World War II. Three American soldiers are led up the hillside to scout the Nazi position in a driving rainstorm. They are led by an old man who may or may not be a fascist sympathizer. During the climb we come to know the three soldiers and how they got to this moment of their lives. They are continually debating whether to report their commanding officer, who killed a woman in cold blood just hours before the trio left on this mission.

Peace is essentially a chamber piece, with the four characters speaking to each other and also maintaining internal monologues. The men are haunted by both their good memories of home and their bad memories of the war as their mission wears on and the rain turns to snow. We come to know Captain Marson the best of all the characters, and it his how he handles his own ethical and moral dilemma at the end of the novel that truly makes this work one that resonates beyond its specific setting.

She Makes Portnoy Look Tame

Steerforth reprinted Fredrica Wagman's 1973 novel Playing House earlier this year. It would never have occurred to me to read this relatively obscure work, except that the new edition featured a foreword by Philip Roth. Roth is not a blurb slut or someone who writes a lot of forewords, so I figured this novel must be something special for him to take his time and single it out.

Wagman writes in an impressionistic prose, and it isn't always easy to figure out what's going on with her characters. The crux of the story is the narrator's childhood incestuous relationship with her brother. That relationship hovers over the rest of her life, but not in quite the way the reader would expect. Well, perhaps a seasoned therapist would expect it, but not me. Roth perfectly sums it up in the opening words of his foreword.

"It would appear from Playing House that the prohibition forbidding sibling incest is designed primarily to protect impressionable children against sex thrills so intense, and passionate unions so all-encompassing and exclusive, that life after the age of twelve can only be a frenzy of nostalgia for those who have known the bliss of such transgression."

Wagman's novel is an incredibly intense, almost feverish read about a woman's life that is spiraling out of control from the moment the incestuous affair ends. No one measures up to her memories of her brother. She nicknames her doting and steady husband, who would spare no resource to save her, The Turtle. Even her children are mere shadows passing through her life.

The siblings never renew their relationship after childhood, but each appearance of the brother leaves the reader with a queasy feeling. It almost seems as though things would be better for the narrator if they got together. Her efforts to replace the brother sexually take her to territory that Roth's most notorious character, Alexander Portnoy, never tread.

It's a disquieting read, to say the least. Probably one that I will never recommend to a book club. But one that made me think, pondering the nature of writing, madness and love.

Stories of Wifeshopping

2008-08-27T08:04:00.014-06:00

For years, I was totally incompetent when it came to shopping for a wife. I desperately wanted a long-term relationship and yet I repeatedly dated women who had no interest in a committed relationship or at least not in one with me. These women and I were often ill-matched and our dates tended to end in long silences over lukewarm food as the conversations petered out. This was in the days before eHarmony.com.

My particular method of sabotaging relationships was to find a woman that was about to move away from Boulder and begin romancing her. As soon as I heard the words, "my lease is up," or "I've got a job offer in California," or "I head off to Georgia for graduate school in three weeks" I was there with flowers and reservations at the best restaurants in Boulder and Denver.

There was the Bulgarian who was about to move back to her home country. That relationship came to an end on the ski slopes of Copper Mountain when out of the blue she said "you will take me to rodeo this afternoon." This was not an Eastern European double entendre for "hey cowboy, wanna get lucky?" She literally wanted to stop skiing at lunch time so we could drive all the way back to Denver in a snowstorm and attend the National Western Stock Show. "It is so American," she said as I glared at her on the ski lift.

I wooed a beautiful saleswoman in an art gallery in the weeks leading up to her departure to take a post as a curator of small museum in Virginia. I realize now that it was probably for the best that she really did take that job. It was becoming exhausting pretending that I had the budget to spend $8,000 for an oil painting that looked like a smudge of grass, dirt and blood. I put her off by endlessly debating which smudge best exemplified the artist's obvious feelings of malaise about American life while she talked about how much the commission would assist her move.

I actually followed one woman back to her parent's home in a rural Pennsylvania town. During my first evening there, I walked up and down the burg's three streets and looked at the Christmas lights glimmering in the windows of the houses and the store fronts. There was no one else out on the streets, no stores were open, no signs of life except the decorations and the omnipresent glow of the television in every living room. I couldn't wait to return to Boulder, even if I was coming back alone.

Needless to say, I understand the hapless, lovelorn men in Steven Wingate's magnificent new story collection, Wifeshopping, which won the prestigious Bakeless Prize for short fiction. Wingate portrays men in the elusive search for love in these 13 diverse tales. In almost every story, his characters manage to betray themselves, breaking hearts (most often their own) time and time again. The methods of betrayal are myriad and remarkably creative.

"(I wrote) probably two dozen stories that were all clustered around this idea of searching for love, because I think both psychically and imaginatively I was really trying to figure out what the love thing was and how relationships worked and why they didn't work," Wingate said.

In the most poignant stories in the collection, it is long-term relationships that come to crashing halts because of a false move, an awful decision or just plain obstinance. The crisis is usually brought on by the narrator's emotional immaturity and inability to understand his own needs and desires.

In "Bill", the narrator is engaged to be married to a fellow law school graduate, Myra, when he develops a strange friendship with an old man at a flea market. He begins buying Bill's old clothing, much to his fiance's chagrin. With each old suit, new grievances emerge in the relationship. The fissures are opening before the reader's eyes and our stubborn narrator insists on carrying on at flea markets at his own peril. He's more defined by his ability to spot a good deal than by his capability of maintaining a meaningful relationship.

"We consider our ability to spot salvageable junk to be an almost genetic trait -- one that would undoubtedly pass on to my offspring whether their mother liked it or not. Myra had a problem with this. She bought what was fashionable and replaced it when it fell out of style, and viewed my family's hand-me-down habits as declasse. That's where she was wrong."

In many stories the men sacrifice their relationships for a quirky principle or an ideal that would seems ludicrous from the outside. Why are these men digging holes in the backyard when the pregnant women they love are stewing inside the house? Why are they ambushing their lovers with crazy relatives? They're fighting more to establish their own identities than for love.

"It's very easy to confuse the search for your own identity with the search for love. And I think most of the characters make that mistake to one degree or another," Wingate said. "I think a lot of flexibility is obviously required in a long-term relationship; some of these characters know that and some of them just aren't able to get beyond their own search for self."

Despite the similarity in themes between the stories, Wingate's pieces are remarkably varied in tone, plot and attitude. Each story is a world unto itself. His settings range from New England to Florida to Flagstaff. Most of the stories are written in the realist tradition, but one of the best ones "A Story About Two Prisoners," is a short experimental piece with a delightful twist. Also, Wingate's entertaining language and ultimately optimistic outlook infuses these stories with a lightness and a joy that belies their plots and characters.

"As a writer I have to entertain myself and keep myself happy, so working on a story over many, many drafts over many, many years, you have to get to know your character, you have to get to know their warts as well as the things that are funny about them and quirky about them," Wingate said. "Everybody's got their own humor and their own likability, and so finding that in my characters allows me to write them better than if I were to simply focus on one aspect of them."

There is one relationship that has a real chance among these stories. Clay has fallen in love with his widowed neighbor Lisbeth and her dog in "Knuckles." It's a tale of mature and patient love that spans months, rather then hours or days, but it has hit a snag. Each day Lisbeth takes her shaggy golden retriever to the park and he half stamps, half dances in the snow forming an "M", for her late husband Miles. Finally, Clay gets fed up with the routine and tells her "a dancing dog can't bring back dead people."

Lisbeth takes the dog away and leaves Clay's life and yet there is a bit of hope. Clay realizes his mistake. As she is leaving, Clay watched Knuckles, "the dog, who knew the score a lot better than I did, looked pleadingly back at me." A few weeks later he buys the dog a toy in his first efforts of rapprochement, which is a lot more than most of Wingate's men manage to do.

In Wifeshopping, there are no easy love stories. It's a lot like real life. Forming a relationship is tremendously rewarding, but it takes an ability to see beyond yourself, to be able to truly integrate another person into your world. Wingate writes about this process in a sensitive and humorous way that never becomes cliched or sappy. In the end, you believe there is hope for many of these characters despite their painful blunders.

After all, there was hope for me following all those false starts. My wife and I just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary and she's staying in Boulder.

Steven Wingate will be signing his book at the Boulder Book Store on Thursday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Here's are the links to my video interview with Wingate and a very entertaining book trailer for Wifeshopping.

Say it ain't so, Chelsea

2008-08-21T09:05:00.006-06:00

In one of the most insensitive, wrong-headed and self-important decisions that a publisher has made in the last 15 years, the small, independent and formerly progressive publisher Chelsea Green has managed to turn its prime book selling allies into enemies. Perhaps more amazingly, the press has managed to unite Barnes & Noble and independent book stores around the country in their ire at Chelsea Green's unfair business practice.

Chelsea Green has given Amazon.com a three-week exclusive on its new book The Obama Challenge by Robert Kuttner. The book was to be released on September 15th, but Chelsea Green thought it was too important to wait that long. Nothing less than the fate of the nation itself hinges on delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver buying a pro-Obama book, according to publisher Margo Baldwin. So, attendees will receive 25% off coupons for the book on Amazon when they arrive in Denver on August 25th. Kuttner's book, which details what Obama's policies should be after taking office, actually seems more fitting to release closer to the election.

What's so amazing about this whole deal is that Chelsea Green has a bold initiative to woo independent bookstores. The Boulder Book Store, along with nearly 40 other independents around the country, is a Green Partner with the press. The Green Partner stores are committed to buying their titles non-returnable, working with Chelsea Green on publicity and author events and for basically waving the same progressive flag as high as possible.

We were one of the first stores in the program along with Denver's great independent book store Tattered Cover. Did it never occur to Chelsea Green just how detrimental distributing 15,000 coupons for our prime competitor in our community could be? Wouldn't a true partner work on a way to drive that business into our stores? Or, perhaps more realistically, allowed us along with Barnes & Noble and Borders to compete on a level playing field with Amazon?

It's interesting that a press like Chelsea Green that has published so many progressive books, including Naomi Wolf's End of America and George Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant, would resort to backdoor dealings and cronyism that would make Dick Cheney proud. Instead of trying to live Barack Obama's message, which at its core is about fairness and opportunity, Chelsea Green went for a blatant money grab that would embarrass the most hardened Republicans.

Chelsea Green is blinded by their laughable hubris and the idea that somehow one book from a small press can really change the world overnight. In the end, they've inadvertently started a change in the publishing world that if it takes hold, will make the market a much more inhospitable place to the very stores Chelsea Green relies on to sell their quirky progressive books .

I'm not sure where we go from here with Chelsea Green. We've canceled our order of the book in protest, although if customers start requesting it, we will pick it up. We were planning to feature it on our recommended titles display. The future of our relationship with Chelsea Green is much more troubling. We've basically given them favored publisher status over the past two years. We've taken chances on many of their books that we wouldn't have from other publishers, we've accepted a non-returnable discount that is a few points short of what we'd really like, all in the hopes of making a small difference in our community.

We partnered with them because the books they publish match the political beliefs and lifestyle choices of our customers better than perhaps any press out there. They publish books about strengthening local communities and dealing with global warming. But their business practices and insensitivity (they still don't seem to realize how they stabbed their Green Partners in the back) belies the content of the books they publish. It makes it almost impossible to do business with them. At the very least, we will need to get out of our partnership with them. To do any less would be setting ourselves up for future pain. Say it ain't so, Chelsea.

Oates writes on JonBenet Ramsey

2008-08-01T06:11:00.005-06:00

Note: The following article is reprinted from a story I wrote for the Boulder Weekly. The interview with Joyce Carol Oates was conducted by phone.

The JonBenet Ramsey murder case is one of the most written about crimes in the history of the United States. In the days, weeks, months and years since her Dec. 26, 1996 murder, JonBenet has been the focus of front-page features in every major newspaper in the country. The strangely lurid photos of the child beauty queen have appeared on the cover of dozens and dozens of supermarket tabloids. Magazines from The New Yorker to Vanity Fair gave the unsolved case serious treatment, as did hundreds of other mainstream publications.

JonBenet’s case has been the subject of at least six true-crime books, including the 1998 bestseller by Lawrence Schiller, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. In addition to traditional print sources, the Web is also filled with speculation about the murderer’s identity. Typing “JonBenet Ramsey” into Google yields more than 535,000 hits, including more than 1,800 articles about the July 9 apology and exoneration of the Ramsey family by the Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, based on new DNA evidence.

Into this whirling mass of words, speculation and rumors steps one of America’s top writers, Joyce Carol Oates. Her new novel, My Sister, My Love, is about the Rampikes, an upper-class, dysfunctional family, whose 6-year-old daughter, an ice skating prodigy, is brutally murdered in the family home. It’s a largely satirical examination of the culture that produces children’s beauty contests and of the tabloid media that feast on people’s lives. Oates refers to the setting as “tabloid hell.” Its narrator is the Rampikes’ son, Skyler, who is just 9 years old when his sister is murdered.

It’s not the first time that Oates has sought to illuminate one of the nation’s top news stories through her intense fiction. In her remarkable novel Black Water, she reset Sen. Ted Kennedy’s 1968 Chappaquiddick accident in the early 1990s and told it from the perspective of the woman who lost her life in the car. She wrenched that tragedy from the realm of the political (much has been made of how it has influenced Kennedy’s career) into the world of human drama by focusing on the victim’s thoughts and memories as the water closed in around her.

“When I wrote Black Water, I wanted a character like Senator Kennedy,” Oates said. “I wasn’t writing Senator Kennedy. My character was much older. I’m looking for an equation in these true stories and trying to make it fiction. The characters are fictitious.”

When Oates set to writing My Sister, My Love, she began looking for the true story that might serve as a launching pad for the issues that she wanted to address. It wasn’t so much the grisly details of the murder that fascinated her, although she was familiar with them from writing a piece for The New York Review of Books reviewing the literature of the Ramsey case back in 1999. Rather, it was what the story said about contemporary America that interested Oates.

“I wanted to write a novel from the perspective of a young person from a notorious family, those families that are often in the tabloids and have reporters constantly following them around,” Oates said. “I envisioned a young person, an innocent person, in tabloid hell with no place he could go.”

She toyed with the idea of writing a novel from the perspective of one of O.J. Simpson’s children, and in fact Skyler’s fleeting love interest in the novel is the offspring of a professional athlete who was tried and acquitted of stabbing to death his ex-wife and her male friend. But in the end she settled on the Ramseys because she was intensely drawn to the drama of the children.

“At a certain point I thought of the Ramseys. I must have seen that little girl’s made-up face 500 times,” Oates said. “The photos of her in the beauty-queen outfits were everywhere for a long time. I know literally nothing about her brother Burke Ramsey. I didn’t look up anything. I wanted to write about a young man traumatized.”

Astute readers will almost immediately spot differences between the Ramseys and Rampikes. First of all, the Rampikes live in Fair Hills, N.J., and not in Boulder. Secondly, the mother, Betsey, is an ex-ice skater and is training her daughter to be a figure skater rather than a beauty contestant and dancer. Third, Betsey’s husband, Bix Rampike, is an ambitious young man in his early 30s just entering a high-powered career, while John Bennett Ramsey was 53 at the time of his daughter’s murder and was at the apex of a lucrative career.

Skyler’s narrative reveals a severely damaged person, both as a young child in the Rampikes house of the mid-1990s and in the present day as a 19-year-old recovering addict living in New Brunswick, N.J. The damage has been inflicted by his parents, Betsey and Bix. Oates does an amazing job of imagining what life must be like inside the family of a child prodigy. Almost everything else is shunted aside by the over-zealous mother, including Skyler, in the desire to make her daughter, Bliss, into a skating star. Bix, in pursuit of his career, is almost wholly absent from the lives of his children.

In the two years leading up to the murder, the children are shuttled from one ice rink to another. Both of the Rampike’s children are heavily medicated with psychiatric drugs, while Bliss is also given a regimen of performance-enhancing pills and shots. Skyler describes how his younger sister would perch on the edge of her bed because it would hurt to sit down after her shots.

“I’m very concerned with the pharmacological revolution among children,” Oates said. “A high percentage of children are medicated. You walk around a mall on the weekend, and so many of the kids you’ll see will be taking something. Many of my friends are on anti-depressants. I’m not criticizing it, but in children these drugs must be over-prescribed.”

Contemporary child-rearing comes under fire in My Sister, My Love as Skyler describes a horrific series of play dates in a tone of biting satire. These dates aren’t with children that Skyler likes; rather they are with the children of the town’s movers and shakers. Skyler is just a pawn in his mother’s social climbing. The kids play together in a totally unsupervised atmosphere, while the parents disappear.

At one of these playdates, Skyler and a classmate compare diagnoses. The classmate explains that he is a G.C.S.S. (Gifted Child Syndrome Sufferer), while Skyler can only counter that he is I.D. and I.A.D.D. (Incipient Dyslexia and Incipient Attention Deficit Disorder). The friend helpfully adds that Skyler just might be A.P.M (Acute Premature Melancholia), as well. Eventually, Skyler is prodded to try some of his classmate’s medicine and ends up having a hallucinogenic incident before almost being thrown out of the house.

“In the past, many of these things were just personality quirks,” Oates said. “People of genius have always had different personalities. I don’t think Einstein was normal at the age of 4. Many of the disorders in the book are real, and they are taken from my research.”

As Skyler continues to struggle for his parents’ attention, his sister Bliss is literally being smothered by it. Her workouts, her diet, her hair: all are closely monitored by Betsey. Oates describes Bliss’ skating costumes, largely modeled after JonBenet’s real-life outfits, in great detail. It’s a sickening catalog of inappropriately seductive items. If they weren’t based in fact, they would be written off as the grotesque fantasies of a child pornographer.

In these passages, Skyler’s narrative takes on the detached feeling of a news account of the event. It’s as if the details are too painful for him to remember in his own words. Here’s how he describes one of his sister’s greatest skating triumphs:“The All-American-Girl Ice Jubilee in Bangor, Maine, in early November where in a ‘Vegas showgirl’ costume of glittering white sequins and filmy white feathers, long tight sleeves with ermine-trimmed wrists, stardust in her ‘upswept’ hair and on her eyelids, and crimson-lace panties teasingly visible beneath, Bliss Rampike ravished both judges and audience with a skate-dance performance of that sultry-tango pop-American classic ‘Kiss of Fire.’”

Bliss’ death seems fated in My Sister, My Love. The ice skating star is becoming more and more disenchanted with her role in the family and on the ice. She is suffering from phantom pains and has just come off of a disastrous showing in her latest competition. Her mother is blaming her for the breakup of her marriage, and she can’t seem to learn even the simplest things from her tutors. She’s a portrait of melancholy, pleading for her brother’s help in the middle of the night when she wets her sheets. Still, she manages to attract a bevy of admirers.

“One of the passages is about how it’s so strange that people want some part of Bliss’ celebrity,” Oates said. “They just want to be near her. But she’s just a shy, insecure, unhappy child. When you get through the aura of celebrity, you often just find a wounded person that other people are using.”

Oates’ description of the night of the murder and its immediate aftermath is a haunting work of fiction. She wraps the true brutal events of JonBenet’s murder into the narration of an innocent child. Looking back on it from a distance of 10 years, Skyler still can’t make out the circumstances of the evening, although the reader will come away with a clear sense of who the murderer was in Oates’ version of the crime.

At night, before the children go to sleep, Bliss begs Skyler to draw a red heart on the palm of her hand. He knows his mother will be upset if he does it, but Skyler eventually gives in. We know that JonBenet was found with a red heart drawn on her hand. Later, Bliss wakes Skyler up and asks him for help, but Skyler doesn’t want to deal with his sister’s sheets again so he doesn’t get up. He’s also tired beyond his usual state because he was given an extra dose of medication. At one point in the middle of the night, he wakes up to find his mother working on a letter. He never seems to make the connection to his mother’s late-night writing and the ransom note.

He wakes up to his mother shaking him at 6 a.m., demanding to know where Bliss is, where he has hidden her. Skyler, wracked with guilt and shame and feeling the effects of too many drugs, doesn’t even know if he had anything to do with his sister’s death. Years later, this question still haunts him. The body is found by Bix in much the same way John Bennett Ramsey carried his daughter up from the basement of their home. The ensuing investigation also suffers the same flaws that occurred here in Boulder.

Once Bliss is dead, Skyler is shuttled between psychiatric institutes and boarding schools. Neither of his parents manages to establish a meaningful relationship with him. He only glimpses his mother in the tabloids or on afternoon talk television. His father, thoroughly absorbed in his career, mostly ignores his son. Bix Rampike, a former college football player, only reaches out to his son when giving occasional advice about what it means to be a Rampike man. In fact, Bix’s machismo, along with the macho world of corporate America that he inhabits, creates a wide gulf between the sensitive Skyler and his father.

“That corporate culture is more alive and well than ever under Bush,” Oates said. “I spent a couple of years looking at Fox News. Bix is a sort of Bill O’Reilly — a swaggering, macho, conservative Christian personality. It’s disturbing and alarming how these people come out of the woodwork in an era like this. In other times, the bigotry and misogyny would be there but hidden away a little more.”

Now, 10 years later, Skyler is compelled to write his story. He’s one of Oates’ odder narrators, which is saying a lot when you look at her varied career more than 40 years. His satirical story includes scores of entertaining footnotes and even a novella within the novel, which makes the 560 pages go fairly quickly. There are many stops and starts, and repeated scenes, as Skyler attempts to remember the pertinent events. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the narration is that Skyler is a completely real person. His tale and his world is an exaggeration of many of our society’s worst attributes, and yet the person in the middle of this alternate version of America is lovable and vulnerable.

“It’s meant to be emotional. He’s really struggling with his story,” Oates said. “He’s saying, ‘God I hate writing. I’m trying to make you feel something about these people in the tabloids.’”

In the end, Skyler finds some peace of mind and begins to reconstruct his damaged life. He begins to emerge from “tabloid hell” with the help of a down-to-earth preacher and some caring people.

“One of the answers is to return to simpler values,” Oates said. “Non-charismatic, basic religion on a very human level of helping one another is a start. We need to find community in a small group of people, not in celebrity. We need other people. You can’t look inside your heart all the time for the answers. You need a community.”

They Write About Books?

2008-06-30T19:21:00.005-06:00

When it comes to reading book reviews, I'm a snob. I'm much more highbrow in my reading of critiques then I am in my taste of actual books. If the review does not appear in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books or a paper from London, then it doesn't really attract my interest. Conversely, I'll read just about any book if it features a great cover, touches upon the subject of baseball, involves super heroes or looks respectably risque.

I'm not sure how I got like this. Frankly, most of the writing in The New York Review of Books bores me, and yet I persist. Perhaps, in my addled head, I connect the dry prose with literary respectability. I admit that occasionally I'll read a review in another publication if it's by a writer that I enjoy. I make a habit of perusing the Denver and Boulder papers to keep abreast of what the local residents might be encouraged to purchase at our store. But for the most part, I'm not really that interested in what Newsweek, Time, or most anyone else has to say about books.

I figure if I look hard enough I'm liable to find a good review of just about any book out there. God knows that the publishers find plenty of positive reviews to quote for the paperback releases of their worst dogs. You can practically hear the book barking as you crack open the front cover and read the stirring praise from U.S.A. Today. No thank you. I'll stick to the tried and true for my reviews.

All of this began to change a few months ago, when a magazine of dubious pedigree appeared in our apartment. After a round of bitter marital recriminations, I finally came to believe that my wife's subscription to Entertainment Weekly was an unfortunate error. It seems that a couple of months previous, we had bought a magazine subscription as part of a school fundraiser from the daughter of a dear friend. We were reluctant to take on another magazine, but the student had been a flower girl at our wedding, and to refuse her anything was beyond my capabilities. The problem is that unread, or barely read, copies of The New Yorker, Harper's and Paste already clutter up our minuscule living room.

"No, no honey, you can't throw out that October, 2003 issue of Harper's yet," I plead, every time we try to clean the apartment. "I'm halfway through a fascinating article that debates whether Nader is going to run for President again, after the 2000 debacle in Florida."

Finally, after much humming and hawing and some nudging from our friend, we agreed upon a subscription to Sports Illustrated. I reasoned that at least I'd thumb my way through it in search of baseball news each week. I also pointed out that everyone knows that sports writers are the most literate and talented of all journalists, so perhaps even my wife might enjoy the feature articles. (Disclaimer: the author of this blog is a former sports writer.)

By the time Entertainment Weekly arrived, I had completely forgotten about our subscription to Sports Illustrated. Once we ascertained that a switch had occurred, we'd already received four issues of the wrong publication. What could we do? I suggested browbeating the absurdly cute flower girl into correcting the error and getting us the right magazine. My wife, who was eschewing all of our highbrow literary magazines in favor of Entertainment Weekly by this point, said that we just had to suffer through the subscription in peace and quiet.

Week after week, a parade of celebrities crossed the threshold of our door. One week it was Johnny Depp, the next it was Will Ferrell gracing the cover of the hideous magazine that had brought the tabloid world into the rarified air of our home. It wasn't until the cover featuring Ellen Page of Juno, that I broke down and cracked open the magazine. I admit that I just love that movie. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed; the magazine was rife with gossip, inane features on celebrities and fawning palaver aimed at dreadful Hollywood fare.

However, I found a curious three-page section of book reviews towards the back. I was flabbergasted. The reviews were concise, well written and featured not just popular books but independent and intelligent titles. I don't recall the exact books that were discussed in that issue, but ever since I have scanned each issue of Entertainment Weekly for the reviews.

I started mentioning the book news and insights that I'd read in the magazine to reps and fellow booksellers. I'd get a few askance glances, but I'd push forward. Making my exposure as a reader of trashy magazines even worse was my habit of referring to the publication as "EW" It seemed that I was on overly familiar terms with Entertainment Weekly. This delighted a few of the people I worked with who were only too happy to catch me quoting a non-snooty publication.

My conversion to Entertainment Weekly, was completed this past week when they released a special double issue featuring the best movies, tv shows, albums and books of the last 25 years. I skipped past the other categories (although I couldn't help noticing that they named the mediocre Spiderman 2 the 36th best movie) and headed right to books.

It's a surprising, quirky and literate list. Cormac McCarthy's The Road earns the top spot and is joined by Harry Potter, Beloved, The Liar's Club and American Pastoral in the top five. It's not just the books they pick -- I personally don't agree with the selection of Philip Roth's American Pastoral, for instance. I'm not sure it's even his fifth best book of the last 25 years. It's the pithy comments that accompany each entry that really provide the hooks.

Here's the write up for #29, Bel Canto by Anne Patchett: "A South American embassy throws a birthday bash for a Japanese electronics mogul. A famed opera singer is on the guest list. The terrorists who swarm in through the air-conditioning vents are not. The diva's performance works miracles even with the terrorists, but it's Patchett who really sings."

I also like #16, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: "After 1984 came and went without ado, we needed a new futuristic dystopia to haunt our sleep. Atwood obliged, dreaming up the Republic of Gilead, a grim theocracy where women are valued solely for their ability to bear children."

I'm not arguing that this is a definitive list of great books published over the last 25 years. There are some true hits (The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien, Blindness by Jose Saramago) as well as some books that were wildly popular (The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane) but have no business being on a list of new classics.

What EW does so well is to make books appear to be as entertaining as avid readers know that they really are. EW treats books with the same flippancy and zing that they treat movies and music. Anyone can enjoy a great record, and what they are saying in their book pages is that anyone can enjoy a great book. You don't have to be hyper-educated or part of a book club to pick one up. If you want to be entertained, here's some books that are great options.

In a strange way, I think EW does a better job with books than they do with movies and television shows. In the visual mediums, they are such an establishment force, that they have certain things that they must cover. They write about all of the major Hollywood pictures, no matter how unworthy of space they may be. Their book pages aren't as thorough, but they are free from establishment expectations. EW features first novels next to graphic novels, and the latest Janet Evanovich novel in the same issue that they have a full-page article on Ethan Canin's America America.

I used to think that these mainstream reviews didn't really matter much. Who reads EW or People for their book coverage? Well, People featured Nina de Gramont's The Gossip of Starlings a few weeks ago, and the book sold out at all the national distributors within days. Someone's paying attention out there. Perhaps there's really life beyond The New York Times Book Review for books and authors.

Now where did I put the EW featuring pictures of Angelna Jolie's tattoos? I didn't finish reading all of the book reviews in it. "Honey, what do you mean you threw it out?"

Welcome to the Digital World

2008-06-10T09:09:00.008-06:00

Can Anyone Use a Computer Around Here?

Buying new books for the store, the crux of my job, can be an exercise in absurdity and futility. It's an antiquated, inefficient system that hardly takes into account the invention of the personal computer and completely ignores the existence of the internet. Here's how it works in a nutshell:

1. The publishers send out catalogs several months in advance of the publications of their new titles. I just bought Oxford University titles that aren't due out until next winter. These catalogs, which look and read like poorly edited magazines, usually feature one title per page. For each title there is a short (a few paragraphs) description, an image of the cover, often an author photo and information on the author's previous titles. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get a humorous tagline that reads something like "a cross between All the Pretty Horses and the Da Vinci Code."

2. I flip through the pages of these catalogs (sometimes 500 or more pages in a single day), going through one at a time to discover the books I want. I dutifully look up old titles by the authors, previous editions of travel books, and books with similar themes or topics. The titles in each catalog are in a seemingly random order that must make some sense to the publisher, but usually befuddles me. For instance, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, and Simon and Schuster each may have up to a couple dozen different catalogs. The new hardback fiction titles might be spread throughout as many as ten of these. This makes it nearly impossible to really know how much of any one topic or genre you are ordering during the sales call.

3. The sales rep goes through the catalog with me, highlighting books that the press is particularly excited about, or, more often, books that the publisher isn't really supporting with publicity, helping to guide me to a final number. Since the catalogs are out of date by the time they are printed, a lot of the rep's job during the appointment entails pointing out which terrible covers in the catalog have been changed, mentioning price increases, and informing me about upcoming publicity that was recently booked. They do this at every appointment. Honestly, I don't know how they stay awake.

4. Five or six hours into the appointment, when I've worked through all the titles in the catalog and it's all I can do to keep from dropping off to sleep, the sales rep stealthily whips out a stack of photocopied pages for me to peruse. These are sell sheets for titles that the publisher announced too late for inclusion in the catalogs. Often these books have no descriptions or jacket photos on the sheet. When I ask the reps about them, a shrug of the shoulders is the most common reaction I get. Of course, many of the most important books of the year get released like this, so I have to wade through these pages and pick out the Bob Woodward or Stephen King title lurking among them.

5. Once the rep leaves, my assistants and I enter all of the titles one by one into our computer system from the marked-up catalogs. When the data entry is complete, we recycle the catalogs immediately. It comes to over 100 pounds of wasted paper every few months.

A Better Way to Buy

Several publishers, most notably HarperCollins, are discussing the possibility of moving to an online catalog. I have one word for these publishers -- Hallelujah. It's about time. It was about time five years ago, but this is the book business, and things move at a glacial pace.

The publishers are doing it mostly to cut costs and to get some points for being green. Apparently, the current catalogs cost a fortune to produce and mail out. The bigger houses report that they spend over a million dollars on their catalogs. As far as being green, that's just a bad joke. We are in an industry that doesn't think twice about overprinting and shipping vast quantities of books that will never be sold. Our catalogs might come to 300 pounds a year, but our returns probably run to several tons.

What interests me about an online catalog, if it were done right, is that it could be a much better way to buy from the publishers. As soon as a book has a new cover, I could see it on the site. When new publicity, like an NPR show, is booked, it would be updated online immediately. Never again would my rep and I have to waste time looking at outdated pages. Instead, our appointments could be used to quickly discover the best books for the Boulder Book Store and to determine how best to position those titles. Add-on sheets for late titles would be a thing of the past. Instead, those books would be up and ready to go on the website.

Here's one buyer's vision of how this should work:

1. The catalog would be available online, and each store would access it through a distinct login. All of the information that is currently available on each title in the paper catalogs would be present on the online version. In addition, there could be extended reviews, pages of the text (especially helpful with children's books), author interviews, etc. Buyers would be able to annotate and customize these pages.

2. Each buyer would be able to sort the catalogs however they wanted. Publishers (in my wildest dreams, I see the major houses working together to come up with a standard format) would enable buyers to sort the books in dozens of different ways. How about looking at debut paperback fiction? How about hardback American history under $30? I'd love to sort out fiction with a spiritual theme.

3. The bookstore's computer system would feed into the online catalog to provide sales data on older titles. Why should I look up what John Grisham's last title sold, when the two computers could just talk to each other? We already give the publishers access to our sales information through a program called Above The Treeline; the presses should just feed it back to us on the online catalog. It should come up that I've sold 24 copies of Grisham's latest hardback and 47 of his most recent paperback. Perhaps carpal tunnel syndrome won't have to be the scourge of all middle-age book buyers.

4. An alert system could let buyers know of all the changes or additions that have happened since they last placed an order. Instead of receiving 5 to 10 pesky emails per week from each sales rep, perhaps buyers could just log on to the site once a month or so. I envision three tabs that would keep buyers informed: "New Titles," "New Publicity," and "Price and Title Changes." Bye-bye photocopied sheets.

5. The publisher's online catalog would dump the purchase order directly into our computer system. I know this is problematic due to most stores' (including the Boulder Book Store's) ancient computer systems. But it is still something that we could work towards once we get online catalogs up and running. The amount of staff time this would save is immense.

Words of Caution

HarperCollins held a meeting at the recent Book Expo America in Los Angeles with buyers from many of the top independent bookstores in the country to discuss their plans to implement an online catalog in the next nine months. It was a fascinating study in how people react to change. I was leading the charge into the online world with a handful of other booksellers. Many other buyers were much more hesitant to change a system that has worked for them, despite its inherent flaws. To them, the rush to change seemed reckless.

My biggest concern is that bookstores are some of the most under-capitalized businesses you'll ever find. Most stores do not have state-of-the-art computers and speedy internet connections. If an online catalog features too many bells and whistles, (HarperCollins is planning on having video and audio components to many pages) it could take too long for bookstores to load the individual pages. Staring at a stuck screen for more than an instant is going to bring the whole appointment to a crashing halt. There has to be a quick-loading basic page, with the exciting, colorful features all offered as something booksellers can access only if they want to learn more.

It's true that there are some potential downsides to ordering from an online catalog. It's harder to snuggle up with a laptop than a catalog in bed. Also, there's definitely something alluring about seeing photos on glossy paper as opposed to a computer screen. And a catalog is a lot easier to pass around the office.

However, the potential to revolutionize the buying process, save hours of tedious labor for both reps and buyers, and to make better decisions based on current information is too great to ignore. It's time for publishers to step up and make this happen. I applaud HarperCollins for the strides they've made and challenge Random House (the so-called industry leader), Penguin (publisher to most of last year's mega-sellers) and Simon and Schuster (home of the most useless catalog in the business) to wake up and give buyers a tool they can really use.

Homecoming for a Debut Novelist

2008-05-28T08:29:00.014-06:00

Bookstore staffs are populated by struggling writers, hopeful authors and dedicated scribblers who are all a break away from getting published. Many give up, pushing their half-finished novels, ragged drafts of short stories, and marked-up pages of poems to the bottom of a drawer as they move onto more certain and lucrative careers. A few manage to get published, but by the time they do they've long ago left the bookstore behind and are never seen again.

Nina de Gramont worked for the Boulder Book Store in the mid-1990s, and she was one of the more earnest wannabe writers on the staff. Perhaps she knew all the hard work that lay ahead of her, since her husband David Gessner published his superb natural and personal history Wild Rank Place while she was a bookseller. More likely, she was just a bit more serious in her ambitions and much more willing than most of her colleagues to put in the hard work necessary to become a professional writer.

De Gramont, who now lives in North Carolina, returns to the Boulder Book Store on June 26th to speak and sign her new novel, Gossip of the Starlings. It's a magnificent look at adolescents careening towards disaster as they succumb to peer pressure. Her signing will be a rarity in the bookstore world. It's the first time in more than a decade that a former Boulder Book Store employee has had a reading for a published book at the store.

"I'm really looking forward to it," de Gramont said. "I'm excited. I have great memories of working at the store. David (Bolduc) was a generous employer. To me, the Boulder Book Store is a naturally calming space, especially the ballroom where the readings are held. I don't feel like a conquering hero returning, more like a humble servant visiting."

Gossip of the Starlings is a nuanced look at two high school friends, Catherine Morrow and Skye Butterfield. These aren't your typical teenagers. Skye is the daughter of a United States Senator, and Catherine competes at the highest levels of show jumping. Despite their high-class pedigrees, de Gramont manages to make their stories resonate. They are two teenagers caught in a spiraling world of drugs and high expectations. The inner turmoil that consumes them could mirror that of any troubled high school student.

"As a writer, you have to express compassion and sympathy for your characters regardless of their circumstances," de Gramont wrote in an email interview. "Part of what makes the story dramatic is the way in which these characters are willing to gamble with, and in some cases squander, all the opportunity and safety that's been granted them."

Catherine narrates the story in an elegiac tone as she looks back on the fateful year she spent as Skye's friend. This device allows de Gramont to view the wild and impetuous Skye through adult eyes rather than through the harsh lens of an adolescent. Catherine also imbues the entire novel with a hint of foreboding that begins on the very first page. The opening paragraph establishes not only the point of view and the sense of doom, but also the beautiful, meticulous, and poetic language that de Gramont uses throughout the book.

Now, when I see teenage girls laughing, when I see them loosed on a summer evening--
their limbs tanned and gossamer, their imagined freedom radiating like nuclear light--
I can't help but fast-forward two decades or more. I know the curve of their bones has
already made an imperceptible bow to gravity. I see the decay in slow motion, even or
especially through those stunning and immortal years.

"One of the reasons I wanted Catherine to narrate from a remove of years was to accomplish an adult sort of sympathy toward Skye," de Gramont said. "From a teenage point of view, Skye is glamorous and dangerous and very powerful. But from an adult point of view, she becomes quite tragic."

The reader begins to get a clear understanding of the recklessness of Skye's character and a hint of the tragedy that is sure to come in an extended scene that takes place in the eerily empty summer home of Skye's parents on Cape Cod. In the scene, de Gramont touches upon both the exhilaration of being a teenager along with the feelings of ennui that are experienced at that age. Skye's actions are so inappropriate and dangerous that Catherine's other friends clearly see her as a risk, even as Catherine is blinded by her seductive friend.

"I am drawing on some of my own experiences for that scene in particular," de Gramont said. "I wanted to establish the sense of freedom that comes from escaping rules, and at the same time illustrate the dynamics that evolve from new, self-imposed rules. In other words, Skye and Catherine may have escaped the bonds of one culture, but of course they've entered a new one. As a neophyte in the rule-breaking world, Skye doesn't understand the importance of the new parameters. She's as willing to flout her peers' rules as she is her parents', and that more than anything is what makes her dangerous."

The writing is remarkably powerful and emotionally true because de Gramont seems to dig deep into her own experiences and feelings in the narrative. Despite the nostalgic tone, there is an urgency that both teenagers and adults can appreciate in this novel. The drama and the feeling of living life on the edge that are the hallmarks of adolescence are perfectly recreated here.

Surprisingly, the skeleton of the story is based on a real life drug bust from the 1980s. Unlike so many other novels that have roots in true news incidents, Gossip of the Starlings has none of the stiltedness that comes from being bound to the facts of a story. The characters are fully fleshed out and wholly original. Catherine and Skye and those around them take on lives of their own that don't seem to follow a preordained script or fit into a network news cycle.

"In 1984 there was an infamous drug bust involving one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country," de Gramont said. "The incident got some press in the New York Times and even a segment on Sixty Minutes.... The surrounding events lingered in my imagination for years, but they only provided the barest template. I intentionally didn't go back and research any of the old news stories, or conduct any interviews, because I wanted the action to belong purely to the characters in my novel."

De Gramont's fertile imagination has yielded not only a beautifully written novel that perfectly melds tone, character and plot into a riveting narrative, but also an important cautionary tale for teenagers who are just beginning to explore the world on their own.

She might not feel like a conquering hero as she returns to the Boulder Book Store, but coming back to her old stomping grounds with one of the most accomplished books of the season certainly makes her a literary hero.

Nina de Gramont will read and sign her book Gossip of the Starlings at the Boulder Book Store on June 26th at 7:30 p.m.

Judging Books by Their Covers

2008-05-21T11:04:00.014-06:00

Every week I place 40 to 50 advance reader's copies in the staff lounge here at the Boulder Book Store. Advance reader's copies are basically paperback versions of hardback books that will be published in the next few months. The distribution of these reader's copies are a critical component to the publishers' strategy for selling their new titles to booksellers.

The idea is that while our booksellers are noshing on the freshly baked bagels that are delivered to the store, they will pick up a reader's copy and become hooked. Once the booksellers are sold on a title, they will recommend it to customers. That's especially how the publishers are hoping it will work for unknown authors and titles they have paid a lot of money for, like Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader.

Rarely, however, does it really goes as planned. Our 45 staff members pick up an average of 10 to 15 reader's copies a week, leaving 25-40 untouched. The rest end up being used to reward customers, as perks for local school teachers, or in boxes that get hauled off to the Goodwill. Over the years, I have tried to bribe or cajole the staff into taking more copies. I write up a sheet highlighting what I consider (based on conversations with the publisher reps, my own reading experience, and Publisher Weekly Reviews) to be the best titles of the week.

I've learned to put the books out about a month or two before their release date. If I put out the October copies now, there is a distinct possibility that the staff member who grabs a reader's copy won't be working by the time the fall rolls around. In months like May and June, when tons of new titles get released, I often start falling behind and sometimes I'm putting the reader's copies out on the eve of their hardback release dates.

Currently, I am frantically trying to clear out the June titles, but I am being foiled by the publishers at every turn. In today's mail there were May reader's copies still coming in, including our 5th copy of A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a great new comic novel that is already out in hardback.

We have one main rule at the Boulder Book Store regarding reader's copies: once a staff member takes one, it can never, ever come back. A few old books found their way onto the reader's copy shelf yesterday, much to my chagrin. After an intense investigation, the culprit--a wonderful young bookseller--was discovered. She explained to me that she was about to move and had way too many books and so she thought her January reader's copies would just blend back in.

I told her and a few other employees in the lounge that as soon as their hands touched a reader's copy, they couldn't put it back on the shelf. It was theirs. I knew I was in trouble when one of our most creative staff members began searching for barbecue tongs in order to look through the reader's copies while avoiding actually touching them.

This week, I tried a new tactic in an effort to get more people to take reader's copies. Instead of describing what the books were about and the merits of the various authors, I featured the beauty of the covers. I know, I know--that sounds shallow. But if you were faced with as many rejected titles as we are (1500 or more per year), you'd get a bit desperate as well.

The publishers spend a fortune in an attempt to make these books visual appealing. Some come in boxes, others have ribbons wrapped around them. It costs more to produce a reader's copy than a hardback. Maybe the staff will appreciate the production value over the content. After all, it works for the movies. Below is the note that accompanied the 45 reader's copies that I put in the staff lounge this morning:

Reader's Copy Highlights 5/21/08

When I first started working at the bookstore in 1992, we got about 10 reader's copies a week from the publishers. They came in plain yellow or blue covers with the title and author's name in unadorned black script. Nowadays we get 50 or more every week and many of them are truly beautiful. Liesl (one of our long-time buyers) noted that the reader's copy covers are often nicer than the finished book's. The advance cover of Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant was far superior to the jacket on the hardback. In this week's highlights, I'm featuring books as art objects. These are the most beautifully designed reader's copies of the week (without regard to content).

The Size of the World by Joan Silber. The cover features three photos, the middle one tinted in a sumptuous orange, evoking the feel of a Vietnamese film. It's a novel set in wartime Vietnam.

The Montefeltro Conspiracy by Marcello Simonetta. A reproduction of a Renaissance Italian painting graces the jacket of this historical look at the attempted assassination of the Medici brothers.

The Other by David Guterson. The author of Snow Falling on Cedars is given the stark black and white treatment featuring a photo of a mysterious snow field with one set of footprints running through it.

The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman. A gorgeous wraparound cover of an 1892 harem painting by Frank Disksee lets the reader know of the delights that will surely be found in this novel set in the 16th century Ottoman Empire.

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan. A luscious dark blue cover features a swirling jacquard (a fabric of intricate variegated weave or pattern named after Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French silk weaver in the late 1700s.)

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen. I admit that the cover isn't great, but the line drawings are interesting at least. The author photo on the back cover is what really makes this reader's copy. Rivka is quite alluring.

The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano. A spiral staircase with an intricate wrought-iron railing is the centerpiece of this cover, which also features a ghostly image of a woman in period costume (I'm not sure which period). The author's photo on the back cover is absurdly posed, but Daina is beautiful enough to get away with it.

The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall. The cover photo of Venice's St. Mark's Square and the Doge Palace as seen from across the water with two gondolas in the foreground just makes you want to leave work immediately and head for that enchanted city.

Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst. An orange-hued jacket featuring the silhouettes of a couple of crows along with a wolf. What makes this cover stand out is the embossed title. The series name--The Wolf Chronicles--and the author's name are also embossed in gold lettering that is prettier than a shiny wedding ring.

Dying to Climb Mount Everest

2008-05-12T18:18:00.007-06:00

Everest is a rugged, cold, oxygen-deprived, inhospitable mountain that isn't suitable for human life. A few nearly super human souls like Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, who climbed the mountain solo and without oxygen in 1978, defy the odds and stretch the limits of human endurance. Many more people, like the dozens of amateur climbers who ascend the peak every year with the help of fixed rope lines, oxygen canisters, and teams of sherpas, conquer the mountain's 29,029 feet with all the resources that modern life can bear.

But modern conveniences and large tours only mask the true danger of the mountain. In 2006, eleven people died trying to reach the summit of Everest. Unlike 1996, the focus of John Krakauer's thrilling account Into Thin Air which documented a brutal storm that lead Everest's deadliest year, there was no swift-moving storm in 2006. In fact, there was a great deal of controversy about how and why so many people died in relatively calm weather. Nick Heil's new book Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season delves into the personalities and the histories of both the climbers who died and those that survived as well as the checkered past of Everest, in an attempt to untangle the mysteries of 2006.

Two men at the center of the controversy -- David Sharp, a British climber who lay dying as scores of climbers passed him in their attempt to summit and Russell Brice, the preeminent tour operator on the north side of the mountain -- get a lot of attention in Heil's account. Sharp's fate made headlines around the world when it became known that he perished on the mountain despite being seen by so many climbers. Brice, because he runs the most lavish and well-outfitted tours, was subject to a great deal of outrage in the climbing community. Why didn't Brice's people do more to save Sharp, even though he wasn't on Brice's tour?

"Brice, arguably more than any other individual, has been responsible for developing commercial climbing on Everest's north side, and where his responsibility and accountability ends when it comes to the welfare and activity of other teams and climbers on the mountain has become a subject of spirited debate," Heil wrote in an email interview. "Brice has been criticized for developing a heavily supported system that pampers clientele and removes most of the challenges (finding and putting in the route, dealing with weather, managing gear and food, etc) from high-altitude mountaineering, and thus enabling amateurs to make it up a peak they otherwise might not."

Sharp wasn't one of those amateurs. In 2002 he climbed Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world and less than 2,200 feet shorter than Everest. The next year Sharp attempted to climb Everest and fell just hours short of the summit because he was struggling with his oxygen system. In 2004, Sharp attempted a solo climb of the mountain and was turned back just a mile from the summit (about six hours) when he began to suffer frostbite. When he returned in 2006, he was a determined man. Once again he was climbing without a sherpa or a support team.

Sharp's forays were in direct contrast to the type of trips Brice ran. He was also a much different climber than the ones that Brice brought to the mountain. Among Brice's 2006 clients were several people overcoming physical difficulties. Mark Inglis, who lost his legs in a 1982 climbing incident on New Zealand's Mount Cook was attempting to become the first person to climb Everest on twin prosthetics. Gerard Bourrat, a 62-year old man who was barely recovered from kidney surgery, had the doctor cut into his abdomen rather than his back so he could carry a backpack without irratating the wound. Perhaps strangest of all, Tim Medvetz, a motorcycle crash survivor who was 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, had signed onto the trip at the last possible moment in questionable shape. Brice seemed to be running a wayward camp for guys trying to prove that they were physically up to snuff.

"I'm sure most able-bodied mountaineers who have climbed big peaks can appreciate what Mark Inglis, the double-amputee, accomplished by climbing to 29,000 feet," Heil wrote in his email. "That said, mountaineering does seem to attract a percentage of people seeking to reaffirm their own self-worth or bolster their self-esteem, and there may be no better case study than Everest--largely because it continues to carry such cache, no matter how cynical you might be about commercial climbing."

The tension between the amateurs and the accomplished climbers, between the well prepared mountaineers and people who might not even be in peak shape animates much of Heil's book. In one particularly memorable scene, Medvetz -- a rank amateur by most people's reckoning -- gets stuck behind 16 people waiting to climb the rock ledges at the bottom of the second step. "C'mon, let's go! It's fucking freezing down here," he screamed. "I'm going to die of frostbite! It's not funny."

Heil describes the climbers, a group of Turkish women, flopping around as the sherpas try to yank them up by their backpacks. It almost reads like a slapstick comedy, if the effects of standing around at 27,000 feet weren't so perilous. Once Medvetz scrambles up the ledge he gets stuck behind the women again, except now there is no reason to scream. The sherpas are performing CPR on one of the climbers that has collapsed and is blocking Medvetz's path. All he can do is wonder if he's going to watch someone die.

If there are any true heroes in Heil's tale it is the sherpas. They are the ones that fix the ropes at the beginning of the season, they are the ones that share their oxygen when western climbers collapse and they are even the ones that drag the dead bodies off the mountain. In the end, the only person who really tried to save David Sharp was Brice's lead sherpa Phurba Tashi, who spent hours trying to revive the Brit.

"Phurba Tashi is really just fantastically strong, and he knows what's happening on the mountain," Heil answered when I asked him about Everest heroes. "He helped turn Tim (Medvetz) and Gerard (Bourrat) around (when it was obvious they couldn't reach the summit), then did more than anyone else to try to help David Sharp, and THEN he carried Mark Inglis halfway down the North Ridge on his back when Inglis could no longer walk. He's an extraordinary individual who gets far less recognition than he deserves."

Dark Summit is a riveting book not just because the human drama that played out on Everest in May of 2006, but because of Heil's fine descriptive writing and keen insights into the motivations of the climbers, the guides and the tour operators. These portraits of the people and the landscape paint a much more complex view of what is happening on Everest then is generally understood. The difference between right and wrong is much easier to judge at sea level than it is at 28,000 feet. Heil shows completely exhausted climbers who aren't making the decision to ignore people in need, but are rather just trying to survive in the deadly climate.

"In fact, when I was on Everest in 07, I was struck not by what a circus it was (and there was some of that) but by the sense that these people did care, by and large, and that they WERE looking out for each other," Heil emailed. "What tends to get reported is all the nasty stuff of course; you never hear about the Sherpa who gave up his oxygen, or the guide who stopped to check on someone along the route, or really all of the small gestures of kindness and thoughtfulness that take place all the time."

Heil also gives a brief overview of Everest history including the exploits of George Mallory, Maurice Wilson (a crazed climber who planned to crash a plane into Everest to begin his ascent) and Edmund Hillary which helps to ground the tales of today's climbs. He also discusses the medical effects of cerebral edema, frostbite and freezing to death which come in handy when the climbers start collapsing all over the mountain.

Heil's book ends on a surprisingly high note with one climber who collapsed and somehow got up again. Lincoln Hall, who has written his own account of his climb Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest, survived even though he was basically left for dead overnight on the mountain. Heil tells the improbable story of his rescue, including tales of desperate sherpas who violently threatened Hall in an effort to get him down the mountain. Of course, the sherpas couldn't possible inflict more violence on a human being then the brutal world of Everest's North ridge.

Nick Heil will be discussing and signing Dark Summit at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 14th at the Boulder Book Store.

Additional Questions for Nick Heil:

Kash's Book Corner: After your extensive research and multiple interviews and your own experience on the mountain, what would you suggest for dealing with the problems of a crowded mountain. Should permits be tighter? Should there be a fitness test? What is even feasible?

Nick Heil: There are some basic steps that could certainly help: for starters, previous 8,000-meter experience on another peak (Cho Oyu or Shish, for example), minimum five years climbing experience, and probably a cap on the total number of climbers. I think the rope-fixing needs to be figured out and managed through a consistent system. And I think some sort of infrastructure that could deal with emergencies, like a rotating team of Sherpas that stays at one of the high camps during the busiest summit days. This all pertains to the commercial outfits of course. Independent and private outfits would need to demonstrate some kind of previous experience and expertise. I think the mountain's guides, outfitters, and permitting agencies could reach a fair consensus on all this. It's going to take Nepal and China to step up and require it, however.

Kash's Book Corner: The Olympic torch going up Everest has been in the news this week. What was the attitude towards last year's practice run? Is this just another step towards turning the mountain into a circus?

Nick Heil: I think the attitude about the torch test run in 07 was mostly mild bemusement. This year, with the mountain closures and general ruckus related to the torch relay and pending Games, it's turned to annoyance, if not genuine anger. The torch fiasco probably points less to the circus like nature of Everest than to the iron fist with which China controls that part of Himalayas. They care far less about the tourism industry (including the Everest climbing community) than they do about creating their own propaganda and news spin. The torch's trip up Everest is obviously of great symbolic importance. But all those who were put out of work this year on the mountain might have a significantly different interpretation of that symbolism than the Chinese.

Kash's Book Corner: If the sherpas can fix the rope lines early in the season, would it be possible for them to store emergency air cannisters and other supplies at key places in the route?

Nick Heil: Yes, they could. Problem is, it's expensive (oxygen canisters run upwards of $400/pc), and it's also quite a project for someone to try to manage independent rescue resources on the mountain. As I mentioned before, there could in theory, even be a small rescue team positioned up high, but again, there's the cost, and such a thing would also seem a bit excessive to mountaineers who pride themselves on the notion of their own self-sufficiency. One of the reason the Brice/Himex model works so well is that Brice has built in failsafes to troubleshoot problems during the climb. I think that's probably the way to go, before trying to establish elaborate rescue systems.

Deconstructing the Library

2008-05-10T13:47:00.006-06:00

I first read T.C. Boyle's classic novel Budding Prospects in 1991 when I was a sportswriter in Maryland. I picked up my hardback copy for about five bucks at a used bookstore a few blocks away from the newspaper office one sunny spring afternoon. I flew through Boyle's comic masterpiece of ill-fated, paranoid pot growers in between covering high school baseball and softball games.

The novel resonated with me in ways that are hard to describe. I didn't grow pot, I'm not particularly paranoid and I certainly wouldn't be as inept at anything that I put my mind to as Boyle's characters are in their endeavours. There was a spark and a lightness in Boyle's language and his characters that struck me. The voice of the first person narrator, Felix, was direct, honest and humorous all at the same time. The spectre of failure haunted Felix from the opening sentences. I was at a difficult point in my life where I was getting by (sharing a broken-down house with two other reporters), but success in the adult world of work certainly did not seem assured. Maybe I was feeling a bit hopeless as I read Felix's opening words:

"I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team," Boyle writes. He continues, "I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston."

A year later, I did quit my job at the newspaper and headed west to Colorado. My personal list of quitting had risen to include the cities of New Orleans and Houston along with a relationship and now my career as a sportswriter. Budding Prospects, along with about 75 other precious books, was packed away in the trunk of my car as I sped across the country with my friend's windsurfer tied to the roof.

When I left Maryland, I didn't even consider ditching my books. They were part of my identity. The battered copies of Bernard Malamud's novels helped me understand my Jewish ancestry. Joyce Carol Oates' Because it is Bitter, Because it is my Heart gave me some insight into racial relations in America. Richard Hugo's book of poems 31 Letters and 13 Dreams described the satisfactions and heartaches that lay ahead for me if I followed my most secret desire of becoming a poet. As I drove across America, I thought of Alex Kotlowitz's recently published instant sociological classic There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America that told me what was really happening in the inner cities that I sped past on the highway.

I treasured these books for how they had touched me as a reader and person, and I couldn't imagine being without them. I believed that I would refer back to them over and over again as the years went on. They were irreplaceable to me. You couldn't just go into any library or bookstore and find Hugo's poetry or Malamud's more obscure novels. I needed to carry them with me to create my own personal library.

I hung onto these books and added hundreds more over the subsequent 15 years. Budding Prospects was packed up and moved five separate times over the years. Each time it was placed on my bookshelf as if it was a valuable family heirloom saved in the Armenian exodus from Turkey by my great-grandmother. The bookcases in my condos grew from bricks and boards to beautiful painted wooden cases acquired at a Mexican furniture store in downtown Boulder. No expense was too great when it came to caring for my books. When those cases were bursting with titles, I installed metal brackets and wall-to-wall shelves on every available wall. Finally, when there were still books that couldn't find a home on any of the shelves, stacks started accumulating on the floor.

Then, a funny thing happened about two years ago -- I tried to reread Budding Prospects. As part of a store contest, every staff member was supposed to pick a backlist book to recommend for the summer. What could be a better fit for pot-smoking Boulder than my old beloved friend. I managed to get to about page 75 before I set aside Boyle's work in boredom. It seemed more meandering than I recalled, and all of the wonderful passages that I remembered held none of the surprise for me that they did on the first reading. Here was this book that I'd carried for over 2,000 miles and packed and repacked for the last 15 years and I had no desire to read it again.

I didn't immediately get rid of my copy of Boyle's debut novel. But I started thinking about all of my books. Why was I holding onto them? At the age of 40 I was much more confident of my identity than I had been at 25. I didn't need them to define me anymore. I never seemed to reread them, except for an occasional poem or short story. I didn't really refer to them very much. Some I even forgot I owned and would snag a remainder copy of a title that it turned out was sitting in our spare room collecting dust in its alphabetically correct place on the shelf.

Furthermore, even if I let go of Budding Prospects I could turn around and get it right back if I really wanted it. Over the last couple of months, I've gradually been dismantling my personal library. As I part with each precious tome, I'm addicted to looking up what it's really worth out in the world. It turns out that most of my books are worth between one penny and three dollars according to Amazon and Abebooks. That's not much when you consider how valuable every inch of an 800-square-foot apartment is in downtown Boulder.

Sometimes, I fear that as I get rid of them I will miss their physical presence. It will be like the fresh paint on a wall where an old picture used to hang. You might not even know what the picture was, but you miss the frame, and it's almost painful to see that clean spot on the wall. This worry was assuaged a bit last night over drinks with an old friend, a writer, who said goodbye to many of his books when he moved from a house into a 640 square foot condo with his wife.

"We packed up and got rid of so many boxes of books when we moved, and I don't miss them at all. There isn't a single thing that I miss," he said. I peered at him closely trying to figure out if I really believed him. "It's great," he blurted out in conclusion and grinned. He sure looked like a happy man to me.

It was reassuring to see him smiling; it is kind of depressing to think that these objects that have had a hold over me like holy relics or talismans for the past 15 years could be worth-less. On the other hand, it is freeing to think that I no longer need to construct a personal library. Every obscure Malamud novel can be had in several different editions.

I spent a couple of days during the last week receiving used books at the bookstore. I was amazed at the plethora of titles that comes in every single week. Classic works of literature, religion and history, along with books that are still on the bestseller list. If you want to get a cheap copy of Eckhart Tolle's Oprah sensation A New Earth or Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, just put in a request at our used book office and one will probably show up within a few days.

In the used book office, I felt like I was standing beneath a waterfall of books as I looked at the floor to ceiling shelves of books we'd recently purchased waiting to be received. As I stood there, I began to realize that there is a never-ending flow of books. There's no reason to dam up a tiny area for my own personal pool. For a modest amount of money, I can reach into this flow at any time and read exactly what I want.

The dismantling of my library hasn't gone that smoothly. There are still books that I've owned for 12 years that I insist that I will eventually read. My wife doesn't quite understand why I have to hang on to two copies of Don DeLillo's Underworld. I explain that one is the reader's copy and the other is a signed first edition. These are the hazards of my profession. I got rid of Budding Prospects, but I can't let go of T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain and Road to Wellville. They are both signed, personalized and dated. Then there are books like Kevin Canty's collection of short stories, Honeymoon. It's one of 250 signed first editions. I've never read Canty, but perhaps this will become a holy relic if Canty goes on to win a major award.

These books with personal touches seem to be all that I want to keep anymore. They seem to me to be irreplaceable in a way that most books simply aren't. I'd sooner sell my couch (my wife might disagree since she's currently napping on it) than my autographed Philip Roth books. But is this really a library? No. It's just a fairly random collection of signed or rare books that I've stumbled across in my years as a bookseller. The world, for better or worse, is now my library.

From Fugitive to Professional

2008-04-21T08:53:00.008-06:00

The word terrorist is thrown around quite a bit these days. We can all agree that the events of 9/11 was the work of terrorists. Few people would hesitate to call Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, a terrorist. But what about Palestinian children who throw rocks at Israeli soldiers? What about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas? Those are more difficult questions, especially now that the Zapatistas aren't using military weapons to achieve their revolution. But they are actively working to overthrow the Mexican state.

For a brief moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s the protest movement against the war in Vietnam took a violent turn. Frustrated protesters made the argument that the immoral war needed to be stopped by any means necessary. Bombs were set, people were killed and many of the perpetrators went into hiding. They became fugitives. Were they terrorists?

In Janis Hallowell's new novel She Was, Doreen Woods, a professional mother living in Denver, is one of these fugitives. A student radical at Berkeley in the 1970s, she has eluded capture for 35 years and transformed herself from a violent teenage war protester into a mother nervous about her son's attendance at a peaceful anti-war rally. She hardly seems like a violent enemy of the state.

"I wanted to write about a fugitive woman," Hallowell said in a wide-ranging interview. "These women really existed, more than one. There were few notable political things that women did, but women took starring roles in this kind of action."

The action in question is a bombing at Columbia University that kills a black janitor. Hallowell recounts the night from the perspective of Louis Nilon, the victim, in a spellbinding prologue that evokes pathos without being sentimental. The janitor makes his rounds thinking about his life while listening to the Ali-Frazier championship fight. It's clear that a human being has died in this explosion. There's no writing off of Nilon as collateral damage.

That's more damage than Hallowell's real life model for Doreen Woods, Kathleen Soliah, did when she planted bombs in Los Angeles police cars in 1975. Those bombs didn't go off. Soliah went into hiding and 24 years later was arrested living under the name Sarah Jane Olson. She was back in the news last month, when she was released from jail and rearrested due to an administrative mistake.

"I decided to turn up the volume a little more," Hallowell said. "I wanted to bring into higher relief the moral ambiguity of the situation. It's one thing if you set a bomb and it doesn't go off. But it does explode and kills a black working-class man--the very kind of person that the radicals said they were doing these things to help. I made it harsh on purpose. I didn't expect to feel compassion for her."

Gradually, the reader does come to feel compassion for Woods. Hallowell not only shows us the life that Woods leads in Denver, which includes taking care of her sick brother, but also her personal history leading up to the fateful evening at Columbia University. It's a story set in the turbulent, emotional times of the Vietnam war. The beliefs of sons and daughters are set against the values of their own parents as American living rooms became increasingly hostile places. It's easy for a smart, impressionable 19-year old to be lured into the world of violent student radicals after seeing the damage the war has inflicted on her beloved older brother.

More importantly to developing compassion, Hallowell shows us Woods' life after the bomb explodes. She gives us the story from a variety of viewpoints including those of her husband, the woman pursuing her and her brother Adam, a troubled Vietnam vet. These different narratives add texture and a scope that couldn't be achieved if we were with Doreen the whole time.

"I had to find ways to get into their skin," Hallowell says of the characters she writes. "You have to find the humanity of everyone you write about. There are memoirs about the subject, but as a memoir you only get your perspective. In fiction you have the freedom of telling the story from any perspective. That's what's powerful about fiction. I didn't even try first person with this book."

It's a good thing, too, because the scenes from Adam's point of view are among the most powerful she writes. Adam has some harrowing memories of cruelty and inhumanity from Vietnam that are floating to the surface of his hallucinating mind throughout the story. It's not the kind of writing that you'd expect from Hallowell. Her first book was the excellent novel The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn, a first-person tale of a teenager who might have the divine spirit in her set in a fairly tame Boulder. It hardly seemed like the resume of someone who would write searing scenes of the Vietnam War.

"When it became clear to me that Adam's story involved being a vet, I resisted it. I'm a woman. I had no business writing about a war that I couldn't have fought in. I talked to Nick Arvin (the author of Articles of War) and he told me some of the best war scenes were fiction. I decided to dip my toe in with some research and went to the Vet center in Boulder. One of the vets told me that everybody in the war knows the war from the 10 feet around them. Everyone's experience was insular and different. That gave me the confidence to write the scenes."

Once you read this novel it's almost impossible to think of Doreen as a terrorist. Her mistake, which haunts every day of her life, seems like a terrible youthful indiscretion. It pales in comparison to the atrocities that Adam witnessed in Vietnam. When a grandstanding politician refers to her as a fugitive terrorist at the end of the novel, it is jarring. Surely Doreen Woods isn't what we mean when we talk of the war on terror.

But it's our contemporary situation that gives this novel such resonance. Hallowell might be writing of the anti-war movement in the 1970s, but its impossible to read She Was without thinking of Iraq and our grappling with how to handle terrorism now.

"When I proposed the book, I had to stick to my guns and say 'I think this is going to be timely'", Hallowell said. "If we'd pulled out of Iraq, I wonder how easy it would have been to sell the book. It has to be relevant to what's happening now. I'm pleased it's coming out before the election. After the election, things could really change in Iraq. A novel has to work in a timeless way, but it taps into the zeitgeist of today and that is nice."

Hallowell will be speaking about and signing She Was at the Boulder Book Store on May 8 at 7:30 p.m.