THE BOOK TROUT

Our February 2012 Bookshop Hours

2012-01-24T10:09:00.002-05:00

We are taking our annual break during the month of February at Old Saratoga Books and will be open for reduced hours: Fridays and Saturdays from 12 noon to 5 pm. Our shop will be back to the normal schedule above on Thursday, March 1st, 2012. 

New Arrivals in the Bookshop

2012-01-17T08:53:00.001-05:00

Despite my entreaties over the phone and cyberspace to the many who contact us each day about wanting to donate or sell us books, ("We're REALLY quite full right now, so we're not buying all that much" is my usual refrain), there are boxes of books that arrive daily at Old Saratoga Books and Dan and I find that we can't resist a fresh batch of interesting books.

Sometimes it's a pile of orphaned books left on our doorstep when we open up and often it's a mound of garage sale leftovers, festooned with colorful price stickers. Most of these volumes end up in our to-be-donated-to-whatever-library-is-next-in-line-for-a-fundraiser-book-sale. Then there are those folks who show up with really lovely, unusual books that we've never seen before, and though the shelves are groaning from all the New Year declutterers that have brought us books, we simply pull out the check book and sigh.

In recent weeks we've bought many, many baking cookbooks from a former culinary student, boatloads of fishing and gardening books, a spate of books about film history and biographies about Hollywood's Golden Age, interesting pop-ups and books about paper art and origami, some antiquarian art and history titles, scads of classic science fiction paperbacks, and quite a nice pile of literary biographies. I've only put a handful of these titles online, so if you are interested in any of these areas, feel free to inquire about what's on the shelves.

Here's a little sampling of what these new collections contain:

Ritz, Charles; Piper, John A Fly Fisher's Life NY Crown Publishers 1973. Reprint Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.Foreword by Ernest Hemingway, introduction by Arnold Gingrich. Large octavo. Green cloth binding. Many photos and illustrations. Jacket lightly tattered. In jacket protector. ; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; 285 pages.

Lewis, C. S.; Como, James T. C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences
NY Macmillan Company 1979. First Printing Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. n jacket protector. Index, alphabetical index to the writings of C. S. Lewis, bibliography. A compilation of memories about C. S. Lewis from 22 of his friends. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 299 pages.

Reichert, Mickey Zucker; Nye, Jody Lynn Nye; Ranieri, Roman A. Anne Mccaffrey's the Unicorn Girl: The Illustrated Adventures. NY HarperPrism 1997. First Printing Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. collection of short stories based on McCaffrey's character by Jody Nye, Mickey Zucker Reichert and Roman A. Ranieri and illustrated by various artists. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 136 pages.

Mesnier, Roland; Malard, Christian All the Presidents' Pastries: Twenty-Five Years in the White House. Paris Flammarion 2004.First English Language Edition Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. irst printing of first English Language edition. Several pages of photographs. "This extraordinary success story-told by the hero himself-of a young French pastry chef who climbed his way to the top, embodies the great American dream. After working at the Savoy in London, the George V in Paris, the Princess in Bermuda, and the Homestead in Virginia, Roland Mesnier took on the job of a lifetime as pastry chef to the White House. He provides behind-the-scenes insight into the characters, tastes, and obsessions of the five presidents and first ladies he served during his 25 years in Washington. Seventeen easy-to-follow recipes include the favorite desserts of all five presidents and their families. " (rear cover blurb) ; 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall; 344 pages

Haddon, Kathleen Cat's Cradles from Many Lands Longmans, Green and Company 1911 First Edition Hardcover Very Good.live green cloth binding with cat's cradle figure and lettering stamped in white on front boards. Index, bibliography, many illustrations. Gift inscription penciled on front free endpaper, boards lightly rubbed. Many examples of string figures, or cat's cradles from cultures around the world, including Alaskan Inuit, the Torres Straits, Andaman Islands, Yoruba tribes, Navaho Indian tribes and others. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 95 pages.

Palestrant, S. Practical Papercraft: Over 400 Useful and Decorative Projects for Fun and Profit
NY Homecrafts 1950 Hardcover Good in Good dust jacket. any photos and illustrations. Jacket flaps glued to endpapers and endpapers darkened from the adhesive, usual library stamps and markings. Learn how to make toys, costumes, flowers, lampshades, masks, boxes, stage scenery, puppets and party decorations out of paper. ; Ex-Library; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 119 pages.

Kendall, Elizabeth The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s
NY Knopf 1990. First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket
Jacket price-clipped and curled at edges, foxing to page tops and bottoms. Index, bibliography, notes, photos. A look at the changing role of women, romantic love and how films mirrored these changes. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 285 pages.

Gorling, A. ; Meyer, Bl; Woltmann, A. Art Treasures of Germany: A Collection of the Most Important Pictures of the Galleries of Dresden, Cassel, Brunswick, Berlin, Munich and Vienna. with Portraits of the Most Celebrated Masters and Explanatory and Biographical Notices
Boston Samuel Walker and Company 1873 Hardcover Good. Half-bound in morocco with title and owner name stamped in gilt on spine. Contains 120 engravings after paintings by various European masters, including Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Murillo, Holbein, Caravaggio and many, many lesser known Dutch and German artists.

Stevens, C. F. ; Ryskind, Morrie; Englander, James The Home Movie Scenario Book
NY Richard Manson 1927 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Fair dust jacket
Gray boards with black cloth backstrip. Pages toned, jacket soiled and tattered. In jacket protector. Several pages of advertisements for camera stores and movie theatres. A collection of twenty plots for home movies in a silent film format, as well as chapters on how to produce, direct, act in, provide makeup, sets, lighting, and editing these home productions. Ryskind was wrote and helped produce Broadway musicals (he got a Pulitzer for "Of Thee I Sing", written in collaboration with George Gershwin) , an award-winning Hollywood screenplay author and "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 169 pages.

Thomas, Graham Stuart The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book:
Sagaponack, NY Sagapress 2004 0711223971 / 9780711223974 Revised Edition Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. revised, one volume edition of Thomas' trilogy of rose reference books: The Old Shrub Roses, Shrub Roses of Today and Climbing Roses Old and New. 158 color plates. Index, bibliography, line illustrations. ; 4to 11" - 13" tall; 359 pages.

What I read at The Book Trout in 2011

2012-01-01T13:33:00.000-05:00

Man, I read some really great books this year. I found some wonderful new authors courtesy of some Old Saratoga Book customers (I know, I know, I try to press books into their hands but I always seem to get several recommendations packed into my book bag by the end of a working day).

I managed to devour 96 books last year, which is less than I would like, but more than I thought. I am finding that my pre-menopausal bouts of insomnia are very useful for quiet, concentrated bits of reading and that I almost look forward to my times along snuggled up with cats and dog and a riveting book during the middle of the dark night.

There were of course lots of mysteries, travel memoirs, biblionovels, culinary titles, layman's science and biographies in my 2011 reading pile, but I also squeezed in some odd books here and there. I finally found time to read through the prolific Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles mystery series, which feature great herbal and gardening tidbits. I most enjoyed savoring the seven Armand Gamache mystery novels by Canadian author Louise Penny that unravel murderous deeds in Montreal and the quiet Quebec village of Three Pines. Penny studs her books with poetry, antiques, history, great food and drink, art and there's even a quirky bookstore owner in the mix. Thank you John P. for insisting that I move these books up front and center on my bedside pile!

I finally got a chance to read the bestselling Steig Larsson series about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and found myself having to focus on slowing down and not just skimming ahead. They are very good, and I did find myself hoping that the late author has indeed stuffed a lot of plot summaries and notes in the computer held by his late partner so that I can read more stories about these unusual protagonists (and what about Lisbeth's twin sister?).

Alongside oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer I plowed through the earth's eleven gyres, many eddies, several colossal garbage patches and numerous debris-strewn beaches, courtesy of his book "Flotsametrics". I journeyed to various tourist hellholes with extreme travel writer Chuck Thompson; recoiled in horror at the bibliomania gone bad of "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much", "The Poet and the Murderer" and in "Stuff"; delighted in learning about arachnid evolution with "Spider Silk"; shivered in a frozen cabin in the Maine woods with raven researcher and ultramarathoner Bernd Heinrich and enjoyed philosophical ruminations in Edinburgh with Alexander McCall Smith's heroine Isabel Dalhousie. Overall, a very exciting year!

Here's the list of what I read in 2011, in mostly chronological order.

2011 Reading List

The Second Mouse, by Archer Mayor

An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude, by Ann Vanderhoof

In the Kitchen, by Monica Ali

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Distant Mirrors: America as a Foreign Culture, by Philip R. DeVita & James D. Armstrong

Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard

China Bayles mystery series by Susan Wittig Albert: Thyme for Death, Witches' Bane, Hangman's Root, Rosemary Remembered, Rueful Death, Love Lies Bleeding, Chile Death, Lavender Lies, Mistletoe Man, Bloodroot, Indigo Dying, A Dilly of a Death, Dead Man's Bones, Bleeding Hearts, Spanish Dagger, Nightshade, Wormwood, Holly Blues, Mourning Gloria

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Cook Until Desired Tenderness, by Cleo Papanikolas

The Noble Legacy: The Story of Gilbert Clifford Noble, Cofounder of the Barnes & Noble and Noble & Noble Book Companies, by Betty Noble Turner

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee

Dodie Goes Shopping and Other Adventures, by Dodie Kazanjian

The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art
of Forgery, by Simon Woorall

The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl

U is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton

Coop: A Family, A Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg, by Michael Perry

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen and Cadillac Jack, by Larry McMurtry

Soul of a Lion: One Woman's Quest to Rescue Africa's Wildlife Refugees, by Barbara Bennett

Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, by Samuel Thayer

Tahoe Beneath the Surface: The Hidden Stories of America's Largest Mountain Lake, by Scott Lankford

Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig

Boogalo on 2nd Avenue, by Mark Kurlansky

Conservation Treatment Methodology, by Barbara Applebaum

Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny: Still Life, A Fatal Grace, The Cruelest Month, A Rule for Murder, The Brutal Telling, Bury Your Dead, A Trick of the Light

A Sloth in the Family, by Hermann Tirler

Savannah Blues, by Mary Kay Andrews

The Complete Fawlty Towers, by John Cleese and Connie Booth

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, by Raghuram G. Rajan

On Rue Tatin, by Susan Hermann Loomis

Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous, by Don Foster

Cooking for the Common Good: The Birth of a Natural Foods Soup Kitchen, by Larry Stettner and Bill Morrison

Dave Barry Does Japan, by Dave Barry

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science, by Phillip Manning

Death of a Poison Pen, Death of an Addict, Death of a Gentle Lady, Death of a Witch, Death of a Valentine, and Death of a Macho Man, by M.C. Beaton

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

Warmly Inscribed: The New England Book Forger and Other Book Tales, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

The Drowning Room, by Michael Pye

Beethoven's Only Beloved: Josephine! by John E. Klapproth

Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, by Michael Sims

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? by Morgan Spurlock
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl

To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism, by Chuck Thompson

Driving with Dead People, by Monica Holloway

A Year in the Maine Woods, by Bernd Heinrich

Entertaining Disasters, by Nancy Spiller

The Wimbledon Poisoner, by Nigel Williams

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson

Perfect Sax, by Jerrilyn Farmer

Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith: The Sunday Philosophy Club: Friends, Lovers, and Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, The Lost Art of Gratitude and The Charming Quirks of Others

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee

Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home, by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin

The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, by William Nothdurft and Josh Smith

Drawing Conclusions and A Question of Belief, by Donna Leon

Coin Street Chronicles: Memoirs of an Evacuee from London's Old South Bank, by Gwen Southgate

Outlaw Cook, by John and Matt Lewis Thorne

Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co., by Jeremy Mercer

Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scagliano

**So what did you read this past year that was really wonderful? Leave me a comment below so I can add to my teetering book pile!

Chronicle Book Fair in Glens Falls, New York

2011-11-10T12:40:00.000-05:00

It was the second time round for Old Saratoga Books as an exhibitor at the Chronicle Book Fair at the lovely Queensbury Hotel in downtown Glens Falls. Last year I brought way too many books and way too many shelves and this time reined in my inventory, bringing only two folding shelves to put atop my table (since people never look below their navel as I found out last year) and 12 boxes of books. Still, I think this was 3 boxes too many, as I didn't have an ability to flop out all the books I wanted. Indeed, a few boxes never even got unpacked and served as stands beside my table for my ephemera display.

And, as was the case last year, what sold were books that were facing out. That Robert Sabuda pop-up book (with the yellow star on the front cover) sold almost immediately, and my Ernest Hemingway photoessay (top shelf left) caught a bibliophile's eye from across the room. Other interesting titles sold throughout the day included a Puerto Rican cookbook, a Looking Glass edition of George MacDonald's "The Princess and Curdie" (with Edward Gorey typography), biographies of James Thurber, Dashiell Hammett, Mama Cass and Robert Fulton, Roald Dahl juvenile fiction in hardcover, Adirondack history, some old postcards, gardening books, a signed children's book by William Kennedy, a book on Irish pubs, and assorted other music, cooking and literary titles.

My bestsellers, however, as was the case two weeks ago at the Albany Antiquarian Book Fair, were the vintage paperbacks. The more lurid or ridiculous the cover art, the better they sold. One older lady was particularly funny when she pointed to a copy of Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" and told me this was a "spicy" book that was passed around back in her high school days. Now, even children's programming shows more cleavage (bust and butt) than that paperback cover and surely this novel would seem tame by most readers' standards.

The crowds at the Chronicle Book Fair were nice from 10:30 am (many browsers drifted in early) to about 2 pm and then rather precipitously dropped off. This left a little time to sneak away to chat with Gluten Free cookbook author Amy Rota-Poulin and my fellow bookseller, Victoria Garlandia at her Three Wise Women booth to snag a few local history titles.

I will definitely be partcipating in next year's fair, as the sales were good and this event gets the word out about our bookshop to a devoted group of bibliophiles. Next year I will bring a big sign though, with our store name, address and slug about buying and selling used and rare books, as people don't seem to notice the bookmarks and brochures I strew about my booth.

My Continuing Education at the 37th Annual Albany Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair

2011-10-24T17:15:00.002-04:00

So many books, so many postcards, so many trade cards and posters, and so little time...That was the vibe at yesterday's Albany Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair at the Washington Avenue Armory. Organized this year by Garry Austin

Garry Austin on the left, unidentified but very gracious and friendly bookseller on the right

of Wilmington, Vermont-based Austin's Antiquarian Books, it was Old Saratoga Books' first appearance as a bookseller and the overall experiment proved successful indeed. I got to see many familiar faces among the exhibitors and browsers and there was steady traffic throughout the six-hour show.

A bibliophile browsing Owl Pen Books' booth

On the Saturday set-up day, I found that other booksellers swooped in even before I could unpack my four wooden folding shelves and eleven boxes of books, so I made a few quick sales to subsidize the exhibitor fee. One sale was a cool Civil War broadside with a map of the shrinking Confederate states, exhorting New York State voters to support Lincoln's mandatory draft and other military strategies which then Governor Horatio Seymour was criticizing. The other nice sale was an 1830s biography of Lemuel Haynes, an African-American minister (the first one to serve a white congregation) and abolitionist who lived in various parts of upstate New York and Vermont.

Two views of the goods at Old Saratoga Books' booth

Most of the books and paper items I brought to the Fair were not as rare as these items, though, and I had a display of more modestly-priced volumes that I thought would be of interest to a wider range of buyers. I sold some antique children's books, a book about whiskey, a handwritten Victorian-era journal, some Jack London and Charles Lindbergh, a Richard Brautigan first edition and a smattering of other cookbook, music and art titles, but the big sellers were the selection of vintage paperbacks I had strewn about for eye candy. These were particularly appreciated by the 20-somethings in the crowd, who alternately scooped them up because of the campy cover art or because they were oddball titles. I also brought what little ephemera we've accumulated over the years and these little pamphlets, postcards and advertisements were a popular item for us as well.

There were quite a lot of lovely books to peruse at my colleagues' tables. I was tickled by the antique medical calendar offered by Evie Eysenburg which featured elves with giant skull heads mixing up pharmaceutical potions.

Evie Eisenburg's ghoulish druggist elves' calendar

Her booth partner, Patricia Reilly, also had a colorful collection of eye catchers, including a tremendously intricate homemade Valentine. Patricia also very kindly loaned me some cash when I noticed that I had forgotten my stack of $1s and $5s for making change when I had my first customer. She truly has not one, but two hearts of gold!

Patricia Reilly and her beautiful antique Valentine (center of case)

Both Evie and Patricia seemed to have a nice stream of customers flipping through their binders full of trade cards, advertising posters, folk art and unusual ephemera, and it seemed to be the general consensus among other booksellers that I spoke with that ephemera sells quite well at the Albany Fair. I will definitely keep my eye out for more papery items when I'm out book hunting, as ephemera only dribbles into the bookshop, most usually retrieved from the pages of our incoming books.

Sometimes retail can be like this.

Rounding out the other ell of our U-shaped booth, was my new biblio-buddy Anne Brockschmidt of Carnegie Hill Books of Manhattan, which specializes in architecture, decorative arts and design. She had some beautiful bindings and interesting titles and ended the day happy with her day's business.


Anne Brockschmidt of Carnegie Hill Books

My neighbor to the north was another first-time exhibitor at the Albany Fair, Mark Brumberg of Boomerang Books. Mark owned the Globe Bookshop in Northampton, Mass. and then worked at the nearby National Yiddish Book Center before starting his own rare books business. (Read the Book Trout review of Aaron Lansky's "Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books"). He has a great inventory of modern first editions, many of them signed, including this great copy of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried". You also gotta love a guy who whoops when he finds an unexpected cache of his wife's cookies stashed in his lunch bag.

Mark Brumberg of Boomerang Books

My New York colleague, Will Monie of Cooperstown, who nudged me to get untethered from the bookstore and exhibit at the Albany Fair, was on hand with an impressive display of unusual books. Will really makes great use of his exhibit space, with shelving lining both sides and ends of his booth and he had a lot of trade back and forth whenever I glanced his way during this event. Will also organizes the annual Cooperstown Antiquarian Book Fair in June, and I am mulling over whether to become untethered again for that one.

Cooperstown's Finest, Bookseller Will Monie

And now to reveal the most interesting bit of conversation overheard at the Albany Fair. There was a snappily-dressed book dealer whose name I never did get, who was chatting behind me right before the line of browsers was unleashed who made me laugh out loud when I heard that he "was really into promiscuous pricing". I never did get the chance to run over and ask him to explain that one to this Book Fair newbie, but to hear more of this kind of lively talk, see huge numbers of gorgeously illustrated and bound volumes, pore over interesting and esoteric titles, and engage in some spectacular people watching (what is it with biblio-folk and their chapeaux?) you'll have to wait around until the 38th Annual Albany Book Fair.

Albany Antiquarian Book Fair - October 23, 10 am to 4 pm

2011-10-21T10:12:00.000-04:00

We will be exhibiting some of our books and other papery items at the Albany Antiquarian Book Fair at the Washington Avenue Armory in downtown Albany this Sunday, October 23, from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is $6.00. For directions, information on the 40 or so other participating booksellers and more information about the Fair check out their website.

It's Old Saratoga Books' first time as an exhibitor at the Fair and Rachel will be there with an assortment of titles from our 50,000 volume inventory, including some volumes that we have recently acquired and not yet offered for sale in our shop, including an interesting New York State Civil War broadside, many vintage and antique children's books, and some interesting horse and fly fishing titles.

See you at the Fair! For a peek at last year's Albany Book Fair, you can investigate the Book Trout's view as a visitor here.

See You at the 2nd Annual Empire State Book Festival, Sat. April 2

2011-03-28T09:02:00.000-04:00

Old Saratoga Books will be on the road at the Second Annual Empire State Book Festival this coming Saturday, April 2nd, from 10 am to 4:30 pm in Albany at the Empire State Plaza. We will be manning a booth with a selection of our books somewhere at the base of the Egg and Empire State Convention Center Meeting Rooms.

This free literary festival is sponsored by the New York Library Association and will have a host of other exhibitors as well as workshops, lectures and kid-friendly activities all centered around reading and literacy.

Babysitter's Club author Anne M. Martin will be giving an address and book signing at 10 am and singer/songwriter/author Roseanne M. Cash will be giving a lecture at 3:45 pm. Other notable authors and illustrators involved in various workshops and seminars include Pamela Sargent, Paula Fox, S.J. Rozan, Laurie Halse Anderson, Donna Andrews, Mordicai Gerstein, David Hadju, and many others. You can see the full list of Festival Literati at this link here.

Free workshops include such topics as book collecting, science fiction, how to get published, children's story times, writing for teens, mystery, romance, historical fiction about New York City, female detectives, writing about pets, graphic novels, poetry and much more.

If you are attending the festival, be sure to stop by and say hello and peruse some of the special books we are bringing to the festival!

March Book Sale: 50% Off Science Fiction and Fantasy

2011-03-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Greetings Earthlings. During the month of March, Old Saratoga Books will be discounting its online Science Fiction and Fantasy titles by 50%. Authors include Brian Aldiss, Lloyd Alexander, William Gibson, James Blish, Otis Adelbert Kline, Nancy Kress, Stanislaw Lem, Isaac Asimov and many others.

To check out the list of sale books, go to our website, www.oldsaratogabooks.com and click through the Browse by Category link on the left hand tab. Or you can click on this link. Book prices are automatically discounted on the website and the sale price is noted in red.

New Arrivals at Old Saratoga Books

2011-02-04T09:18:00.011-05:00

Though our shop is closed during the month of February (and the store thermostat is set low, low, low much to store cat Sam's consternation) Dan and I are back and forth filling Internet orders, cleaning, moving sections around and generally doing all those biblio-maintenance tasks that cant' be done when the shop is open.

We are also going through many boxes of books that we have bought over the last year and stashed in the basement, so when we open, there will lots of new (used) titles for our customers to peruse. In the meantime, here's some of the newest and most interesting books we've catalogued:

The Irish Beauties, by E. Barrington, [Beck, L. Adams]Garden City, NY Doubleday, Doran 1931 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket. Decorative black cloth binding. Corners bumped, jacket dampstained and chipped, pages toned. In jacket protector.

Historical fiction based on the lives of two penniless Irish sisters, Elizabeth and Maria Gunning, who were the belles of mid-18th century London. Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton and became the first Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon, and sister Maria married the 6th Earl of Coventry, though her continued use of arsenic and lead in various cosmetic preparations led to her death at aged 27 in 1760. 310 pages
Price: 15.00.

Mary McDowell, Neighbor, by Howard E. Wilson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1928 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Fair dust jacket. Gray cloth binding. Index, several photos. Foreword by Jane Addams. Jacket price-clipped and tattered and missing large section along top edge of front jacket panel. In jacket protector.

A biography of one of "America's greatest social workers" and founder of the University of Chicago Settlement House. Many interesting historical bits about Chicago in the early 20th century and its poorest neighborhoods, including the horrific conditions in Packingtown. 235 pages. Price: 60.00 (on sale for 42.00 through the month of February, as are all of our biographies).

Poems and Portraits, by Christopher La Farge, NY: Coward-McCann 1940 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper. Tan cloth binding. Boards lightly worn, jacket tattered and chipped. In jacket protector. A 1955 Christmas card containing a verse by the author taped to front endpapers. Christmas card is inscribed by La Farge on the verso.63 pages. Price: 35.00

Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, by Ben Fong-Torres, NY: St. Martin's Griffin 1998. Revised Edition Softcover Very Good. Index, discography, bibliography, several pages of photos. A biography of the short, hard life of Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Fallen Angels rocker Gram Parsons. 244 pages. Price: 10.00

Ohio Art: The World of Toys, by Jim Gilcher and Lisa Kerry, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing 1998. First Printing Softcover Very Good. Many color photos by Adam Griffith. A great reference for the toy collector, which includes a wide range of colorful lithographed toys made by the Ohio Art Company from the 1920s-80s. 160 page. Price: 15.00

Remagen and Other Rhine Crossings, by Walter Niedermayer, Indiana, PA: A.G. Halldin Pub. Co 1993. Softcover Very Good. The 1944 capture of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany by the 9th Armored Division is recounted here. Maps, photos. Author photo on rear cover. Bibliography. Covers scuffed, else a clean, tight copy. 58 page. Price: 18.00

The Wood-Peasant's Grandchild, by Marg. Lenk. Johannes Herrmann 1924 Hardcover Very Good. Green boards. Many illustrations by Ant. Baworowski. A tale about an old man and his orphaned grandson, Fridolin, called Friedel, who are evicted from their Salzburg home by an evil Archbishop. The tale takes place in 1730. Covers lightly worn, else a clean, tight copy. 168 pages. Price: 15.00

Putman Style, by Stephane Gerschel, NY: Assouline 2005. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. Boards rounded at spine and corners. Signed by Putman on the title page. Many photos and illustrations. Translated from the French by Linda Jarosiewicz and Elena Luoto. Foreword by Francois Russo. Interviews with various Putman associates throughout.

A look at the life and work of French designer Andree Putman, who studied piano until the age of 19, when she went to work for a French fashion magazine. She later worked for the French department store Prisunic, then the Mafia Agency, and then worked with Didier Grumbach to launch Createurs et Industriels, a shop providing fashion designers with ready-to-wear sales. She later founded Ecart, a furniture company and began designing residential and commercial spaces for Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Mugler, Michel Guy, Steve "Studio 54" Rubell, the Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporains, Air France (she redesigned the interior of the Concorde) , Ebel, Balenciaga, film director Peter Greenaway and the French Soccer league, among others.
Price: 65.00

Burke's Complete Cocktail & Drinking Recipes With Recipes for Food Bits for the Cocktail Hour, by Harman Burney Burke, NY: Books, Inc. 1941 Later Printing Hardcover Good. Small black moire hardcover binding with gilt lettering and cocktail clock design (drinks start at 6 o'clock, apparently) on front boards. Index, several blank pages at rear for "My Own Recipes" with two of them filled in with previous owner's handwritten recipes for "Original Ramos Gin Fizz" and "Sagerac". Boards worn, one inch tear at crown of spine, owner name and date on copyright page. 125 pages. Price: 20.00

Toadstools, Mushrooms, Fungi: Edible and Poisonous; One Thousand American Fungi; How to Select and Cook the Edible; How to Distinguish and Avoid the Poisonous, with Full Botanic Descriptions, by Charles McIlvaine and Robert K. MacAdam, West Glover, VT: Something Else Press 1973 0871100932 / 9780871100931 Reprint Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.

A facsimile reprint of the 1902 revised edition. White cloth binding. Jacket lightly soiled and price-clipped, fly specks on page tops. In jacket protector. Photos. "How to select and cook the edible. How to distinguish and avoid the poisonous". 729 pages. Price: 25.00

Booking at Yellow House Books in Great Barrington, MA

2011-01-24T08:51:00.005-05:00

Last Fall I had my annual Ladies Weekend getaway with my band of girlfriends. We've been vacationing together each November for the last twenty years, and while I haven't been able to attend each jaunt, it's always a treat to get away to a new locale, reconnect with my ladies and have a giant gab fest back at our hotel rooms. And drink copious amounts of wine and sample new varieties of cheese.

This past November we picked Great Barrington, Massachusetts as our destination and while most of our party enjoyed the nearby shopping outlets (blah!), my buddy Linda and I headed for our favorite kind of shopping: bookhunting.

We were both able to while away a pleasant couple of hours at Yellow House Books, a small used and rare bookstore located at 252 Main Street in downtown Great Barrington. The shop is small, but has a carefully selected range of interesting and unusual books. The front room has a nice selection of art and music, while the second room contains a fine array of antique children's books and illustrated volumes.

I spent most of my time in the innermost third room, which contained the history and cookbook sections, picking up some local history titles for the shop and a handful of unusual books for my personal collection. I was psyched to find a signed copy of John Thorne's book of autobiographical food essays "Outlaw Cook", a Sherlock Holmes cookbook and a delightful
"Cookbook for Booksellers", by Craig Claiborne, which was a promotional book handed out by the publisher to booksellers perhaps en masse at a large book fair or individually by a book sales rep to bookseller clients. This bibliophilic treat contains book quotes and recipes for such literary eats as Proust's Madeleines, a Virginia Woolf-inspired Boeuf en Daube, Clifton Fadiman's Yorkshire Buck, Lord Byron's Oyster Stew, Bookbinder's Soup, Tobias Smollett's Vitello
Tonnato and a Madras Curry for William Makepeace Thackeray.

The bookshop also had a nice selection of Modern Library editions (see above photo) which are one of my husband's favorite things to collect, so I will be bringing him back here to visit soon.

Yellow House Books is owned by Bonnie and Bob Benson, who were doing a brisk business on the Saturday morning I was there, so I did not get a chance to chat with them. The shop is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm and on Sundays from noon to 5 pm. The phone number is: 413-528-8227.

Books I Read in 2010

2011-01-12T08:54:00.003-05:00

I didn't think I had read as many books as I thought, but I guess I found time to read 106 books last year. I know I get a little obsessive when I find a good mystery series and start popping books down like candy. Such was the case with Michael Dibdin's excellent Aurelio Zen series set in contemporary Italy which I had started at the tail end of 2009 and finished up early in 2010. I dove deeper back into Italian history with Steven Saylor's crisply written, wonderfully detailed mystery series featuring ancient Roman detective Gordianus.

I read a fair number of books about books and biblionovels, the best of which was Geraldine Brooks' "The People of the Book". It seems everything that Brooks and her husband Tony Horowitz writes is wonderful and that spans humor, fiction, and non-fiction. The funniest and most enjoyable biblionovel series I discovered last year was Ian Sansom's books about London transplant Israel Armstrong, who takes a job as a bookmobile librarian in Northern Ireland and is just overwhelmed by things.

Foodie novels and memoirs were also much appreciated in 2010. My favorite foodie read was Madhur Jaffrey's "Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India", which I read and cooked from for the best darn virtual foodie book club out there, Cook the Books.

Here's hoping I get time to read the slew of great books that are weighing down my nightstand in 2011!

Medusa, by Michael Dibdin

Back to Bologna, by Michael Dibdin

End Games, by Michael Dibdin

Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir, by Rick Gekoski

The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

March, by Geraldine Brooks

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden Lives of Islamic Women, by Geraldine Brooks

The Girl of His Dreams, by Donna Leon

About Face, by Donna Leon

Murder is Binding, by Lorna Barrett

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat

Turning the Tables: Restaurants From the Inside Out, by Steven A. Shaw

Codex, by Lev Grossman

Deadly Slipper: A Novel of Death in the Dordogne, by Michelle Wan

The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

The Pedant in the Kitchen, by Julian Barnes

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

Pomegranate Soup, by Marsha Mehran

Rosewater and Soda Bread, by Marsha Mehran

Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

Death of a Maid, by M.C. Beaton

Death of a Village, by M.C. Beaton

Death of a Dustman, by M.C. Beaton

Roam Italy: A Teacher and His Students Take the Ultimate Class Trip, by Michael James D'Amato

India Exposed: The Subcontinent A-Z, by Clive Limpkin

Through Travel and Error: Confessions of an Asylum-Seeking Canadian, by Matt Hamilton

Letters to Zerky: A Father's Legacy to a Lost Son and a Road Trip Around the World, by Bill and JoAnne Walker Raney

Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity, by Leigh H. Edwards

Nish'Ki: Cheyenne Grandmothers, Pillars of Strength, by Kay Schweinfurth

Close Calls and Happy Landings: Adventures in Boatbuilding, Flying and Life, by Fred McCarthy

The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom

Mr. Dixon Disappears, by Ian Sansom

The Book Stops Here, by Ian Sansom

The Bad Book Affair, by Ian Sansom

On the Road with Washington Irving, Chiefly in 1832, by Mary Weatherspoon Bowden

Eating for England, by Nigel Slater

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, by Vicky Myron

Somewhere South of Tuscany, by Diana Armstrong

A Thousand Days in Venice, by Marlena di Blasi

The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, by Sy Montgomery

The School of Essential Ingredients, by Erica Bauermeister

Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with his Son, by Peter Carey

Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, by Thomas Fox Averill

Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Hiding Place, by Trezza Azzopardi

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, A History, by Lewis Buzzbee

It's Never Just the Food: Recipes, Memories and Funny Stories of my Grandmother and Me, by Gregory Gallerano

Pass the Polenta and Other Writings from the Kitchen, by Teresa Lust

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney

Second Hand, by Michael Zadoorian

Lantern for the Dark, by Jessica Stirling

Spotted in France, by Gregory Edmont

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved my Life, by Mameve Medwed

The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway

The Owl and Moon Cafe, by Jo-Ann Mapson

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

Gluten-Free Girl, by Shauna James Ahern

Plague: A Story of Science, Rivalry, and The Scourge That Won't Go Away, by Edward Marriott

Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning, by Christian de Duve

The Dawn of Symbolic Life: The Future of Human Evolution, by Jon Beach

Deep-Sea Detectives: Maritime Mysteries and Forensic Science, by Peter R. Limburg

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, by Madhur Jaffrey

Murder with Peacocks, by Donna Andrews

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, by Steve Olson

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess, by Gael Greene

Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy by David Gentilcore

Roman Blood, by Steven Saylor

The House of the Vestals, by Steven Saylor

Arms of Nemesis, by Steven Saylor

Catilina's Riddle, by Steven Saylor

The Venus Throw, by Steven Saylor

Murder on the Appian Way, by Steven Saylor

Rubicon, by Steven Saylor

Last Seen in Massilia, by Steven Saylor

Mist of Prophecies, by Steven Saylor

The Judgment of Caesar, by Steven Saylor

The Triumph of Caesar, by Steven Saylor

Exile in the Kingdom, by Robert Harnum

All Mortal Flesh, by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Luncheonette, by Steven Sorrentino

The Discomfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen

Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs, edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett

Brick Lane, by Monica Ali

The Big One: The Earthquake that Rocked Early America and Helped Create a Science, by Jake Page and Charles Officer

No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, by Anthony Bourdain

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, by David von Drehle

Alligators, Old Mink & New Money: One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing, by Alison and Melissa Houtte

London Holiday, by Richard Peck

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, by Nicholson Barker

Dial 999: A Jon Hunter Mystery, by H.L. Raven

The Last Templar, by Michael Jecks

The Merchant's Partner, by Michael Jecks

A Moorland Hanging, by Michael Jecks

The Bookseller and Other Stories, by Gunilla Caulfield

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure, by Alice Kimberly

Messages Found with the Carving Knife, by Pam Maneeratana

Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb, by Massimo Montanari

The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke

Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast, by Bill Richardson

How to Cook a Tart, by Nina Killham

The Farmer's Wife Guide to Growing a Great Garden and Eating From It, Too!, by Barbara Doyen

Connie Cobbler, Toy Detective, by James DeSalvo

Albany Antiquarian Book & Ephemera Fair, Nov. 28, 2010

2010-12-03T01:01:00.010-05:00

Last week I hopped on over to the 36th Annual Antiquarian Book & Ephemera Fair at the Washington Avenue Armory in Albany. I hadn't attended the Fair in many years and was pleased to see so many colleagues and new book buddies busily chatting up their books, prints and paper items with a steady crowd, despite the fact that the Fair was scheduled on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, a time when many prospective book buyers might be on the road visiting family.

My colleague Peter Luke of New Baltimore, NY, was in attendance. Peter often frequents our shop looking for Americana and ephemera and had a wonderful book of 19th century color lithograph fruits and vegetables on display.

Cooperstown, NY bookseller Will Monie was on hand with his delightful wife, and they were doing a brisk business selling and buying books at the Fair. Will Monie Books naturally specializes in books and other items about baseball, though both his open shop and online bookstore carry a wide range of titles. (Pardon my fuzzy photo, this cute couple looks much sharper in person).

My next stop was to the unnecessarily camera-shy booth of Lyrical Ballad Bookstore sellers John and Jan DeMarco. They reported that they had been doing a brisk business at the Albany Fair and had just gotten back from a successful Boston Book Fair as well. The Lyrical Ballad booth had some gorgeous books on display, and you can see that they were catching the attention of several other book browsers.

Richard Mori of Mori Books in New Hampshire was doing his best Kilroy Was Here impression for me. Richard's a delightfully enthusiastic colleague who had a gorgeous display of children's books, illustrated books and paper items. Here he is below with two great finds that he purchased at the Albany Fair from another dealer, signed copies of Alice M. Brock's books "My Life as a Restaurant" and "The Alice's Restaurant Cookbook".

And here's Richard again with another gorgeous Albany Book Fair acquisition, a Folio-sized 1849 volume, "The Rhododendrons of Himalayan Sikkim", by J.D. Hooker, festooned with gorgeous hand-colored illustrations of the flowering plants.

And finally, we see my neighbor and book colleague, Edie Brown of Owl Pen Books in Greenwich, New York. Edie's in profile in the photo below and yours truly is wearing the fuzzy burgundy jacket. Owl Pen Books has two barns chock full of great books nestled deep in the hill country of Washington County. You should check them out when they are open again May 1, 2011.

I had a great time browsing the beautiful books on display and found a few treasures for myself and for the shop on my visit. Will be back next year for sure!

Saratoga Postcard Book Signing with Author Tom Wood

2010-11-27T09:38:00.002-05:00

We are delighted to be hosting a book signing with local author Tom Wood at Old Saratoga Books on Saturday, December 4th from 1 to 3 pm. Tom's new book is "Saratoga (Postcard History)" and features antique postcard scenes from throughout the Town of Saratoga, including our little village of Schuylerville.

We will have copies available for sale at this event but if you are unable to attend, feel free to contact us ahead of time to reserve a signed copy to pick up later on. This book costs $21.99.

Book Art at the Albany Airport

2010-11-18T08:51:00.007-05:00

It was alternately delightful and maddening to see some artwork made from books when I was recently at the Albany (International!) Airport. "The Imaged Word" exhibition is currently on display in third floor Airport Gallery until January 9, 2011 and can be viewed daily from 7 am to 11 pm.

There were some cool paintings modeled after vintage paperback covers...

And this obsolete reference volume hanging with its guts falling out over the gallery staircase...

This photograph of artfully arranged antique schoolbooks made me wince.
And made my spine hurt.

This artwork of beetle and scorpion cut out from otherwise undamaged and still relevant photography seemed like wanton destruction of two good books. There are certainly many other crappier books that could have been sacrificed to the insect art gods.

Phrases from a poem adorned the surfaces of these decorative objects.

A book arch of unjacketed books by Aaron T. Stephan, entitled "Building Bridges", was fun to inspect up close. I couldn't make out any of the titles as no spines were facing out. This certainly takes the wind out of my sails about my sometime-in-the-future project to construct something similar out of the 50+ copies of Robert James Waller's overpublished bestseller "The Bridges of Madison County" that reside in a corner of our store basement.

Artists in "The Imaged Word" exhibit include Fern Apfel, Gabe Brown, Gayle Johnson, Paul Katz, Scott McCarney, Amy Podmore, Fawn Potash, William Ransom, Aaron T. Stephan, Robert The, and Barbara Todd. It's well worth checking out the exhibition if you find you are waiting for a delayed flight. The Airport Gallery is on the public side of the terminal, soif you are a passenger you would need to inspect it before you take off your shoes and get super-scanned by airport security.

Chronicle Autumn Leaves Book Fair 2010

2010-11-10T09:34:00.009-05:00

Tethered as we are to our open shop, most weekend book fairs and festivals can't pry us away, but this year I was determined to participate in The Chronicle's Autumn Leaves Book Fair in nearby Glens Falls which took place this past Sunday, November 7th.

I had heard so many positive things from customers and book folk about how the Book Fair had really grown and had such a diversity of local authors, publishers, booksellers (including our favorite independent new bookseller, Red Fox Books) and other participants and the reality met my expectations. There was a nice crowd in attendance, lots of readings and demonstrations by Book Fair participants and the Chronicle and hotel staff were lovely to work with. There were some stellar authors participating in the Book Fair too, including Joseph and Jesse Bruchac, David Pitkin, Bruce Hiscock, Joseph Peck (a Schuylerville fave!), and James H. Kunstler.

Husband Dan manned the bookstore while my teenage daughter/book slave and I packed up a small percentage of our books and sallied forth to the lovely and historic Queensbury Hotel to set up early Sunday morning. Amazingly, I was able to stuff six folding wooden bookshelves, twelve milk crates full of books and a few boxes of assorted supplies* into the back of my antiquarian Jeep Cherokee and we spread out our wares.

This was my first experience selling books outside the shop but I thought regional authors and history would sell well (they were actually our "midlist" sellers). I also packed up a smattering of art, music, cookbooks, children's books, some novels and an assortment of non-fiction. At the last minute I popped in several books on hot air balloons because of the popularity of the Adirondack Balloon festival and they sold out. Next time I would obviously bring more ballooning books (and maybe some planes, trains and automobiles) and would bring more older children's books and books about art, music and popular culture, as these were strong sellers.

I would also bring fewer books, but face more out, as they disappeared at a much more rapid rate. My lumbar region would have thanked me had I refrained from filling the bottom two shelves of each wooden bookshelf. Nobody even noticed any book that was below waist-level anyway.

And next year I would bring a big sign with "Old Saratoga Books, Used and Rare Books" on it to pin to that big white space in front of our table or display prominently. The bookmarks and pamphlets didn't grab people's attention readily and I was constantly being asked who I was and what my booth was about. I was also asked if I was the Autumn Leaves Bookstore as "Autumn Leaves" was more prominently on my Chronicle-supplied name tag.

A framed picture, or maybe several pictures, or maybe even a poster of Sam the Bookstore Cat would also be an attention-getter and conversation-starter. He certainly has his fans! I recognized a few customer faces and would explain that we were Old Saratoga Books, in Schuylerville, and would get blank stares until I mentioned our handsome gray and white cat-in-residence and then there would be smiles of recognition and effusive inquiries after his health.

I was delighted to see my friends Victoria and JoAnn manning a used book table as Those Three Women (okay, so there was only two of them; their books were still cool to peruse). Here's a shot of their shelves at the end of the day when they had sold quite a bit of their inventory. I picked up a great 1940s cocktail book, a cookbook or two, some local history titles and assorted other books from them, and then they threw in that snazzy Lake George Steamboat Company hat from the photo so it is now adorning my nautical section back at the shop.

*Essential book fair supplies include a couple of blank notebooks, bookmarks, pamphlets, pens, bottled water, plenty of monetary change (I have a great fake book to house it in), calculator, plastic bags, a couple of funky bookends, lots of utilitarian metal bookends, coffee cups to hold the bookmarks, blank index cards (for making quick shelf signs), etc.

How to Accessorize with a Moose

2010-05-19T12:45:00.005-04:00

A great book on wilderness skills came into the shop last week and I thought I would share the details with you.

The book is titled Wilderness Hunting and Wildcraft, with Notes on the Habits and Life Histories of Big Game Animals by Townsend Whelen (Marshallton, DE: Small Arms Technical Publishing Co, 1927). This interesting book features many photographs and illustrations by the author, a larger-than-life outdoorsman, who, like Teddy Roosevelt, came from a patrician background and was a spindly lad, later blossoming into a hale and hearty wilderness adventurer after a course of self-improvement in the American and Canadian forests. He was a soldier in the Spanish-American War and served as a Colonel in the 29th Infantry Regiment guarding and mapping the Panama Canal Zone and surrounding rain forest. He was never happier than when he was by himself in the woods, hunting (and sustaining himself on) big and small game, tinkering with guns and ammo and writing his experiences up for his many published articles and books.

This volume contains chapters about various game animals, clothing and personal kit, how to make camp beds and shelters (Whelen preferred a lean-to) , rifles, marksmanship, photography and the physical preparation needed to survive extended wilderness outings in all manners of terrain. There are many wonderful photographs of wildlife, dead and alive, and of Whelen posed with various beasts and portions thereof, including a splendid shot of the author with a bull moose head and scalp on his shoulders, "a heavy and awkward load of from 125 to 175 pounds".

The book is listed on our bookstore website for $100.

A New Upstate New York Used and Rare Booksellers Pamphlet

2010-05-14T15:01:00.004-04:00

The used and rare booksellers of Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties in upstate New York have just published a directory of open shops and other independent booksellers. This pamphlet is now available in member bookshops and at various libraries, visitor centers and other locations. The directory lists shop hours, contact information, bookseller specialties and other information for eleven area booksellers.

To download and print your own copy of this 2010 directory, you can visit the links below or to get a copy by mail, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Old Saratoga Books, 94 Broad Street, Schuylerville, NY 12871.

Page One of Booksellers Directory

Page Two of Booksellers Directory

Happy book hunting!

Books Read in 2009

2010-01-06T07:14:00.003-05:00

Last January I started to keep track of the books I read and in 2009 I surprised myself by reading more than I thought. Somehow, in the reading times squeezed in before falling asleep in mid-chapter in my cozy bed, while waiting for children to emerge from soccer practice and the few decadent days in which I devoured a whole book because I simply had to (and one day when I had a major head cold), I managed to read 71 really good books.

2009 was my Year of the Italian Mystery. I plunged into Donna Leon's excellent Venetian mystery series featuring the philosophical Guido Brunetti and finished the year by discovering the late Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series, featuring another Venetian-born, but peripatetic, Italian police detective. Brunetti is grounded by his morality, his learned wife, interesting children and aristocratic in-laws. Each Leon novel explores a different social issue, from illegal immigration to environmental pollution. Dibdin's detective is a more complicated, existential guy who wanders the Italian peninsula in various police roles, dodging the Mafia, his mother, his lady friends, and demanding bosses. Some of the Zen novels are comic farces, while others remain as hard-boiled as a 20-minute egg.

I attempted to join a few Reading Challenges to expand my predilection for mysteries, and was able to complete one, a Books About Food Challenge, in which I read and reviewed 4 non-fiction books about food, including titles about absinthe, chili, Jordanian-American food and Vietnamese-American food. My intentions to complete the Science Books Challenge were well-intentioned, and I did read and review two very interesting natural history books about ravens and extinct deer for this challenge, but while I did read several other science books, I just never got around to posting a blog review, so this challenge remained incomplete. My self-dictated intent to read more classic literature also went by the wayside in 2009, as only Willa Cather's "O Pioneers" made it to the top of my reading pile.

I did have some fun with an online book club that two other bloggers and I started, the Cook the Books Club. To date, our little band has read seven different novels, children's books, memoirs and other books about cooking and food and every other month we have a roundup of participants' blog reviews and dishes inspired by our reading. We have been fortunate to have many of our featured authors serve as guest judges for our friendly competition to snatch the coveted Cook the Books winner badge for our blogs and it has been a great deal of fun.

I also notice that I have done a great deal of armchair travel in the last year. Aside from traveling around the Italian city-states with Dibdin and Leon, I explored 19th century San Francisco and China, backpacked around various geographic outposts, hit several Caribbean islands, and wandered around Japan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ireland, 1960s-70s Czechoslovakia, Mexico City, Mount Everest, France, and New York City in various eras.

Here's the complete list of what I read in 2009:

The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, by Diana Abu-Jaber

Ravens in Winter, by Bernd Heinrich

A Noble Radiance, by Donna Leon

Fatal Remedies, by Donna Leon

Friends in High Places, by Donna Leon

Wilful Behaviour, by Donna Leon

Sea of Troubles, by Donna Leon

Uniform Justice, by Donna Leon

Doctored Evidence, by Donna Leon

Suffer the Children, by Donna Leon

Through a Glass Darkly, by Donna Leon

Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon

Crazy in the Kitchen: Foods, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, by Louise DeSalvo

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in San Francisco, by Marilyn Chase

A Bowl of Red by Frank X. Tolbert

Absinthe: Sip of Seduction: A Contemporary Guide, by Betina J. Wittels and Robert Hermesch

Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen

Boswell's Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men's Afflictions, by Dr. William B. Ober

Untangling my Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto, by Victoria Abbott Riccardi

Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked? by Robert Webster

A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, by Gary Buslik

The Extinction Club, by Robert Twigger

Marco Polo Didn't Go There, by Rolf Potts

Finding Ireland: A Poet's Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture, by Richard Tillinghast

A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, by Gary Buslik

The Epicure's Lament, by Kate Christensen

A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, by John Baxter

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

World of Pies, by Karen Stolz

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, by Sven Birkerts

The Twelve Little Cakes, by Dominika Dery

Evolution of Vertebrate Design, by Leonard B. Radinsky

In the Company of the Courtesan, by Sarah Dunant

The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge

The Last Chinese Chef, by Nicole Mones

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin

The Food Taster, by Peter Elbling

Heat, by Bill Buford

No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, by Ayun Halliday

The Sunday Tertulia, by Lori Marie Carlson

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan

Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress, by Debra Ginsberg

Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain, by Frank T. Vertosick, Jr., M.D.

Why We Run: A Natural History, by Bernd Heinrich

Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David, by Artemis Cooper

Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance, by Kenneth Kamler, M.D.

Deceptive Clarity, by Aaron Elkins

A Glancing Light, by Aaron Elkins

Confections of a Master Closet Baker: A Memoir, by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home, by Kim Sunee

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew, by Peter Mayle

Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales, by Jake Halpern

Darwin, Then and Now: The Most Amazing Story in the History of Science, by Richard William Nelson

The Movement of the 400 Pueblos of Veracruz, by Victor Allen

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, by Mark Kurlansky

Ticknor, by Sheila Heti

Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, by Ann Powers

The Death of an Ardent Bibliophile, by Bartholomew Gill

Ratking by Michael Dibdin

Vendetta, by Michael Dibdin

Cabal, by Michael Dibdin

Dead Lagoon, by Michael Dibdin

Cosi Fan Tutti, by Michael Dibdin

A Long Finish, by Michael Dibdin

Blood Rain, by Michael Dibdin

And Then You Die, by Michael Dibdin

A Taste for Adventure: A Culinary Odyssey Around the World, by Anik See

Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading, by Nancy M. Malone

Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes

Ex-Libris, by Ross King

If I had to pick my favorite reads, I would have to say that my favorite novel would be Peter Elbling's "The Food Taster", an earthy romp through Renaissance Italy. My favorite non-fiction title was Diana Abu-Jaber's memoir "The Language of Baklava", about growing up with a Jordanian father and American mother around snowy Syracuse in the 1960s-70s.

The Catch of the Day: The Fishermen's Own Book, 1882 Gloucester Mass.

2009-10-15T11:14:00.005-04:00

Just landed this book in the shop and it's a beauty, inside and out. It's a great compendium of history, fishing statistics, nautical folklore and a few tall tales, poems, and the most wonderful antique advertisements from the businessmen of 1880s Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The Fishermen's Own Book, Comprising The List of Men and Vessels Lost
from the Port of Gloucester, Mass., From 1874 to April 1, 1882, and a
Table of Losses from 1830, Together with Valuable Statistics of the
Fishers, Also, Notable Fares, Narrow Escapes, Startling Adventures,
Fishermen's Off-Hand Sketches, Ballads, Descriptions of Fishing Trips
and Other Interesting Facts and Incidents Connected with This Branch
of Maritime Industry, Gloucester, MA: Procter Brothers, 1882, presumed
first edition.

Dark brown pebbled cloth binding with gilt design of fishing boat in
harbor stamped on front boards. 274 pages and 34 pages fore and aft
of nautical advertisements with great artwork of boats, cod, rope,
hearses, carriages, machinery, billiard tables, and furnaces. One
reproduction of a 1606 map of Gloucester Harbor, complete with
spouting sea monsters. Several full-page plates of fishermen's nets.
Many engravings and woodcut illustrations of nautical images
throughout text.

In Very Good condition (boards rubbed and moderately worn at corners and spine
extremities, 1/2 inch gash at lower end of spine, "Ref 58" inked on
front pastedown endpaper and top corner of title page, hinges
starting, front free endpaper chipped at top corner, pages toned, gift
inscription on front and rear flyleaves, two pages heavily toned from
laid in papers).

A glorious book packed with data, articles, poems, folklore and other
information about the fishing and whaling port of Gloucester,
Massachusetts in the 1880s. Subjects include historical data for
mackerel prices and catches, hammerhead sharks, fishermen's
superstitions, early fisheries of Cape Ann, stories of shipwrecks,
statistics about catches of various fish species, humorous stories,
and many a tale about "the fish that got away" (a 600 lb. halibut!). For sale at $150, including media mail shipping and insurance, to the U.S. Will ship elsewhere.

I, Libertine: A 1950s Literary Hoax

2009-06-09T11:01:00.004-04:00

I just sold a copy of a hilarious literary hoax novel penned by humorist Jean Shepherd and novelist Theodore Sturgeon and am struck with a severe case of bookseller's remorse. The book in question is I, Libertine, by Frederick R. Ewing (the goofball pseudonym for Messrs. Shepherd and Sturgeon), published in 1956.

The story behind this hoot of a novel is quite interesting.
Originally, radio disc jockey Jean Shepherd exhorted his cadre of
"Night People" to come up the title for a book that would be a
sure-fire best-seller. "I, Libertine" was suggested by one of his
listeners as an appropriately ridiculous title for a book about the ribald adventures of an 18th century British roue. Thereafter Shepherd
and Company managed to talk up the "Banned in Boston" book and request
copies of it at enough bookstores to the point where it starting
showing up on best-seller lists and in library card files.

At this time, Shepherd and his publisher, Ian Ballantine had lunch
with sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon and Sturgeon was hired to bang
out this bellicose "English" master work under the pen name of
Frederick R. Ewing. Shepherd posed as the dyspeptic looking author on
the rear jacket panel and Frear created a nutty illustration for the
front jacket with the book's hero, "Lance" Corday, in ruffled 18th
century gentleman's garb smirking a la Alfred E. Neuman.

Behind him, a bosomy lady with severe decolletage glares at him from in front of a
tavern,The Fish and Staff (Sturgeon and Shepherd). This book was also published as a paperback and the color cover art must really add to the luridness of this Turbulent! Turgid! Tempestuous! literary work. I guess I'll have to go on the hunt....

June Book Giveaway

2009-06-05T08:41:00.001-04:00

Last month, I offered a copy of the novel "Medieval in LA" by Jim Paul. The lucky winner is Teresa. Congratulations Teresa! Hope you enjoy your reading.

For the June book giveaway, I took a gander at our books here at used book shop, Old Saratoga Books, and came up with an autographed copy of:

"Women Make the Best Friends: A Celebration", by Lois Wyse (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995, first printing). This hardcover book is signed by the author on the half-title page and is in gift-giving condition. Wyse's book is a collection of stories, poems, anecdotes and illustrations by Paula Munck that celebrate women's friendships. Perhaps you would like to read this book yourself or present it as a gift to your BFF.

To enter the book giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment below by midnight, June 30th and I'll randomly pick a winner from all the entries.

Good luck everyone!

Guerrilla Marketing for the Bookshop

2009-06-04T08:55:00.005-04:00

Last year Dan and I saw the first signs of an anemic book-buying economy and embarked on a tedious, but necessary project to boost book sales on our used bookstore website by adding photographs to all of our book listings. On any given day, I maintain 7,000 or so book listings online, out of the 50,000 books on our bookshop shelves, so this massive project took a little over a year to complete. I chipped away at it in between customers and when the natural lighting in the shop was best, which was hardest to do in the winter months.

The photos aren't Pulitzer Prize winners, but they convey the books' condition and attributes and our book listings get ranked higher in the search engines because of the photos. I do know that our website sales quadrupled, even in these tough economic times, so I'm happy to have done this task. I did also shake my head at myself for having listed some books that are either really common or beat up or overpriced for the market, so these got deleted, donated, repriced, etc. I would recommend this somewhat Sisyphean project to anyone with online book listings that would like to sell more on their own websites.

Now I just got to get cracking on attaching the photos to my book listings for sale on other book seller sites, but I need a break from boring, long projects for awhile.

Another marketing tactic we undertook for Old Saratoga Books was to make use of a metal sign post that was long-vacant and sticking out of the sidewalk a couple of blocks north of our bookshop. Dan fashioned a sign out of some waterproof plastic board scraps from his pile of recyclables and with a few screws and nuts, we now have a directional sign that a few customers have told me lured them into Old Saratoga Books.

Another monumental project which I started during our annual February break was to update my book cataloguing software. I had been using an old version of Homebase for years and was comfortable with it, but wanted to start listing books on Amazon, which has a whole set of issues associated with that; chiefly, the requirement that books without ISBN numbers (which started only in the 1970s) need to have a specific Amazon identification number attached to them to be listed on the bookselling site.

Again, it's another long and tedious project of going through my book database yet again and finding the correct Amazon id to upload and selecting out heavier books to exclude from international delivery, but I bought a copy of the Booktrakker software, which, as advertised, simplifies many of the dreary tasks associated with online bookselling and has the dynamo time-saving feature of uploading all my book updates to our website, Alibris, Biblio and Amazon with one click. Amazon has quickly grown to be my bestselling used book site and this helps in any economic climate. I got back my purchase price for Booktrakker almost immediately through Amazon book sales and would highly recommend it to my colleagues.

Perhaps some of you out there will be able to make use of some of these suggestions for weathering these tough economic conditions. I would love to hear about your similar experiences or any recommendations you may have for increasing book sales.

Book Review: Elisabeth Hasselbeck's "The G-Free Diet"

2009-05-17T09:59:00.002-04:00

The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide, by Elisabeth Hasselbeck (NY: Center Street, 2009).

The publisher sent me a copy of this brand-new book by television personality Elisabeth Hasselback, a celiac herself, and here's my thoughts.

A new book about the gluten-free diet is always welcome and having a celebrity author brings extra public awareness to the issues of celiac disease and gluten-intolerance. I applaud Mrs. Hasselback for bringing her own experiences to print (embarrassing digestive disturbances and all) and letting more people know about the symptoms and long-term health effects of celiac disease.

The most useful chapters are the ones in which she describes strategies for food shopping and preparation and ways in which she and her family, a combination of gluten-eaters and "G-free" dieters, avoid contaminating kitchen work surfaces and cooking implements. Hasselbeck also dishes out lots of good advice about how to approach family, friends and restaurant workers when eating away from home. There are many recommendations for specific restaurant chains which offer gluten-free dining options and information regarding certain food brands and products, although this kind of data is so easily changed that the book became dated the minute it rolled off the printing press.

The concerns I have with the way the book is packaged. I assume that is the author's picture on the front dust jacket pushing away a tempting assortment of crusty breads and rolls. Why make these breads so delicious-looking? Why don't they look moldy or misshapen or bad for you, like a squishy, spongy, loaf of supermarket bread? I say, forget the food stylist for that cover photo and just show the sparkling health of Mrs. Hasselbeck next to some unappealing piles of glutenous products.

The dust jacket blurbs are also kind of goofy. The quotes on the rear jacket promote the gluten-free diet as a "lifestyle" option that can help you lose weight, and as the "next big movement in health and wellness". 95% of Americans with undiagnosed celiac disease, suffering from any of the myriad, commonplace and sometimes subtle symptoms, might pick up a copy of this book, scan it quickly and get the wrong idea to self-diagnose and stop eating gluten before being medically tested. The actual text of the book and Dr. Peter Green's foreword do caution against this, but the dust jacket just sends the wrong messages out.

Hasselbeck's book is a nice addition to the gluten-free library and would be good to peruse if you are newly diagnosed as a celiac or want to pass on a copy to a friend or family member who wants to cook for you. For an introduction to gluten-free living, I personally favor the more comprehensive information in Danna Korn's "Living Gluten-Free for Dummies" (2006) and the glorious and delicious writing of Shauna James Ahern's "Gluten-Free Girl" (2007). However, Hasselbeck's "The G-Free Diet" has the opportunity to introduce many more people to the issue of celiac disease and gluten-intolerance because they are familiar with her from "The View" and "Survivor". She has lots of good information to share and is working hard to promote the book and the issue of celiac disease, so it is a welcome book. Just throw away the dust jacket.

May Book Giveaway: Medieval in LA by Jim Paul

2009-05-07T14:20:00.003-04:00

Last month, The Book Trout swam through her used book store and selected a copy of D.M. Thomas' "The White Hotel" to give away and the winner is Genevieve from sunny Southern California. Congratulations Genevieve!

For the May book giveaway, I am offering a hardcover copy of the novel "Medieval in LA: A Fiction", by Jim Paul (Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996), which sounds like a funny, philosophical novel about a man visiting Los Angeles and finding illuminating encounters in the most mundane events.

To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment below by the deadline of Sunday, May 31st, 2009, midnight (Eastern Standard Time) and I will randomly pick a winner. Good luck, everyone!

April Book Giveaway

2009-04-02T17:06:00.003-04:00

Last month the giveaway book, plucked fresh from the shelves of our used bookstore, Old Saratoga Books, was the novel "In My Sister's Country", by Lise Haines. The randomly-selected winner is Lady Roxi. Congrats, my Lady! I'll be contacting you immediately after finishing this post to get your mailing address.

For the Rainy Month of April (rainy days = prime reading time, if you ask me), I am offering a gently used hardcover copy of a modern classic novel, D.M. Thomas' The White Hotel (NY: Viking, 1981, second printing). This is the most popular of the writings of the Cornish-born author and relates the story of a woman undergoing psychoanalysis from Dr. Sigmund Freud himself. She is an opera singer suffering from strange psychosomatic pains and fears, and there is a thread of narrative about her visions of the future and the Holocaust. Wikipedia has a longer discussion of the book's themes here.

To enter this book giveaway contest, all you need to do is leave a comment below before the deadline, April 30th, midnight (Eastern Standard Time). Good luck everyone!

Book Reviews: Untangling My Chopsticks & Absinthe

2009-03-30T18:05:00.008-04:00

I am squeezing in two short book reviews to complete the Books About Food reading challenge today. Interestingly, both books are centered around green beverages: green tea and absinthe. The first book, "Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto", by Victoria Abbott Riccardi (NY: Broadway Books, 2003), recounts the author's year spent in Kyoto, Japan, learning about the art of kaiseki. Kaiseki is the traditional and highly ritualized series of foods to accompany green tea ceremonies and involves a series of small dishes of exquisitely prepared and garnished foods.

Riccardi lands in Kyoto without much knowledge of Japanese culture or language, but is fortunate to have some friends of friends to stay with until she finds other lodging, enrolls in language classes and snags a coveted spot in a prestigious tea kaiseki school where there is an American ex-pat to help her navigate the new culinary and language challenges she faces.

The kaiseki banquets she studies sound exquisite; they evolved from Buddhist monastery traditions into highly formal social dining banquets in which tastings of thick and thin whipped green tea are interspersed with samples of the freshest, seasonal dishes, exquisitely garnished. She also provides interesting glimpses of Japanese home cooking and ordinary restaurant fare, and includes many recipes easily adapted to Western kitchens.

Though this book is but a glimpse into a highly complex Japanese culinary tradition, it was a mouthwatering introduction and I will be referring back to it when attempting my own forays into Japanese cooking.

The concluding book for this Books About Food reading challenge is actually about a distilled spirit, and one which not only does not provide any nourishment butwas historically considered quite deadly in large doses. The spirit in question is Absinthe, that green spirit made from wormwood and the favorite tipple of many an artist, writer and dreamer in 19th century Europe, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

The fascinating history of this often-outlawed beverage is fleshed out in "Absinthe: Sip of Seduction: A Contemporary Guide", by Betina J. Wittels and Robert Hermesch (Golden, CO: Speck Press, 2008). This revised edition is an entertaining look at the rituals of drinking this bitter spirit, which involve diluting it with water and straining it through an absinthe spoon and sugar cube to produce an opalescent, cloudy cocktail. Absinthe was perhaps the most vilified alcoholic beverage during the temperance movement that swept the West over the last century, associated as it was with the excesses of the bohemian lifestyle, but it has since become legal to imbibe in the United States and Europe again.

The book contains a wealth of illustrations of Art Nouveau posters, postcards, absinthe drinking paraphrenalia and photographs of Absinthe fans from Aleister Crowley to Johnny Depp, so this makes for an entertaining foray into the lore and truths about this infamous beverage.

This concludes my reading for this short but sweet Books About Food Reading Challenge. In addition to the two books reviewed succinctly above, I also enjoyed reading:

The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, by Diana Abu-Jaber

A Bowl of Red:The Classic Natural History of Chili Con Carne with Other Delectable Dishes of the Southwest, with Recipes and a Guide to Paper Napkin Restaurants by Frank X. Tolbert

Stealing Buddha's Dinner, by Bich Minh Nguyen

My original list of Books About Food was changed to suit my mood, but all were enjoyable and recommended reading. Now I am primed to read some more science and classics books. Off to the couch!

More Change at the Bookstore

2009-03-20T16:19:00.005-04:00

It must be a sign of the times. Schuylerville, New York is not an economic hot spot, but lately I have more and more customers at Old Saratoga Books paying with coins. Usually it's just kids who come in for one or more of our 25 cent kids books or people killing time in between washer loads from the nearby laundromat. But not lately. There has been a notable uptick in the number of folks forking over handfuls of dimes, quarters and nickels to pay for their paperback and hardcover escapes.

Are they raiding piggy banks for some cheap entertainment? Hunting through couch cushions so as to procure the next installment in their mystery or fantasy series? (note to self: check couch tonite).

Ditto for the surge in phone calls asking if we are buying books right now (answer: VERY sparingly, as I'm trying to balance the yin/yang of the OSB till) and in the number of sales calls for all manner of business services.

Another more encouraging trend is the increase in sales and requests for books about such self-reliant skills as gardening, canning, appliance repair, alternative energy, weatherization and home repairs, and cooking.

I am trying more sale piles of books in the shop and these seem to be selling well and easing the groaning of the shelves. I've been successful with stacks of books by the same author (Stephen King, John Sandford, Doris Lessing and Solzhenitsyn have all been lugged out of the shop to make way for more fiction), and by subject (religious books, gardening and furniture repair have all gone out). If you are one of my regular in-store customers, come on down to see what's stacked up cheap and if you are one of my on-line customers, feel free to call or email to inquire about any inexpensive book lots I might have lying about for sale. Requests for particular authors/titles/subjects also considered.

Gotta go roll some change.

March Book Giveaway

2009-03-03T13:53:00.005-05:00

Last month I offered a copy of "Ptown" by Peter Manso here at the Book Trout and the lucky winner is Tina, who has an interesting and yummy blog, Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel Head Manor, about her cooking experiments and other musings. Congratulations Tina! I will be contacting you to get your address so I can send you your book prize.

For the March Book Giveaway, I prowled the shelves of Old Saratoga Books and came up with a copy of an interesting-looking novel, "In My Sister's Country" by Lise Haines (NY: Blue Hen Books, 2002), about a seventeen-year-old girl, Molly, who is orphaned and must go live with her older sister. It is described on the front jacket flap as "a beautifully wrought and wrenching account of sibling rivalry, family betrayal, and repressed grief".

To receive this free book in the mail all you have to do is leave a comment below by midnight (Eastern Standard Time), March 31st, 2009 and I will randomly pick a winner after that time.

Good luck to all!

Book Review: The Extinction Club by Robert Twigger

2009-03-02T10:04:00.005-05:00

The second book on my Science Books Challenge reading list is Robert Twigger's "The Extinction Club" (NY: William Morrow, 2001). My husband had read and enjoyed the author's book about trekking after jungle reptiles in "Big Snake" and I looked forward to diving into this book about the rare Chinese Milu or Pere David deer.

The Milu (Elapharus davidianus) are a native Chinese deer which were only allowed to be kept and hunted by the imperial court. A Basque missionary and amateur naturalist, Pere David, wrote about the deer and smuggled some butchered deer parts back to the West in a French diplomatic pouch (quel odeur!), paving the way for part of the herd to be imported back to various private hunting grounds and sanctuaries back in Europe when the Chinese empire was carved up after the Boxer Rebellion.

Though the book was not the natural history adventure I expected, Twigger's writing is witty and easy to dive into. Just like the Milu, with their camel necks, stag horns, donkey tails and reindeer feet, this book is an amalgam of parts: part philosophical musings on big questions like the meaning of extinction, part history (the carving up of the Chinese empire by Western powers is sad and fascinating), part memoir about writerly angst and only a very small part of information about the subject deer.

Twigger uses a diverting brand of creative non-fiction to juggle these disparate themes and most of the time it works well and reads easily. Other times, it is confusing, as when he invents a maniacal retired Army Major who has the means to cause the extinction of fragile species of fish by pouring chemicals into remote lakes. I thought this fellow was a real person until rereading several passages over again. Then I began to question whether other characters and scenes in the book were real or imagined, so ultimately I have to say that while I was highly entertained by the book, I can't say that I am more informed about Chinese-European history or the saga of the Milu after reading this book. Or was I?

Book Review: Stealing Buddha's Dinner, by Bich Minh Nguyen

2009-02-11T11:37:00.004-05:00

There's another helping of book review to serve forth for my Books About Food Reading Challenge, having read the delightful memoir, "Stealing Buddha's Dinner", by Bich Minh Nguyen, NY: Viking, 2007). The first book I read for this event was another memoir about growing up in an American immigrant family, Diana Abu-Jaber's "The Language of Baklava". This book had similar themes about straddling two cultures and finding one's own adult identity, though the main characters switched from being an American Arab to being a Vietnamese refugee.

Nguyen's book starts with her earliest memories of being a toddler in a cold and drafty house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, living with her extended family of her father, older sister, grandmother and five adoring uncles. We find out early on that the family fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon in 1975, but we don't know what happened to the girls' mother until much later in the book. Her father works long hours at a pillow factory and sleeps with a ceremonial sword on the downstairs sofa to protect his family. His mother, Noi, is a devout Buddhist who cares for the girls and cooks the meals, and is the quiet matriarch in the family.

The uncles provide comic relief and spoil the Nguyen girls with sweets, rock and roll music and toys. The uncles' lairs throughout a succession of moves are a nostalgic morass of Seventies pop culture: shiny rayon clothes, ABBA albums, leather recliners, elaborate hi-fi setups, silver wallpaper. They easily turn off the switch from work to play when they come home from their factory jobs, unlike Nguyen's dad, who spends his few off-hours tensely smoking on the porch or playing cards and billiards with his Vietnamese friends, marinated in lots of booze.

The family is enlarged when Nguyen's father marries Rosa, the socialist teacher and daughter of Mexican migrant workers. She brings her daughter Crissy with her and the family now has to figure out how to integrate this new mother and cook. Rosa is pursuing college and post-graduate studies throughout the book, so her cooking time is precious and limited to a few standard meals that the Nguyen bunch stoically eats without much relish. The author, however, through the lens of adult insight, has a great empathy for her stepmother and insightfully shows her isolation from the rest of the family when they go to Vietnamese parties on the weekends. There, the tall and curvacious Rosa is left to herself, separated by age, gender and language from the cliques of poker-playing men, the TV-watching children and and extended sessions of gossip and deep-frying among the slender women of the kitchen.

Young Binh doesn't want "weirdo" Vietnamese food made from exotic ingredients from the Asian grocery, nor does she savor Rosa's timesaver, budget meals bought with coupons and made from generic cans and boxes. Instead, she covets American junk food: Pringles, a chocolate rainbow of candy bars, Dairy Cones with strawberry dip, McDonalds burgers and buckets of fried chicken. She wants to eat what her conservative, Christian, primarily Dutch heritage neighbors and schoolmates eat so she can fit in, but finds this a constant struggle. As she points out, coming of age in the Seventies and Eighties was to grow up before being ethnic was cool, before phrases like "multiculturalism" and "diversity" were embraced. And Nguyen is unable to become popular like her two pretty (her author photo says she's a knockout too), more gregarious older sisters.

She finds solace in reading and the titles of many of the classic juvenile books she hoards in her special bookcase and which she nests among her bedclothes, will appeal to all those who came to bibliophilia early in life. While her sisters spend their spare change on banana lip gloss and Pat Benatar records, the author buys (and racks up huge library fines) for books outlining the adventures of her friends Encyclopedia Brown, Ramona Quimby, Charlotte the Spider, the March family, Harriet Welsch, and the entire Ingalls clan.

Slowly, though, she comes around to appreciate her grandmother's daily offerings of fruit, (first offered to Buddha on a lacquered salver) carefully peeled and sliced; her Pho slippery with noodles and slices of oxtail; and even Rosa's holiday tamales. Though she may still covet "regular" American foods, she finds greater appreciation for her family's spicier tangle of comfort foods.

"Stealing Buddha's Dinner" does not mix in as much wit as "The Language of Baklava", but was as enjoyable for its detailed and sensual evocations of time and place. Foodie readers will enjoy the Bacchanalian descriptions of Vietnamese holiday feasts and Seventies' spreads at "Ponder Rosa" (the Ponderosa steakhouse chain), while others will delight in the way the Nguyen family changes and grows during their years in America. The author explains a lot about traditional Vietnamese and Buddhist culture and how aspects of both clash against against modern American culture.

Recommended reading for foodies, fans of biography and memoir, social history and the American immigrant experience.

Old Saratoga Books on February Break

2009-02-03T10:40:00.002-05:00

I just want to let our walk-in customers know that our used and rare bookstore, Old Saratoga Books, is currently closed for our annual February break. We will reopen on on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009 with our regular store hours of Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and Sundays from noon to 5 pm.

During the month of February we will be out scouting for books to fulfill many of our customers' book wants and will be cleaning, reorganizing and taking inventory, so look for some specials when we reopen for business on the 28th. In the meantime, though, you can order any of the books we have listed for sale online at Old Saratoga Books, as we will be checking in at the shop each day to wrap and ship orders and feed our fabulous store feline, Sam. Until then...

February Book Giveaway

2009-02-02T12:32:00.003-05:00

Last month the Book Trout offered up a copy of Paul Lafarge's novel "Haussmann or the Distinction" about Napoleonic Paris and the lucky winner is Janel. Congratulations Janel!

For the February book giveaway, the book to be won is Peter Manso's "Ptown: Art, Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape" (NY: Scribner, 2002). Longtime Provincetown, Massachusetts resident Manso gives a history of this funky, artsy city located at the far tip of Cape Cod. Many photos of Ptown's colorful inhabitants, including fishermen, artists, writers, actors, restaurateurs and a few famous faces.

To be eligible for this book freebie all you have to do is enter a comment below by the deadline of February 28, 2009, midnight (Eastern Standard Time). Good luck!

Book Review: A Bowl of Red by Frank X. Tolbert

2009-01-30T18:02:00.001-05:00

A Bowl of Red: The Classic Natural History of Chili Con Carne with Other Delectable Dishes of the Southwest, with Recipes and a Guide to Paper Napkin Restaurants, by Frank X. Tolbert, Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing Company (1988), reprint.

This book is a reprint of the classic chilihead bible, originally published in 1953. Tolbert was a born-and-bred Texan, first, and a journalist and founder of the World Chili Championship held each November in Terlingua, Texas. The book swaggers with lots of outsized Texas bravado about how hot a proper chili should be, how a classic bowl of red would eject any attempts to throw beans into it, and some interesting profiles of cowboy chuck wagon cooks.

"A Bowl of Red" is a little dated, with all of its references to period film stars and celebrities, and some non PC references to various ethnic groups, but it does contain great information about Southwestern culinary history and will make your mouth water for something spicy. He lists some of the many chili aficionados of the day, including humorist H. Allen Smith, Lady Bird Johnson and LBJ, Jack Benny and trumpet virtuoso Harry James, who notes "Next to jazz music, there is nothing that lifts the spirit and strengthens the soul more than a good bowl of chili".

Tolbert's book explores the various permutations of chili (suet or no, tomatoey and garlicky or vegetable-free) and then examines some other Texan specialties, including son of a bitch stew (an extravaganza of cattle organ meats), tamales, enchiladas and burritos. He has the highest regard for the humblest of chili chefs, from diners, jailhouse kitchens and those like Early Caldwell, the Tamale King, who hunts down prime corn shucks and other ingredients and steams up vast quantities in his home kitchen to sell every other day at a prime corner in Athens, Texas.

The book is very entertaining and a great look at a chunk of American food history. I would definitely seek it out as a gift for any chili heads in your life. This is the second book I have read for the Books About Food challenge, which I am thoroughly enjoying. Next up for that reading challenge: "Stealing Buddha's Dinner", by Bich Minh Nguyen.

Book Review: Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich

2009-01-22T11:45:00.009-05:00

Ravens in Winter, written and illustrated by Bernd Heinrich (NY: Summit Books, 1989)

I just finished a great book about ravens and Nevermore will I look at these intelligent birds in the same light again. The author is a Professor of Zoology at the University of Vermont and has written other books about insects, owls, marathon running and ecology.

The book provides a great look at the social behavior of ravens and other birds, bears and creatures of the winter forest in New England, as well as an interesting glimpse into Heinrich's style of scientific observation. He displays his marathon training during the hardcore camping and activities of his first several winters of raven research. He is an Iron Man that sleeps in an unheated cabin during below zero weather, drives hundreds of miles through blizzards, gets up before dawn to shimmy up swaying pine trees to await his feathered research subjects and nonchalantly slices off pieces of raven-ravaged moose butt for supper. A more rugged scientist seems hard to imagine.

The author is dogged in his research and spends monotonous hours in his outdoor blinds watching for ravens to come to the thousands of pounds of slaughterhouse guts and roadkill carcasses he drags uphill on his weekend raven research sessions. He is equally disciplined in avoiding inferences from random observations and reading interpretations into one-time events. He attributes this to a single-minded avoidance of advancing theories without multiple evidence:

When I was very young and didn't "see" what seemed obvious to adults, I often thought I was stupid and unsuited for science. Now I sometimes wonder if that is why I make progress. The ability to invent interconnections is no advantage where the discovery of truth is an objective.

He has a somewhat dry writing style, but his heroics make for interesting reading and he certainly has a sense of humor about his unorthodox research methods. He drives through Maine during hunting season with a dead goat strapped to his hood noting that the beast, which is the same size and coloring as a deer doe, looks "good enough to tag". He enlists volunteer help in capturing and banding razor-beaked test by advertising free beer and a sheep roast at a "Raven Roundup" party.

You may not want to party with Dr. Heinrich but you have to admire his patience and determination and this book was an excellent start to my Science Books Challenge, where I intead to read six books about science in 2009 to expand my selection of reading matter and the content of my gray matter.

The Language of Baklava: A Book Review

2009-01-15T10:57:00.005-05:00

The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, by Diana Abu-Jaber (NY: Pantheon, 2005).

"The Language of Baklava" is the second book pick for the new foodie book club, Cook the Books, that a couple of blogger friends and I have organized. What a fantastic book on so many levels. It is a book full of food memories and recipes, a devastatingly funny collection of crazy family scenes and dialogue, and a writer's memoir, full of interesting
remembrances about how keenly she observed and sensed things throughout her unique childhood. She perfectly captures the buzzing level of energy I remember having as a child and the easy acceptance most children have of new friends and situations.

It is also a funny and perceptive lens on the American immigrant experience of her Jordanian-born father, "Bud" (originally Ghassan), whom we learn is the descendant of Bedouin sheiks and has at least four other wild and crazy brothers who joined him in trading their desert homeland for the Syracuse area of upstate New York. Arid desert winds are swapped for six months of snow and wind that no longer stings from sand but from ice.

Bud was raised Syrian-Orthodox but turned into a "mild" Muslim when he was an adult and struggles with being a gregarious immigrant with high hopes in an American culture that fools and disappoints him often. He marries a tall, American goddess, Abu-Jaber's quiet teacher mother, a retiring figure in the book that quietly accepts moves back to dusty Jordanian compounds when Diana is a pre-schooler and then gets ready for another move when she is a rebellious adolescent. She seems to mutter and slowly fold her objections down inward with each of Bud's new schemes or impromptu dinner parties and I kept wondering why she was so retiring and such a surprisingly minor character in this book. I understand why she was attracted to Bud, a larger-than-life host who can even charm nuns with his spicy special rice and pontifications about religion and philosophy, but I wonder why she never voices any misgivings or argues. She is a very passive character and yet I sense hidden passions and strength.

We learn more about Diana's maternal grandmother, a disdainer of men, in a hilarious Chinese restaurant scene. Never has self-confidence (Gram) and acute adolescent self-anguish (Diana) clashed so mightily as when Gram blunders her way through a conversation with a highly cultured Chinese waiter about the "Chinese opera" she had just taken Diana to see (it was actually Madama Butterfly, a Puccini opera about a Japanese heroine).

Gram's a larger-than-life match for Bud's personality as well. After enduring a bossy father, a scalawag husband that abandons her, and the Great Depression ("brought about by men"), she tries to stanch the burgeoning romance between her daughter and Bud by inviting him over for a bright pink and glistening ham (Muslim taboo), followed by a second dinner of shrimp which Bud thinks are giant insects. Abu-Jaber further defines the difference between them in terms of their cooking styles:

"The problem seems obvious to me: Gram is a baker, Bud's a cook. Cooks are dashing, improvisational, wayward, intuitive; bakers are measured, careful, rational, precise. Gram can follow a recipe, but the drama for spice isn't in her bones. "Oh, rosemary," she says to me dismissively as we discuss a chicken recipe. "Rosemary is for show-offs."

Bud is a restless figure, always wondering whether he should move his family of three daughters back to Jordan to keep them as "good Arab girls" and switching them from suburban to rural real estate around Syracuse as restaurant dreams ebb and flow. As a result, young Diana has to "re-create" herself with all these moves to fit in with new circles of friends. I was especially interested in her comment that American food tasted of "sugar, stone, and chemicals" when she returned from an extended stay in Jordan.

Then, there are the recipes! They sweeten the end of each chapter and I have already tried two of them, Magical Muhammara ("a dip or spread for when you want everyone to quit running around and come to the table") and "Start the Party" Hummus, and can say that they are as sumptuous as Abu-Jaber's writing.

I read Abu-Jaber's second novel, "Crescent", last year and was delighted when "The Language of Baklava" was selected as the second Cook the Books title. It is a book that I can't wait to read it all over again soon.

This book is also the first book read for my portion of the Books about Food challenge, which is headquartered here.

My Reading Goals for 2009

2009-01-09T14:52:00.003-05:00

For the New Year, I have set out two reading goals for myself. I read entirely too many mysteries (I'm now working through Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti series set in modern Venice; what great characters! what corruption! what great food!) so I would like to stretch myself a bit and read more widely. Here's what I plan to read in 2009 to expand my knowledge of the world and its literature:

Classic Novels:

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Pere Goriot, by Honore de Balzac
O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather
Recollections, by Colette

I have never read anything by these authors before, so I will hopefully be able to proudly crow about them the next time some punk kid asks me about them at the shop.

Books about Food:

The Language of Baklava, by Diana Abu-Jaber
A Bowl of Red by Frank X. Tolbert
A Glutton for Punishment: Confessions of a Mercenary Eater by Jay Jacobs
Stealing Buddha's Dinner, by Bich Minh Nguyenn
We Are What We Ate: 24 Memories of Food, edited by Mark Winegardner

I read a lot of cookbooks and foodie novels for escapism, but I would like to know more about the social history of food, hence this challenge for myself. I have just finished Diana Abu-Jaber's book above for the Cook the Books club, and I have also found out that there is an organized Books About Food Challenge which I may join if I can get my butt in gear for the March 31st deadline.

Books about Science:

Bully for Brontosaurus, by Stephen Jay Gould
Ravens in Winter, by Bernd Heinrich
The Extinction Club, by Robert Twigger
The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco, by Marilyn Chase
Equations of Eternity: Speculations on Consciousness, Meaning, and the Mathematical Rules that Orchestrate the Cosmos, by David Darling (this last selection will really test my resolve!)

There's a Science Books challenge for 2009 which asks readers to read only 3 books all year to help spread science literacy. I SHOULD be able to do that.

Back to the books....

Reading Groups and Challenges for 2009

2009-01-08T16:36:00.002-05:00

I am happy to have finished my Orbis Terrarum reading challenge for 2008 to expand my knowledge of world literature a tiny bit, and now am casting about for some new reading challenges for the New Year. I did a little research into online reading groups and book challenges for another guest blog post at Shelf Space, the blog attached to Foreword Magazine, and you can read all about it here.

Book Review: The Salt Letters by Christine Balint

2009-01-03T12:53:00.004-05:00

While I am a few days over my Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge deadline, I did want to clear the decks for a new Reading Year in 2009, so I have a ninth and final book to review. We travel in the uncomfortable and fetid steerage compartment of a ship bound from England to the wilds of Australia in 1854 with a young woman narrator, Sarah, in Christine Balint's debut novel "The Salt Letters" (NY: W.W. Norton, 2001).

Sarah spends yawning days and nights crowded into a bunk and a small room with a cluster of other unmarried women. Their every move is monitored by a Matron, and they are segregated from all other passengers, except for brief journeys above deck when the weather is fair. Otherwise, it is a hot, dank, smelly and long trip, with nothing but a little needlework and gossip for entertainment.

Sarah's recollections about her life in England, which includes an earthy grandmother, a hydrophobic mother and a forbidden attraction with her cousin Richard, are all very interesting and contrast with the squalor of her sea travels. However, having read even more vivid descriptions of conditions on board ships bound for Australia during the same era in Robert Hughes' wonderful history "The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding", I would more likely recommend the latter to anyone looking for a good book on the subject.

Balint has great descriptive talent, but the plot line weaves in and out like one of the heroine's fevered reveries, and ultimately, I was not entirely sure how the book ended. Was she now married? Was she pregnant? Was Richard on board? Did her mother die? Were they finally arrived in Australia? I just didn't feel that things wrapped up and that Balint could have fleshed things out a bit at the end.

Thus concludes my journey around the world with nine books by nine authors about nine different countries, which included:

* 1) Far Afield, by Susan Kaysen (Faroes Islands)
* 2) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia)
* 3) The Harafish, by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
* 4) Murder on the Leviathan, by Boris Akunin (Georgia, Russia)
* 5) The Story Teller, by Mario Lllosa Vargas (Peru)
* 6) Talkative Man, by R.K. Narayan (India)
* 7) Balzac & The Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie (China)
* 8) Reef, by Romesh Gunesekera (Sri Lanka)
* 9) The Salt Letters, by Christine Balint (Australia)

"Far Afield" was a-far and a-way my favorite book out of the lot; it was mordantly funny and the characters were well-described in all their glorious eccentricity. A close second and third for "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" and "Reef", where I was transported to exotic locations and moved by the characters' longing for their former lives.

In 2009 I plan to tackle another reading challenge to stretch my personal reading habits, perhaps with a peek at some classic literature or some history. The structure of a reading challenge like Orbis Terrarum helped keep me on track with my goal and certainly, announcing something publicly on this blog, spurred me on to complete my self-assignment. I am glad that I found some new authors to read further and to recommend to my friends and customers and feel a little more well-read having checked these nine new authors out.

Happy New Year!

January Book Giveaway

2009-01-02T11:53:00.005-05:00

Happy New Year to Everyone! Here's to a peaceful, happy and healthy 2009 for all.

Last year, er, month, I offered a copy of Rick DeMarinis' short story collection "The Coming Triumph of the Free World" and the lucky winner is Anita. I will be contacting Anita to let her know about her win right after finishing this post. Congratulations Anita!

Let's start Book Trout 2009 with another free book giveaway. I have a trade paperback copy of Paul Lafarge's novel "Haussmann or the Distinction" (NY: Picador, 2002) to offer. This New York Times Notable Book is based on the real-life figure of "Baron" Georges-Eugene Haussmann, who was Napoleon's Urban Renewal Czar, charged with demolishing the old alleyways and apartments of Paris and replacing this fabric with the Arc de Triomphe, radiating boulevards and grand new architecture. Lafarge's book tells the story of Haussmann's city planning designs through the eyes of many characters, including a young foundling girl uprooted from a cramped, medieval neighborhood, a "demolition man" who sells off architectural rubble and Haussmann himself.

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of January 31st, 2009, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all!

Book Review: The Reef by Romesh Gunesekera

2008-12-27T13:58:00.005-05:00

I am going to try and squeak through with a strong end of the year finish on my Orbis Terrarum reading challenge. I was supposed to have read 9 books in 9 months by 9 authors from 9 different countries to expand my knowledge of world literature, and while I have read nine such books, I only have eight book reviews under my belt (if I count this present one) which leaves little wiggle room for the final book review. I am going to press on, because I want to try another reading challenge in 2009, and hope to clear the decks with a clean reading conscience in these final days of 2008.

For my eighth Orbis Terrarum read, I savored Romesh Gunesekera's Reef (NY: Riverhead Books, 1996) about life in his native Sri Lanka before civil war tore apart this beautiful island nation in the 1980s. I had previously enjoyed reading Michael Ondaatje's "Anil's Ghost", which is also set in modern Sri Lanka and contrasts lyrical descriptions of the lush, tropical setting and the hellacious ravages of war. I was not disappointed with this second portrayal of the former Ceylon, a giant tear drop set in the Indian Ocean.

Reef was was a finalist for the Booker Prize and one can see why it garnered this attention. Gunesekera's writing is deceptively simple, yet it conjures up exotic and unusual images. The novel depicts the coming of age of Triton, a young boy taken in by a bachelor marine biologist, Mr. Salgado, when his mother dies and his father descends into alcoholism. Triton grows up to become an accomplished cook and main household servant for Mr. Salgado when he gets into a struggle with an older manservant, Joseph. Here's Gunesekera's ominous description of Joseph:

"He was not a big man but he hd a long rectangular head shaped like a devil-mask. His face was heavy and his lower jaw jutted out, making his head look detached from his bdy. A sullen heart compressed the muscles beneath the skin of his face in a permanent grimace. He had big hands that would appear out of nowhere. And as I was always trying to avoid him and never looked up at him, the sight of his hands suddenly on a doorknob or reaching for a cloth was terrifying."

Triton is not educated, but he is extremely observant and reads and re-reads the contents of the Salgado book shelves. Triton is devoted to his benefactor and reveres his live-in lover, Miss Nili, but he has nothing but disdain for Salgado's boorish houseguests when they trample his immaculately clean rooms and gobble his intricate banquets. A Christmas turkey feast is wonderfully etched by the author's words, as he shows each dinner guest's inner soul by the way they approach their plates.

Ultimately, the story ends with a melancholy and reflective finish, but it was a treat to read. This book will remain in my home library, a rare honor for me to bestow upon a novel. Highly recommended.

Happy Holidays to All

2008-12-25T12:23:00.001-05:00

May everyone enjoy as restful and happy a holiday season as my sweet dog Martha. Peace out.

Book Review: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

2008-12-22T11:43:00.004-05:00

A seventh leg of my Orbis Terrarum Book Reading journey is complete. I tried to read Primo Levi's "The Periodic Table" about pre-World War II Italy, but much as I wanted to dive in, it was just not meant to be. I picked up and read the first several chapters a bunch of different times, but couldn't get into it, so I switched over to another book which had logged some time on my nightstand, Chinese-born writer Dai Sijie's novel "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" (NY: Anchor Books, 2002).

This novel was a treat, being not only a book about books and reading, one of my favorite genres, but as a vividly-portrayed look at 1970s China during the harsh re-education policies of the Communist government. The heroes of this too-short novel are teenagers Luo, son of a dentist who dared mention publicly that he had worked on the teeth of Chairman Mao, and his unnamed chum, the son of two medical doctors, who are branded "intellectuals" after their extensive middle school education and banished to a remote mountain farm village. There they live in an unheated agricultural storage building and spend their days hauling baskets of excrement up the mountainsides to fertilize distant fields of opium.

Our young heroes do not know if they will ever be allowed to return to their families in the big city of Chengdu, but find sparks of hope for a way out of their dreary lives when the Village leader discovers their talent for storytelling. They are also allowed a bit of freedom to travel to infrequent movie showings at the nearest market town so as to relate the embroidered plots to their villagers at a later date. It is during these visits that they make the acquaintance of a tailor's daughter, the little Chinese seamstress of the title, and reunite with another teenaged friend from Chengdu, Four-Eyes, whose poet-mother smuggled in a secret suitcase of books, including prized novels by Balzac.

Sijie himself was "re-educated" during the 1970s and left China a decade later for France, where he has since worked as a writer and filmmaker. The imagery in the book is very cinematic and visual, and I could imagine a bird's sweeping view of the mountainous landscape and steep pathways that pepper the book.

I would highly recommend this book to other readers, particularly those who enjoy a bit of history woven into their fiction. Images from the book have stayed with me and I find myself thinking about the symbolism of the red-beaked crows that watch over our protagonists and of the crazy home dentistry scenes in another chapter.

I have read two more books for this 2008 reading challenge (9 books by nine authors from 9 different countries in nine months), and am hoping to bang out two more reviews about them to meet the end of the year deadline, so stay tuned.

Literary Boozehounds

2008-12-17T11:58:00.002-05:00

I have a second guest post on Foreword Magazine's Shelf Space blog about Great American Writers and their penchant for alcoholic fuel which appears today. This is a followup to the Literary Libations research I blogged about earlier here at the Book Trout.

The Deconstruction of Used Books

2008-12-12T10:54:00.002-05:00

Rachel is a guest blogger on Shelf Space, a book blog that Foreword Magazine publishes for librarians and booksellers. Today's subject is "The Personality of Used Books", if you would like to check it out.

December Book Giveaway

2008-12-02T18:44:00.002-05:00

Shelby is the lucky winner of the November Book Giveaway, a copy of Randy Wayne White's "The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua". White is better known for his Fort Myers, Florida area detective novels but this book is a collection of fishing tales from his days as a guide. Congratulations Shelby!

I thought I would switch things up and provide a book of short stories for the December book giveaway. I love the bold book jacket art by Bascove, and this book beckoned from the shelves: "The Coming Triumph of the Free World: Stories by Rick DeMarinis" (NY: Viking, 1988). DeMarinis is a critically acclaimed author of many novels and works of short fiction and even the author of a book about writing short stories. The arts magazine Cutthroat even hands out an annual Rick DeMarinis Short Story Award, ($1,250!) so if you love short story collections, this book may beckon to you as well.

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of December 31st, 2008, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all!

Musings on a Lone Leaf Day

2008-11-19T15:31:00.008-05:00

It is a gusty, chillier-than-usual November afternoon in the bookshop and I feel a little restless as I walk about the shop trying to rev up my circulatory system. Sam the cat is no help curled up in my box of packing peanuts and bubble wrap strips. He should be on my lap warming me up. But instead, I am as the lone leaf shown above on the maple tree outside the shop, flapping aimlessly about.

I could dust some shelves, straighten some paperbacks, water the plants, but no, that's more ennui for the pile. Instead, I found myself drawn to one out of a pile of books waiting to be shelved. The title is just too good: "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked out all the Pots" (by Susan Straight, NY: Hyperion, 1992). Now, that is an evocative title! But I imagine it gave the publisher and book designer apoplexy being so wordy.

"How am I supposed to get book reviews for a three-foot-long book title?",
"How do I pack this title onto the spine?"
"Even the acronym is long! (IBISKALOATP)"

That got me thinking about other great, wordy book titles:

Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me (Richard Farina)
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is 'Enuf (Ntozake Shange)
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Alan Gurganus)
From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg)

All of them very evocative and I read and loved the last two books, so I am partial to these titles. However, apparently publisher wisdom decrees that book titles should be kept small, even though this study by Lulu.com offers a disparate analysis.

This web site informs us all that the world record holder (at 1,433 characters) is an Italian novel (I think it's a novel, I dozed off after trying to read the garbled web-translation of this monstrous title) but here's an article from Denmark which assigns the book title verbosity championship to us Americans. Be sure to read the comments under that article, including the snappy one by Jamie considering inappropriate punctuation of overlong titles. And Foreword Magazine had an article earlier this year considering the trend towards lengthening book titles.

From cataloguing many a book in 12+ years as a used and rare bookseller I can attest to a vogue in wordy book titles during the 19th century, in some cases exhausting the character limits of my software and necessitating a "to be continued below" disclaimer in my book description. But I maintain a fondness for the verbose book titles above. Back to licking the pots....

Book Hunting in Ithaca, New York

2008-11-12T11:32:00.009-05:00

Every year the Book Trout and her buddies plan an escape weekend to leave motherhood, wifery and jobs behind and just enjoy each others' company. We shop, eat out, sight see, and most importantly, reconnect with each other back at the hotel room accompanied by a bottle or two of red wine and a bucket of nail polish for our pampering pedicures. Over the years we've watched our friend Laura race in the New York City and Philadelphia marathons, shopped at outlet malls, gotten roped into judging a costume contest at a Mystery Weekend and attended a crafts fair in Vermont.

This year we planned our annual retreat in Ithaca, New York, a funky college town set among beautiful steep hills and 19th century homes at the southern tip of the Finger Lakes region. We arrived Friday evening and left Sunday morning and managed to pack in a lot of fun into our 48 hour pass. We ate out, shopped for crafts and clothes in Ithaca Commons, tooled around the Farmer's Market and Cornell Campus, attended an elegant opening at the Henry F. Johnson Museum of Art and, of course, squeezed in a lot of chatter and laughter.

The Ithaca Farmer's Market was a treat. Despite the cool drizzle of our November morning, we whiled away a lovely several hours admiring gorgeous displays of autumn vegetables, baked goods and artisan crafts. While slurping up my Cambodian noodle breakfast and lugging my clanking bottles of hard cider I was drawn to the artwork of Alice Muhlback. She paints moon faced figures on wood, including this great bookish artwork entitled "Altered by the Words" that I really coveted.

I was able to convince my bibliophile buddy Linda to break away from the pack and search out Autumn Leaves Used Books, a triple-decker bookshop with a vegetarian cafe upstairs, books on the well-lit, well-populated main floor and used records on the lower level. I was pleased to scoop up several titles that my customers are looking for and of course, several for myself, including a hardcover of Brian Jacques second Redwall novel "Mattimeo" and "Heat" by Bill Buford, about his apprenticeship with chef Mario Batali.

Autumn Leaves bookseller Rick Sage was a delight to chat with and was kind enough to let me snap his photo while admiring a coffee table book about Tijuana Bibles. Linda was also delighted to snag the collected poems of Allen Ginsberg, who, she related to us all later, she caught at Madison, Wisconsin coffee houses reading his poetry (with harmonium accompaniment)during her wild, go-go-boot-shod teenagerhood.

There are a number of other used bookstores in downtown Ithaca and the surrounding hills to explore another day, and I have since discovered that Ithaca has great literary value as the setting of many novels and as the home of some cool authors, so I hope to return soon for some more exploration and book hunting. The Tompkins County Public Library also hosts a twice-annual book sale which is billed as the third largest in the U.S., so other book hunters may want to take note!

Orbis Terrarum Book Review: The Talking Man by R.M. Narayan

2008-11-06T17:09:00.004-05:00

I am now 2/3 of the way across the globe as part of my armchair journey on the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge(nine books by nine authors from nine different countries)having just visited India by reading The Talkative Man: A Novel of Malgudi, by R.K. Narayan, NY: Viking, 1987.

This was a short hop as the book is a short novella of only 123 pages. "The Talking Man" is a fable set in a rural village in South India which is the fictional setting for many of Narayan's other works. The tone and dialogue are light and humorous and are perfect for describing the gossip, intrigue and comedy of manners that ensue in everyday Malgudi.

One day a mysterious visitor who works on equally mysterious projects around the world for the UN worms his way into local village life, first camping out in railway station much to the detriment of the agitated station master's mental health. The stranger then stays as a lodger with TM, a well-off man who dabbles in journalism. The Mysterious One carries on an inappropriate romance with a young college student and after hearing from other women around the globe who have been romanced by this cad, TM and the other villagers save the young lady and her family from embarrassment in a farcical ending involving pompous government ministers, apocalyptic scenarios involving weeds, and hecklers of every stripe.

I found this novella thoroughly enjoyable and will seek out other Malgudi novels so I can visit again. Recommended for those who enjoy comic novels, Indian literature and short romps where villains get their comeuppance.

November Book Giveaway

2008-11-01T15:17:00.002-04:00

Last month I offered a signed copy of "In the Name of Salome" by Julia Alvarez to one of the Book Trout's loyal readers and Alyce is the lucky winner. Congratulations Alyce!

I thought I would swing back to non-fiction for the November book giveaway and have a lovely hardcover copy to give away of Randy Wayne White's "The Sharks of Lake Nicaragua: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fishing" (NY: The Lyons Press, 1999). Better known for his bestselling Doc Ford mysteries set on Florida's Gulf Coast, this collection draws on White's background as a fishing guide and outdoors columnist

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of November 30, 2008, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all!

A New Online Foodie Book Club: Cook the Books

2008-10-24T13:18:00.005-04:00

Over on my food blog, The Crispy Cook, I've been joined by two other blogger buddies, Johanna of Food Junkie and Deb of Kahakai Kitchen where we decided to do something fun to share our mutual love for reading and cooking. We have started a new bimonthly foodie book club, Cook the Books, in which we will highlight a book to read, discuss, and then cook from. Our first book pick is "La Cucina", by Lily Prior, where the setting is Sicily and Palermo and features lots of mouthwatering traditional Sicilian cooking. Our host trio is pleased to unveil our new Cook the Books blog designed by the multi-talented Johanna as our new home. Check back there for literary discussion, Sicilian cooking ideas, and maybe some input from the author herself!

December 15, 2008 is the deadline to read the book, cook up something inspired by it in your own cucina and blog about it. After that time, I will post a roundup of the delicious entries and we will poll participants for a winning entry. The Cook the Books champion will receive a cool Cook the Books badge to wear proudly on his or her blog. We will also be asking for your suggestions for the next bunch of book selections, whether they are foodie novels or non-fiction gastronomic memoirs, culinary history or travelogues. We would like to plan a reading list for 2009 so participants can order, beg, or borrow Cook the Books book selections well ahead of time.

To whet your appetite for "La Cucina" here's a link to author Lily Prior's website where you can read more about this and other titles, and hear Ms. Prior read a erotic, yet funny passage from the novel (p. 134 in my hardcover copy) with her delightful English accent. I have been in contact with our Cook the Books author to let her know about our new book club and she has graciously offered to answer any questions we may have, so feel free to hop over to our new Cook the Books headquarters to post a comment or question.

Now, start Cooking the Books!

Book Review: The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa

2008-10-10T14:10:00.003-04:00

The fifth part of my journey on the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge (nine books by nine authors from nine different countries) took me to 1950s Peru with Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Storyteller" (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989). The book tells the tale of two college friends, one unnamed narrator and his red-haired Jewish buddy Saul, alias "Las Mascarita" (Mask Face), because of the huge port-wine birthmark that obscures half his face. The pair have many philosophical conversations during their university years, though always given ultimate punctuation with Saul's jovial tone and references to his friend as "pal", "little brother", or "old man".

Their friendship erodes as graduation nears and the narrator seeks out a scholarship for studies abroad while Saul is seen less and less on campus and is rumored to be either somewhere in the jungles of eastern Peru living among the Machiguenga people or has emigrated to Israel. Our narrator graduates and is hired to work with a field team from the Institute of Linguistics and later, as a producer of television documentaries. In both jobs he tries to contact Saul to get his take on Machiguenga culture, but he never hears from him again. There is only a haunting image from the first chapter of the book, which has the narrator viewing photographs at a Florentine art gallery and recognizing Saul as a tribal storyteller among the Machiguengas.

The book juxtaposes chapters in the narrator's voice with chapters about Peruvian Indian mythology and this makes for rich reading. A chapter in which Saul and the narrator discuss the influence of missionaries and Western business interests on traditional Machiguenga culture is followed by a folk tale about the elements, animals and the spirit world. Is this the voice of a Machiguenga storyteller? Or of Saul? I didn't know, but enjoyed the weaving in and out of these two viewpoints and the thought-provoking dialogues between the two "pals".

"The Storyteller" is not light reading, but was an enjoyable excursion into another time and place and brought up many interesting sideline discussions about the definition of "civilization", how anthropologists can properly study other cultures, and how outsiders or minorities fit into their larger society. I will be seeking out other novels by Llosa and have already squirreled away "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" for my winter reading pile.

Recommended for anyone interested in Peruvian culture and history, mythology mavens and armchair travelers.

October Book Giveaway

2008-10-01T10:44:00.002-04:00

Last month I offered a copy of "The Space Between Us" by Thrity Umrigar to one of the Book Trout's loyal readers and Carolsue in the lucky winner. Congratulations Carolsue!

This month I unearthed a signed copy of Julia Alvarez' "In the Name of Salome" (NY: Plume, 2001) from our bookstore shelves and am offering it for the October book giveaway. This novel is based on the the life in Cuban exile of Camila Urena, daughter of 19th century Dominican Republic national poet Salome Urena. Alvarez has been an American citizen since her father escaped with the family following his involvement in an unsuccessful coup against Trujillo's military dictatorship. There's an interesting interview with Alvarez about the book here if you would like to learn more.

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of October 31, 2008, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all.

Writers in the Flesh at the Bookshop

2008-09-17T14:32:00.004-04:00

In the dozen years that our used bookstore, Old Saratoga Books, has been open, we've had a few famous writers browse their way through the stacks and order books from us over the Internet. We are located in a quiet rural village of Schuylerville in upstate New York, but are only nine miles from Saratoga Springs and the artist colony of Yaddo, so some writers have taken a break from the Spa City to check out our books. From the imposingly tall Donald Antrim ("The Hundred Brothers" is a hilarious novel) who strode in the shop in biker spandex that seemed to add another foot in height, to the friendly and down to earth author A.M. Homes (who coveted my "It's Always Time to Read" clock in the children's section), it's always interesting and gratifying to meet someone who makes the stuff I sell.

Authors come in many packages. Some shun attention like Jonathan Lethem, who I only recognized after I read his name on his credit card slip. I yammered on about how much I enjoyed "Motherless Brooklyn" but tuned in quickly to his desire to leave with his pile of books without any more chatter. Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Millhauser ("Martin Dressler") was similarly demure when he came in to quietly buy some fiction and grudgingly agreed to sign some (but not the paperbacks) of his books that we had in stock. His companion that day, Skidmore College Professor colleague Steve Stern, prowled around himself for copies of his short story collections to sign.

Despite his reticence, Millhauser has a special place of dedication in our shop as pictured on the right. The shelf of Modern Library classics lies somewhat dangerously in front of the door leading to our basement lair and storage area and my husband didn't know that a famous author was afoot when he briskly strode upstairs and flung the door open, nearing bowling poor Millhauser head first into some Ibsen plays. Someday we'll get around to putting that historical plaque up.

The biggest "rock star" in the bookshop, though, has to be Ruth Stiles Gannett, author of the fantastic "My Father's Dragon", who charmed her way into my psyche with her modesty. You can read all about it my gushing vintage blog post here.

We sold an antique children's book over the Internet to the late William F. Buckley in one of the first years we were in business and just last year sold a cookbook to "Salt" and "Cod" author Mark Kurlansky. That last transaction was spooky, because Dan has just finished "Cod" the night before and we brought the book in to the shop to be housed on our "Books We've Liked" shelf. Kurlansky's call came a few hours later and he wasn't particularly interested in discussing the whole synergy of the transaction (or perhaps was working under a deadline), so that was a brief encounter. Still, kinda cool.

In 1997 we hosted historian Richard M. Ketchum for a book signing of his lively "Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War". Ketchum was an editor at American Heritage for many years and has written many other engaging history and nonfiction titles. He was a courtly and delightful guest at our shop and took the time to speak at length with many of our customers, even the aggressive ones who conducted their conversations with a proprietary hand on his arm. Earlier this year we were also pleased to host Sheridan Hay in our shop for a signing to celebrate the trade paperback release of her bookstore novel "The Secret of Lost Things". She was a similar delight: warm, attentive to all who came and enthusiastic about chatting about other books.

There are many Saratoga County writers who have graced our shop: the prolific Joe Bruchac: poet, reteller of Native American tales and children's author ("Skeleton Man" is Scary with a capital S and highly recommended); Jennifer Armstrong, children's author extraordinaire whom I predict will one day score a Newbery Award; soft spoken Barry Targan, who brings the best books in to trade and who writes novels and short stories in between building handmade boats; Amy Godine, an Adirondack and Saratoga history writer who gobbles down books like candy; and Saratoga gadfly and urban planning critic James Howard Kunstler, who is best known in the larger world for his book "The Geography of Nowhere" and in Schuylerville as the infamous author of a critical New York Times Magazine article.

We're still waiting for William Kennedy to stroll up from Albany and I sure would whoop up a storm if Russell Banks dropped by, but all in all it's still a thrill when we get a real live author in among the ones on paper.

A Foodie Fiction Selected Reading List

2008-09-03T08:23:00.001-04:00

The following is my select reading list of novels that give front and center to delicious plots and passages about food, chefs, restaurants and other gourmet attractions. The Book Trout has read many of them, and they run the gamut from cozy mysteries and chick lit novels to literary classics. Please feel free to add comments below to suggest additions to this hors d'oeuvre.

Allison, Karen, "How I Gave My Heart to the Restaurant Business: A Novel", (NY: HarperCollins, 1997). A novel of the New York City restaurant business by a former three-star restaurateur.

Binchy, Maeve, "Scarlet Feather", (NY: Dutton, 2001). Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather are cooking school chums and upon graduation, decide to combine forces in a Dublin, Ireland catering company.

Bond, Michael - Monsieur Pamplemousse series. Prolific author Michael Bond, creator of Paddington the Bear and the Olga da Polga guinea pig childrens' tales, has at least 15 mystery novels featuring undercover French restaurant critic and gourmand, Monsieur Pamplemousse (French for grapefruit). Magnifique!

Carl, JoAnna - Chocolate Mystery series. This cozy series features Texas ex-trophy wife Lee McKinney, who moves back to her Michigan hometown to work in her aunt's gourmet chocolate business.

Carter, Sammi - Chocolate Mystery series. See JoAnna Carl above. Another cozy series with another divorcee in a chocolate shop.

Davidson, Diane Mott - Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery series. Davidson is the reigning queen of the culinary mystery series, with a Colorado caterer, Goldy Bear, who solves many a whodunnit in between whipping up fabulous feasts. Recipes included.

Esquivel, Laura, "Like Water for Chocolate" (NY: Anchor Books, 1992). The author's first novel, a magic realist AND foodie classic. The Mother of all Foodie Novels. Esquivel interweaves the bittersweet story of a young Mexican woman, Tita de la Garza, whose home cooking is infused with her emotions after her mother forbids her to marry the love of her life. A recipe for a Mexican dish or folkloric home remedy heads each chapter.

Flagg, Fannie, "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe", (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1988). A folksy foodie classic set in a down-home Southern cafe during the 1930s. You can almost taste the pimento-cheese sandwiches.

Fluke, Joanne, Hannah Swensen mystery series. A light culinary mystery series featuring a Minnesota bakery owner. Recipes included.

Gordon, Nadia, "The Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery series". Chef Sunny is the heroine of these novels which feature her organic restaurant and the other bistros and wineries in this California region.

Hart, Ellen - Sophie Greenway & Jane Lawless series. This art has two separate culinary mystery series: one featuring Minneapolis food critic Sophie Greenway and the other featuring Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless.

Hendricks, Judith Ryan, "Bread Alone" (NY: William Morrow, 1993). Wynter Morrison gets ditched by her upwardly mobile husband and drifts over to Seattle, where she works in a bakery and heals her sore heart with breadmaking.

Hildenbrand, Elin, "The Blue Bistro" (NY: St. Martin's, 2006). Described as a sophisticated romance novel in which upscale Nantucket restaurant hostess pines for the affections of her boss, who dines nightly with a female chef.

Jaques, Brian - The Redwall series. This juvenile fantasy series is chock full of feasting scenes among the Good animals (hares, voles, otters, badgers) of Redwall Abbey. They work hard at the harvest and in fighting off the Bad animals (foxes, rats, wild cats) but then enjoy bountiful harvests of nut-studded cheeses, ales, casseroles of grains and vegetables and toothsome, honey-drenched desserts.

James, Kay-Marie, "Cooking for Harry: A Low-Carbohydrate Novel" (NY: Shaye Areheart Books, 2004). This light confection was written by a best-selling author under the pen name of Kay-Marie James to raise money for her financially-strapped best friend, so there's a mystery underpinning this tale about a chubby hubby whose gourmet hobby must be curtailed on the advice of his doctor. Plenty of mouthwatering cooking scenes.

Laurent, Antoine, "Cuisine Novella" (NY: Viking, 1987). The author's first book, a novel in which a French master chef proposes to instruct fashion designer Annabelle Fleury in the secrets of haute cuisine.

Lyons, Nan and Ivan, "Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of America" (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993). A sequel to the Lyons' wildly successful gastronomic murder mystery, "Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe", which was made into a 1978 film with the wonderfully comic actor Robert Morley as the overweight gourmand determined to sample the specialties of various world-class European chefs, but finds that they are fatally "prepared" in the same way as their dishes before he can dine. In this American sequel, murder breaks out at a Culinary Olympics.

Mason, Sarah J., "Corpse in the Kitchen" (NY: Berkley, 1993). English Det. Sgt. Trewley is aided by his scientist and judo expert partner, Sgt. Stone, as they investigate the murder of a baker, suffocated by a wad of her own bread dough.

McCouch, Hannah - "Girl Cook: A Novel" (NY: Villard, 2004). A chick lit novel centering on the trials of Layla Mitchner, looking for love and respect in the heat of Manhattan's trendiest restaurant kitchens.

McKevett, G.A. - Savannah Reid series. Light police procedurals featuring Southern California Police Detective Savannah Reid, a chubby, 40-something policewoman with a fondness for desserts.

Mehran, Marsha - "Pomegranate Soup" (NY: Random House, 2005). This debut novel and its sequel "Rosewater and Soda Bread", combine Persian cooking with Irish culture, as the three Iranian Aminpour sisters open the Babylon Cafe in a rural village.

Myers, Tamar - Magdalena Yoder series. These culinary mysteries feature Yoder as the owner/cook of an Amish inn located in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country. Loaded with down-home cooking and recipes.

Mones, Nicole, "The Last Chinese Chef", (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Recently widowed Food Writer Maggie McElroy finds solace in classical Chinese cuisine when she travels to Beijing to write an article about a chef hoping to make a spot in the National Cooking Team for the 2008 Olympics.

Pence, Joanne - Angela Amalfi series. A breezy, romantic, culinary mystery series with San Francisco food writer and caterer Angela Amalfi at the helm.

Pezzeli, Peter, "Francesca's Kitchen" (NY: Kensington, 2006). Francesca is an Italian-American Queen of the Kitchen, who faces widowhood and an empty nest with sadness until she finds a new family to cook and care for as a part-time nanny.

Prior, Lily, "La Cucina" (NY: HarperCollins, 2000) . The Sicilian version of proto-foodie novel "Like Water for Chocolate", in which our middle-aged librarian protagonist, Rosa Fiore, leaves her raucous rural peasant family, comprised of six older brothers, a pair of younger Siamese twins, and her frequently absent parents when her lover is murdered by the Mafia. She becomes an academic librarian in Palermo and saves her passions for her cooking, until a mysterious English visitor, L'Inglese, enters her life.

Rich, Virginia - The Eugenia Potter series. The late Virginia Rich wrote several food-laden mysteries, starting with "The Cooking School Murders", which star the savvy Eugenia Potter, a Nantucket retiree. Nancy Pickard has continued the delightful and well-written series.

Stout, Rex - The Nero Wolfe mystery series. Grand master mystery writer Stout wrote over 30 novels and 30+ short stories featuring his corpulent, housebound (by choice) detective Nero Wolfe, whose sidekick Archie Godwin does all the legwork in solving multiple murders. Wolfe's passions are for growing orchids in his opulent New York City brownstone and for the three gourmet meals his personal chef Fritz prepares for him (with Wolfe's critical suggestions).

Temple, Lou Jane - Heaven Lee series. Lee is the chef at her Kansas City restaurant, Cafe Heaven, and sleuths for clues when she's not cooking there or judging barbeque contests in this cozy culinary mystery series.

Winston, Lolly, "Good Grief", (NY: Warner Books, 2004). Sophie is a young widow with panic attacks and depression who moves to Oregon to make a fresh start as a culinary student and bakes her way through her grief.

September Book Giveaway

2008-09-02T16:05:00.003-04:00

Each month the Book Trout swims through the shelves at Old Saratoga Books, our Upstate New York used bookstore, to select a free book for one of our loyal blogonauts. The August pick was Susan Sontag's "The Volcano Lover", and I am happy to announce that Elaina from Texas is the lucky winner. Congratulations Elaina!

For the September book giveaway, the Book Trout is offering a hardcover copy of Thrity Umrigar's "The Space Between Us". This novel is set in modern Bombay and contrasts the lives of two women: Bhima, a servant who toils away to see that her granddaughter is able to get a university education. She works in the household of Sera, a wealthy Parsi wife of an abusive husband, who is financing Bhima's granddaughter's education. When the granddaughter becomes pregnant, three women's lives are irrevocably changed.

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of September 30, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all.

Baby Sparrow Terrorizes Bookstore

2008-08-23T20:27:00.003-04:00

So yesterday I'm busy pricing up a stack of books at the helm of Old Saratoga Books when I register the sound of squawking birds in the background. I thought it was just a territorial dispute between a couple of birds, but then I saw a dark grey blob skulk past the counter and it was my hunter cat, Sam, normally a sedentary lover cat, with a baby sparrow in his chops.

I somehow got to him before the poor fledgling was harmed, but I was not left unscathed for my maternal pains. Sam scratched and bit and wanted to keep after his bird toy as I dragged his twisting carcass off to a basement quarantine. Of course, when I got back to scoop up the birdling it had hopped off to one of about 1,000 possible hiding places in our bookshop. I spent the better part of two hours whistling and dusting and trying to find my new pet, while Sam yodeled indignantly from below. There were no peeps, no trails of white bird doo-doo, nothing.

It was only after I gave up the hunt and was back to my bookish chores, stooping to throw out something in my wastebasket that the vicious sparrow baby popped its head up and scared me to death. Sam was snoozing away again, so he didn't see me chase after the surprisingly hot little scamp, still sporting a smattering of grey down. I grabbed it and placed him/her on a sidewalk tree branch. Happily, a mamma sparrow showed up within an hour of mournful cheeping by my baby bird friend and she kept up with bug feedings until closing.

Just another day at the old bookshop. Today Sam sulked and wouldn't come onto the counter where he normally craves my company during business hours.

Spencertown Book Festival

2008-08-19T20:29:00.002-04:00

Russell Banks, a wonderful author of interesting and often tragic books about the Northeast will be headlining an interesting literary week in the Columbia County village of Spencertown next month. Details below. Do yourself a treat, though, and read his novel "Rule of the Bone" even if you can't attend this event.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Mary Anne Lee, Spencertown Academy, 518-392-3693

SPENCERTOWN ACADEMY FESTIVAL OF BOOKS INCLUDES APPEARANCES BY MORE THAN A DOZEN ACCLAIMED AUTHORS

SPENCERTOWN, NY – This year's Festival of Books at Spencertown Academy Arts Center in Columbia County, NY, promises plenty to interest bibliophiles, with more than 10,000 books for purchase and appearances by more than a dozen acclaimed authors including Russell Banks and Mary Gordon.

During the first weekend of the Festival, the programming centers on the timely topic of immigration. On Saturday, Sept. 6, a panel of guest authors will explore the immigrant experience as revealed through personal memoir. Da Chen's candid memoirs explore his childhood growing up in communist China; Rutgers University professor Rigoberto Gonzalez wrote about his coming out and coming-of-age as a member of a Mexican migrant worker family in the United States; and documentary filmmaker Sadia Shepard wrote of her experience exploring the tiny Jewish community in India where her grandmother grew up.

On Sunday, Sept. 7,the discussion turns to the immigrant experience in post 9/11 America. Panelists include Ariel Sabar, a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor and author of a forthcoming book exploring his family's roots in Kurdish Iraq; Margaret Talbot, a fellow at the New American Foundation and staff writer for The New Yorker; and Carl Strock, an editorial columnist for the Schenectady Gazette. Also on the panel is Steve Downes, an Albany attorney who worked with Albany ImamYassin Aref to publish his memoir, "Son of Mountains," detailing his journey from Kurdistan as a UN refugee to his imprisonment on terrorism charges.

The second weekend of the Festival brings a line-up of distinguished authors, beginning with the award-winning writers Russell Banks and Mary Gordon on Saturday, and an impressive line-up of local authors on Sunday including Shelia Weller, Rebecca Flowers, Elizabeth Hess, Julia Pomeroy, Alan Gelb, David Rubel and Lucia Nevai.

Both Saturday mornings will feature a children's book breakfast with appearances by everybody's favorite crimson canine, Clifford the Big Red Dog, plus children's book authors, story time and arts and crafts. The children's event begins at 9 a.m. on Sept. 5 and 12.

The festival will be held at Spencertown Academy over two weekends: September 5-7 and September 12-14. Admission to the Festival of Books, including all author readings, panel discussions, and children's events, is free. The opening night preview party on Friday, Sept. 5 from 6-8 p.m., featuring wine and hors d'oeuvres, costs $25; those who attend will have "first pick" of this year's book offerings. Tickets for the Harvest Dinner on Saturday, Sept. 13 at 6 p.m., which honors the distinguished authors participating in the festival and features Columbia County local food, are $125.

Now in its third year, the Festival of Books has grown from a sale of donated, high-quality books (donated collections have included books on filmmaking and cinema and an entire library from a NYC estate) into a premiere literary event.

"In a few short years this event has grown into a significant regional literary festival, and it keeps getting better, as evidenced by this year's roster of acclaimed authors," said Mary Ann Lee, director of Spencertown Academy. "Many people are attracted by the size and quality of our book sale. Because this is a community of readers and book lovers, the Festival has a wide variety of top-notch offerings."

The Festival schedule: Preview Party Friday Sept. 5, 6-8 p.m.; $25 admission; Saturday, Sept. 6, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 7, 12-5 p.m.; Friday, Sept. 12, 9-5 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 13, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept.14, 12 – 5 p.m., all books half price.

Spencertown Academy is located on Route 203 in Spencertown, NY, about halfway between Route 22 and the Chatham/Spencertown exit on the Taconic Parkway. For more information and updated schedule, call 518-392-3692 or visit website www.spencertownacademy.org .

Book Review: Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin

2008-08-16T14:50:00.005-04:00

Another good book has been read and savored on my Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge list (9 books by 9 authors from 9 different countries), in which I endeavor to make my bedside book pile more worldly. I read Georgian-born Muscovite author Boris Akunin's "Murder on the Leviathan" (NY: Random House, 2004), a charming murder mystery set on a luxury ocean liner in 1878. While I had picked the book thinking that there was going to be more insight into Russian culture, this instead provided an old-fashioned locked room mystery puzzle peopled with characters straight out of the Clue board game: stuttering Russian diplomat Erast Fandorin; a pompous French policeman, Commissioner Gauche; a half-mad, ginger-haired English aristocrat, Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes; the Italian Ship's Physician, Dr. Truffo; a outwardly calm but inwardly passionate Japanese nobleman, Gintaro Aono; a pregnant Swiss banker's wife, Renate Kleber; and a middle-aged English lady, Clarissa Stamp, who has recently come into a bit of money.

Commissioner Gauche is aboard the Leviathan steamship on its maiden voyage, bound for Calcutta, India, in search of a mass murderer. Back in Paris, an eccentric collector of Indian antiquities, Lord Littleby, was found bludgeoned next to a shattered display case missing a gold statuette of the god Shiva and painted Indian shawl. Downstairs in the kitchen of his mansion, nine of his servants, including two children, are found poisoned and are slumped in their seats at the table. The only clue Gauche finds at the crime scene is a whale-shaped golden key, which turns out to be a ticket for luxury accommodations on the Leviathan.

The writing is well-paced and the characters are interesting and have their inner ruminations fleshed-out in chapters written from each of their perspectives. A great deal of wit shines through. In this passage, written from Commissioner Gauche's perspective, he comments on the undercurrents of a literary conversation among the suspects:

"The commissioner noted that the person who evinced the liveliest reaction was Miss Clarissa Stamp, the old maid, who started babbling about artists, the theater, and literature. Gauche himself was fond of passing his leisure hours in an armchair with a good book, preferring Victor Hugo to all other authors. Hugo was at once so true to life, so high-minded, that he could always bring a tear to the eye. Besides, he was marvelous for dozing off over. But of course Gauche had never even heard of these Russian writers with those hissing sibilants in their names, so he was unable to join in the conversation. Anyway, the old English trout was wasting her time; "M. Fandorine" was far too young for her."

An old English trout! Indeed.

Similarly, in other chapters written by other suspects we get snarky references to the "amoeba-like" Mrs. Truffo, Anglo-French nationalist rivalry, and Aono's seething rages over daily faux pas committed by his red-haired barbarian shipmates and the completely the reverse, European and American astonishment that Aono would be clad in only a loincloth doing martial arts moves and meditating on the upper deck. Overall, a wonderful mystery novel with all of the elements in place for a mental escape to another time and place: interesting characters, humor, an intricate plot and wonderful atmosphere.

Recomended for lovers of classic British-y and literary mysteries, devotees of historical fiction and anyone interested in Indian folklore and legend.

The Book Trout as Art Patron

2008-08-12T01:54:00.003-04:00

There's nothing that warms the heart of the Book Trout more at the shop than an interesting book quest. I love hunting down books for customers from a few remembered clues ("It had a blue cover and there's something about a dog in the title") or saving a college student a boatload of money by tracking down economical copies of books from an arm-length reading list.

Even more fun is trawling the shelves for unusual requests, such as the other day when Troy Artist/Curator/RPI Professor Michael Oatman came into the shop seeking older science, solar power and space travel books for a project which is being commissioned by MassMoCA, our family's favorite local museum. If understood the scheme correctly, Oatman is designing a rocket ship or airplane that has done some time travel and will be carrying an onboard library of vintage science and technology books that museum visitors will be able to handle and leaf through in the final exhibition. Oatman picked up a couple of boxes of interesting books with cool retro jacket art and illustrations, and amusingly dated titles. I am on the lookout for other books that fit this particular criteria to collect for him and cannot wait to take my daughters over to MassMoca next year(?) to check out the finished installation. Maybe they will think having parents as used bookstore owners is not so uncool after all.

August Book Giveaway

2008-08-02T14:23:00.003-04:00

Each month the Book Trout swims through the shelves at Old Saratoga Books to select a free book for one of our bloggy readers. Last month I selected Timothy Lewontin's "Parson's Mill", his account of his apprenticeship as a sawyer at a Vermont sawmill, as our free book giveaway selection and am happy to announce that Evenlake is the winner. Congratulations Evenlake!

For the August book giveaway, the Book Trout is offering a hardcover copy of the late Susan Sontag's novel, "The Volcano Lover" (NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992). Known more for her essays and erudite, philosophical prose, this novel was a surprise bestseller for Sontag. It is based on the lives of Lord Horatio Nelson, Emma Hamilton, and her husband, Sir William Hamilton. As the dust jacket notes "The Volcano Lover is about revolution, the fate of nature, the condition of women, operatic emotions and stories from Don Giovanni to Tosca, art and the collector's obsessions, and, above all, love". If you like passionate and interesting literary fiction, a la Umberto Eco, I think you will like this book.

To enter the book giveaway, simply leave a comment below by midnight of August 31st, Eastern Standard Time, and the winner will be randomly selected from the participants. Good luck to all.

Biblionovel Review: Death of a Bore by M.C. Beaton

2008-07-31T11:15:00.003-04:00

Beaton, M.C., "Death of a Bore", (NY: Mysterious Press, 2005).

Gangly, flaming-locked Hamish Macbeth is the constable of a small Highland Scottish village and resists promotion to big city detective work. In this novel he solves the murder of the narcissistic, boring writer who alleges to teach the village residents how to write, but prefers to just talk about himself. The villagers, full of eccentricities and self-esteem, will have none of it, however, and insist that he review their literary efforts. One by one, he curtly dismisses their prose, introducing any number of infuriated, possibly homicidal, suspects.

Before the murder, Constable Macbeth takes it upon himself to chat up the insufferable one, and let him know that noone will likely sign up for the writing classes as they are scheduled for the same night as a popular television show, but Heppel gleefully lets him know that the registration is going quite well and further tweaks him by presenting him with a copy of his "Tammerty Biscuit Award"-winning memoir, inscribed "To Hamish Macbeth. His first introduction to literature. John Heppel". I thought that Macbeth had been acting more like a town gossip than police officer in this visit, but after that obnoxious gesture, I was rooting for him all the way. Heppel further irks the township by his constant fake tan and makeup-wearing antics in front of the local television news cameras and the stage is now set for his untimely demise.

M.C. Beaton, the nom de plume for historical romance writer Marion Chesney, deftly describes each of the many characters in this book, including an admirable canine, and makes them quite memorable, whether through their dress, speech, or inner thoughts. I had read one of Beaton's books in her other mystery series featuring curmudgeonly retiree Agatha Raisin and didn't feel compelled to read all of the others, but now I have a delightful bit of catching up to do with the previous 20 (!) Hamish Macbeth books.

These are light, humorous mysteries and are perfect summer reading. Recommended for Anglophiles, dog lovers, cozy mystery readers and the biblionovel contingent.

Literary Libations

2008-07-18T11:43:00.002-04:00

When one first thinks of writers and alcohol, it is hard-drinking Ernest Hemingway's weary visage that pops into view. Poor Hemingway, tormented by mental demons in an unfortunate era of shock treatment therapy, certainly drank in the same driven way he hunted, fished, attended bullfights and bar fights. His Havana days were spent well marinated in a variety of rum drinks, according to the entertaining and intriguingly-illustrated "Tropical Bar Book: Drinks and Stories", by Charles Schumann (NY: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989).

Papa Hemingway apparently had certain drinks that he would only order at specific bars: Mojitos at the Bodeguita del Medio (lime juice, sugar, mint, crushed ice, white rum & soda water), and Daiquiris at La Floridita (crushed ice, lime and grapefruit juice, maraschino and white rum); the Daiquiris often ordered as doubles, hence the nickname "Papa Dobles".

Other tropical tipplers of literary note included the British ex pats that hung out at the Writers Bar in the Raffles Hotel at the turn of the century century Singapore, including Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad and Noel Coward. The Singapore Sling was invented at the Writers Bar, and according to the Tropical Bar Book, started out as a concoction of grenadine, gin, lemon juice and water. Present day recipes for the classic cocktail are significantly pinker and sweeter and include three liqueurs, gin, two juices and a dash of bitters. It does seem hard to imagine Kipling cozying up to the bar and slurping up one of these pastel potions through a pineapple and cherry garnished straw.

The Tropical Bar Book features other snippets of author’s writings and drinking habits, including Graham Greene, Jane Bowles, and Malcolm Lowry, as well as an extensive collection of rum, tequila and other cocktail recipes, many of the author’s own devising. The topic of writers and their alcoholic fuels intrigues me so you can look for more Book Trout posts on this subject as future installments.

1940s Book Rental Jacket

2008-07-16T16:30:00.002-04:00

It was the era of the book rental library during the 1940s. We often see books come into the shop bearing the stamps and desecrations of the rental librarian. The poor dust jackets arrive with lots of sticky black residue along the margins from old-fashioned jacket protectors, ripped-out flyleaves and multiple bold stampings of rental library addresses and announcements of daily overdue fines all over the endpapers.

Not so with this natty arrival. This copy of John Hersey's "A Bell for Adano", though shaken from many readings, is sporting a rather smart jacket protector featuring a pipe-smoking, elegantly-attired gent. Our man peers far-sightedly at his novel, imagining romance, swashbuckling adventure, historical journeys and intrigue on the high seas. A dashing jacket and one that I think I will hang on to for my museum of interesting books.

The How To Section in the Bookshop

2008-07-10T09:47:00.007-04:00

One of the bookstore ideas Dan and I kicked around when planning for our open shop was to specialize in How To books, those books that explain how to fix things, renovate buildings, plant gardens, learn how to play a harmonica, etc. We were basing this rather limited business scheme on ourselves. We have many linear shelf feet of books about historic home repair, furniture refinishing, plumbing, gardening, and way too many cookbooks, and we figured everyone out there was just like us.

In our home library, I count no less than six books on how to make rustic Adirondack furniture, seven on how to make your own fishing lures and equipment and a staggering number of back-to-the-land type books which, if all projects contained in these pages were implemented, would turn our 2-acre "estate" in a checkerboard of mini-garden plots and wind turbine engines. While Dan and I would need several lifetimes to read them all and build the strip canoes, the handmade paper journals, the artisan cheeses and the double-dug garden plots of our dreams, it is precisely the lure of these fantasies that keeps them on our shelves. They represent the things we want to do with the luxury of time and occasionally, woefully all too occasionally, they are opened like presents and a project actually gets explored.

One of the best series of How To books, and a wonderful shelf full of dreams it is, is the 12-volume Foxfire series published in the 1970s and much sought after by our bookstore customers and by ourselves, naturally. The original editions of the later books in the series are scarcer and very difficult to find, particularly Volume 5, which contains chapters on blacksmithing and flintlock rifles. The series is still in-print and can be purchased at the non-profit Foxfire website. Part Appalachian folklore, part country living bible, this series was originally written by Georgia high school students and makes for interesting reading, even if you have no intention of ever starting a quilt or handling a snake.

After the success of the Foxfire books, Pamela Wood captured New England folkways in her book, The Salt Book: Lobstering, Sea Moss Pudding, Stone Walls, Rum Running, Maple Syrup, Snowshoes, and Other Yankee Doings (NY: Anchor Press, 1977), which is also a great country living resource. A second Salt book followed in 1980, which covered more maritime pursuits.

Also highly recommended in the How To section are the three Tightwad Gazette books written and engagingly illustrated by Amy Dacyczyn (Villard Books, 1990s). Dacyczyn consolidated a compendium of frugal living advice, recipes, how-to instructions and philosophical essays in these books, suited for any lifestyle, and particularly relevant in these hard economic times.

I did want to point out that specializing in How-To books, while not necessarily a practical idea for an open shop, can work quite successfully as an online business. Witness our bookseller colleague Charmaine Taylor's great site, Dirt Cheap Building.
Charmaine stocks new and used books, DVDs and other materials on alternative, economical home building, and she generously offers many links to free articles and sites on these topics as well. You'll learn a lot about straw bale homes, papercrete, cordwood building and many other really cool, low-cost building techniques. Check it out.

Here's to having loads more free time to pore over our How To bookshelves....

Monthly Book Contest at the Book Trout

2008-07-01T12:07:00.004-04:00

Last month I announced that The Book Trout would be giving away a free copy of Anita Diamant's book, The Red Tent. All entrants had to do was a post a comment about our original posting. We received four entries, so through the power of bibliomancy I determined that number 4 would be the winner. Congratulations to Raych, who will be notified posthaste.

For the July free book giveaway, I decided to pick out a non-fiction title and ransacked the shelves at Old Saratoga Books, coming up with a copy of Timothy Lewontin's memoir about becoming a sawyer at a lumber mill in Vermont, Parson's Mill (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989). Dan really enjoyed reading this book last year and we want to share it with one of our loyal readers.

To enter the book contest, all you need to do is leave a comment at the end of this post by July 31st midnight, Eastern Standard Time to enter. I will announce the winner shortly afterward. Good luck readers!

Using Ebay in the Open Bookshop

2008-06-30T16:59:00.002-04:00

Selling books directly in an open shop is a wonderful way to meet customers, discuss literary ideas and favorite authors and move books out of the shop and into customers' home libraries. There's no packing and shipping books off at the post office, no cataloguing of books and listing their every defect, no photographing and no uploading book inventory data. The reality of most open shops these days is that Internet book selling is an integral part of the bottom line and so this extra work must be taken to obtain sales.

When the shop is thinly populated with customers (like this when our regular customers wisely remember that Old Saratoga Books is not an air conditioned sanctuary) and especially during the lean post-holiday winter doldrums, I turn to the Internet for inventory turnover and cash flow. We sell books on our own website, and on several other fixed price used and rare book selling sites, but I use Ebay, the well known Internet auction site in a selective way and for specific kinds of books and paper items.

Ebay is marketed as a bargain-hunter's site, and so in the main I use it as such. I have attempted to sell some high end and rare titles there, but they usually don't bring the prices I would like, so I save them for my in-store customers. I tend to put box lots of books on Ebay when I need to prune a particular bookshelf or section and that seems to do well for our store, which never lacks for walk-in inventory. There are huge numbers of books for sale all over the Internet and there is a glut of them as well on Ebay. I try to market group lots of books about a single topic or by a single author and keep the minimum bid price and shipping rates low to encourage bidders to scoop up these books. Here's a link to our current Ebay auctions, if you want to take a gander at what we're listing.

Lately, our shop has been inundated with children's books and so I have been trying to organize lots of board books, easy readers and books grouped according to reading level for teachers, parents and day care providers to latch onto. This has made lots of extra space on the shelves so I can face out more of the colorful covers and dust jackets that kids' books sport, and notice that this "less is more" strategy seems to sell more of these books in the store.

I have also found that paper items (ephemera) or other interesting non-book things that we find in our book hunting adventures sell steadily for us on Ebay. I never seem to be able to flog ephemera in our shop, but when I put out old postcards, maps, menus, magazines and the other flotsam that wings its way into the shop, they will usually sell. Popular culture items tend to sell better for us on Ebay than in the shop, too, and so if I get in a batch of books about old radio personalities, vaudeville comedians, 60's cartoon shows, or rock stars (excepting Elvis and the Beatles who sell strongly in house, thank you, thank you very much) I'll photograph them and get them up on auction.

I'm sure that other open shops have different Ebay selling strategies and some even use the Ebay store model, so I would interested in hearing about these experiences.

Book Review: The Drowning People by Richard Mason

2008-06-28T13:35:00.003-04:00

"The Drowning People", by Richard Mason (NY: Warner Books, 1999)

Boy did this book have a hook. Here's the opening paragraphs:

"My wife of more than forty-years shot herself yesterday afternoon.

At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success. Life with Sarah has schooled me in self-deception, which I find--as she did--to be an excellent training in the deceiving of others. Of course I know that she did nothing of the kind. My wife was far too sane, far too rooted in the present to think of harming herself. In my opinion she never gave a thought to what she had done. She was incapable of guilt.

It was I who killed her."

So of course I had to read this book.

And it was a great read, full of psychological intrigue, an island castle in Cornwall, moldering aristocrats, concert pianists, art auctions and coffeehouse arguments in Prague, murder trials, suicides and an intricate, twisting plot. The writing had an old-fashioned flavor, reminiscent of Daphne DuMaurier, and was very evocative. Great comic relief is sprinkled throughout to liven up the melodrama from a minor character, James' witty, patrician dressmaker chum, Camilla Boardman.

My only complaint is that I felt that even though the main character, James, narrates the book in circumspection about events leading to his wife's murder, I never felt that his character is completely fleshed out. The reader understands that he is a celebrated classical violinist and is attractive to others, but I never came to understand why he was so beguiling. He has passion, but that doesn't seem enough to have at least two other characters in the book become wildly besotted.

The book was Mason's debut novel, and finished up while he was a twenty-something Oxford student, so I look forward to more from his pen. He certainly described obsessive love quite well.

Recommended for mystery mavens, lovers of things Gothic, literary fiction fans and anyone who thinks Daphne DuMaurier was not prolific enough.

A Bookstore in the Movies: Dan in Real Life

2008-06-27T11:34:00.001-04:00

We rented a charming video the other day, Dan in Real Life (2007, PG-13), which featured a romantic encounter in a bookstore/tackle shop (now there’s a business idea!) between Steve Carrell and Juliette Binoche. The curmudgeonly bookstore owner is engrossed in a personal phone call when Binoche strolls in to inquire about a suitable book for her new boyfriend and he imperiously waves her away. She catches the eye of Carrell, who is a browsing customer and asks for his assistance.

He plays along as Binoche rattles off all the things she is looking for in a book, and scoops up titles from around the shelves. She winds down and then Carrell lays out his selections for her: some Emily Dickinson, some Neruda (which they both sigh over), “Anna Karenina”, a biography of Gandhi (Carrell justifies this choice “because he is the coolest guy ever”) and a children’s book, “Everyone Poops” by Taro Gomi (one of my kids’ favorites when they were little) for levity.

Here’s where the movie veers off into sheer fantasy; Binoche, without looking at one price tag, declares that all of the books picks are perfect and declares to the now-available bookstore owner that she will take them all. Hah! My own Dan in Real Life and I do a lot of book recommendations in the course of a day’s work at our used bookstore, and not once in twelve years has someone slavishly followed our suggestions. We have achieved a reputable bit of handselling success, particularly around the holidays when last minute shoppers zip in and out quickly, but scoring 5 out of 5 is unbelievable. Similarly, it is the rare customer that just racks up a pile of books on the counter without glancing at the price on the front flyleaf.

Despite this lapse into science fiction, the movie was an intelligent and interesting romantic comedy that the whole family enjoyed. The kids got hooked when they found out Dane Cook was involved and the adults enjoyed the interesting characters and side plots. And a bookstore scene always rocks.

Cooper's Cave, a Literary Landmark in Saratoga County

2008-06-22T10:48:00.004-04:00

I scouted out Cooper's Cave the other day and took these shots of this literary landmark. This spot marks a western bend in the Hudson River and the rushing of the waters over the cataracts continues to provide hydroelectric power for local factories. There is a gated viewing platform underneath the Cooper's Cave Bridge, connecting Route 9 between South Glens Falls and Glens Falls which affords a nice view of the rushing water and rock formations that inspired James Fenimore Cooper’s novel "The Last of the Mohicans" when he traveled to this area in 1823 or 1824. Disappointingly, one cannot actually step into the cave Cooper describes as the shelter for his Munro sister heroines, but you can glimpse it from afar.

There is a good article with historical background about Cooper's travels to this area and several photographs of the cave and falls unobstructed by industrial trappings here.

Here's how Cooper describes the limestone cave in the middle of the rushing rapids at Glens Falls that shelters Alice and Cora Munro, Major Heyward, Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachgook in chapter six of "Last of the Mohicans":

"We are then on an island!"

"Ay! there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below. If you had daylight, it would be worth the trouble to step up on the height of this rock, and look at the perversity of the water. It falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles; there it skips; here it shoots; in one place 'tis white as snow, and in another 'tis green as grass; hereabouts, it pitches into deep hollows, that rumble and crush the 'arth; and thereaways, it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gullies in the old stone, as if 'twas no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the river seems disconcerted. First it runs smoothly, as if meaning to go down the descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness, to mingle with the salt. Ay, lady, the fine cobweb-looking cloth you wear at your throat is coarse, and like a fishnet, to little spots I can show you, where the river fabricates all sorts of images, as if having broke loose from order, it would try its hand at everything. And yet what does it amount to! After the water has been suffered so to have its will, for a time, like a headstrong man, it is gathered together by the hand that made it, and a few rods below you may see it all, flowing on steadily toward the sea, as was foreordained from the first foundation of the 'arth!"

Cooper's Cave is open to the public from Memorial Day to Halloween from 9 am to 8 pm. You can easily find signs leading to the road and parking for the site at the southern end of the Cooper's Cave Bridge (Route 9 in between the Village of South Glens Falls and the City of Glens Falls). There are informational signs about the Mohican Indians, Cooper's writings and other historical tidbits and a good glimpse of this scenic view if you can blur out the industrial buildings, fences, spill tubes and machinery. Admission is free.

Book Review: The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz

2008-06-21T12:37:00.002-04:00

The Harafish, by Naguib Mahfouz (NY: Doubleday, 1994)

The third loop of my journey on the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge (nine books by nine authors from nine different countries) took me to Cairo, or at least a timeless, unnamed corner of the Arab Middle East. The late Egyptian writer and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz' book "The Harafish" was a wonderful novel, full of direct, elegant writing about ten generations of the al-Nagi family whose fortunes turn and twist amidst their closed society along an urban alleyway.

The Harafish are the poorest members of this small population, and it is the first great member of the al-Nagi family, Ashur, who stays true to his humble beginnings and remembers the Harafish even when he achieves wealth and status. The remainder of the book chronicles Ashur's descendants, rich and poor, male and female, as they wrestle with their desires and flaws and try to live up to the al-Nagi name. In this sense, the novel reads like a myth or epic folk tale, as each new al-Nagi hero makes his or her fortune but is burdened by some sort of character flaw.

In reading the first few chapters I was a bit overwhelmed by the numerous cast of characters, each with similar-sounding names, at least to my Western sensibilities, but eventually I surrendered to the flow of the writing and worried less about trying to keep track of the al-Nagi genealogical tree (although this might have been a useful addition to the book as an appendix).

Mahfouz' writing was very descriptive and often quite earthy and funny. Here's a sample paragraph:

"Abd Rabbihi was getting drunk in the bar while the March winds raged outside.
"Yesterday I had a strange dream," he said.
Nobody asked him what he had dreamed, but he went on anyway. "I dreamed the khamsin winds blew at the wrong time of the year."
"A diabolical dream!" laughed Sanqar al-Shammam.
"Doors came off their hinges, dust fell like rain, hand barrows flew through the air, turbans and headcloths blew away."
"What happened to you?"
"I felt as if I was dancing on the back of a Thoroughbred stallion!"
"Tuck the cover tightly around your arse before you go to sleep!' advised Sanqar." (p. 247)

It is also full of symbolism and meaning:

"The cart glides along discreetly, garlanded with flowers. No one notices the creaking of its wheels. People only hear what they want to hear. The powerful believe they are joined in eternal union with the world. But the cart never stops and the world is an unfaithful spouse." (p. 89)

Altogether a transporting read and an author I will seek out again. I feel I should brush up on my Islamic history, however, as there are undoubtedly many allusions that I entirely missed.

Interesting Article about Yaddo Artist Colony

2008-06-16T09:04:00.002-04:00

The Glens Falls Post-Star has an excellent article on the Yaddo Artist Colony in Saratoga Springs today. This literary landmark is tucked into the woods right off Exit 14 of the Northway and provides a quiet, pampered haven (they do your meals and laundry) for writers, artists and musicians.

Susan B. Anthony's Childhood Home

2008-06-13T15:51:00.003-04:00

When women's rights icon Susan B. Anthony was six years old, her family moved from their Massachusetts home and extended family to the hamlet of Battenville, in Washington County, New York. Susan's father Daniel had been hired by a family friend, Judge McLean, to build and operate a cotton mill along the Battenkill River, and to build a store and homes for the mill workers.

The family initially lived in one-half of the Judge's home until Daniel was able to build a new house for his growing family, which they moved into in 1832-33. The home is two-and-a-half stories and has fifteen rooms, including a second story classroom where Susan helped her cousin Sarah teach some of the mill girls on Sunday afternoons. From 1834-35 she taught in other area home schools and boarded with the host families.

The economic depression of 1837 caused hard times for the Anthony family when the mill lost business customers and was forced to close. Papa Anthony sent Susan and her sister Guelma to a Pennsylvania school for a year, but they had to leave in 1838, when Daniel Anthony declared bankruptcy and they lost their Battenville home and moved to Rochester, New York.

From then on, Susan taught in order to help support her family, later joining in the abolition, temperance and women's rights movements, and the rest, as they say, is History.

I have driven past the empty home on State Route 29 many times and noticed the historic marker indicating that it was Susan B. Anthony's childhood home, but it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I stopped the car to take a closer look. The house sits right on the edge of a very twisty part of the road and I was nearly blown backwards by several speeding trucks as I focused on my shot, but here's a photo of this historic home:

While Anthony's Rochester home is a National Historic Landmark, run by a non-profit organization, her Battenville abode is still in limbo. It was a private residence until January 2006, when it went into mortgage foreclosure (again!) and the minimum bid at auction was not achieved. Luckily, the mortgage holder, Freddie Mac, sold the property to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation for a cool $1, and there are long-term plans to try to get this historic building, now listed on the Historic Register, restored and open to the public.

I gleaned a bit of information for this post from the delightful children's book, "Susan B. Anthony: Champion of Women's Rights" (Childhood of Famous Americans), by Helen Albee Monsell, NY: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1986. I also consulted the website of the Susan B. Anthony Rochester Home and the redoubtable Wikipedia.

Young People Sighted in Bookstore

2008-06-10T07:50:00.003-04:00

What a pleasant surprise to have a group of students in the bookshop the other day for a field trip. The local high school librarian organized a book club this year and they picked our shop for an end of the year excursion. This delightful bunch had a predominantly female membership, including one girl who reads 10-20 books per week (!) and was spoken about in reverential tones by the others, although the lone young man made up for things by buying the most books.

Not a cell phone or IPod was in sight during this Unplugged Event and it was thrilling to see how excited these young people were about books, as they buzzed about book recommendations and searched the shelves for a favorite title to show to their friends.

The reading taste centered on the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, perhaps because this age bubble was reared during the height of the Harry Potter phenomenon, but only one girl admitted to love-love-loving the series. At any rate, the cockles of the Book Trout's heart was fanned by this excitement for the printed word by such a lovely young group of readers. Each left with a free book, and some even scooped up a bag of novels with their pocket money. A blissful end to a hot, muggy day.

Book Review: Reading New York by John Tytell

2008-06-07T12:30:00.003-04:00

Book Trout Book Review: Reading New York, by John Tytell (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003)

The book reeled me in with its grainy old cover photo of a 1911 Manhattan street scene and the sexy subtitle "A Celebration of New York Writers, The Essence of the City, and the Transforming Effects of Reading", but what really hooked me in the gills was the short first chapter which described the author's horrible eye condition which necessitated periodic corneal scrapings and a prohibition against reading. Weepy eyes and parents notwithstanding, Tytell went ahead and read. What a little hero!

The rest of the book interjects snippets of Tytell's youth, university days, sexual awakening with his Arthur Murray dance teacher, and (more interestingly) his interviews, research and sometimes interaction with leading literati in New York City. He offers short overviews of the work of some major NYC writers, including Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Henry James, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe and the various Beats.

Tytell's style is polished and interesting, and the fact that he met with Miller, Allen Ginsberg and some of the other Beat writers and can provide a contrast between their private and public personas gives the book a freshness and intimacy with the reader.

My only criticism is that the end was much too abrupt. I was cantering along with Tytell in the 1970s, as his Queens College teaching job was in financial jeopardy, along with the rest of the New York City government, when I turned the page to find out that there were only two more chapters left. The final chapter summarizes the next thirty years of Tytell's writing career in five choppy sentences. He went to Venice to write about Ezra Pound, taught in Paris, hung out in Southeast Asia and then came back to roost with some doves in the Village. I guess that's all fodder for the next book.

The Book Trout recommends this book, particularly for the New York City-Obsessed, Lovers of Literary Biography, Beat Readers and those who fancy good Books About Books.

Beauty in the Eye

2008-06-06T10:46:00.005-04:00

In order to release her inner apoplexy at the horrendous book cover art that surrounds her at her job as a public librarian, Maughta over at Judge a Book by its Cover has a pantheon of examples of weirdly proportioned humanoids, bad air brushing and photoshopping techniques and just plain horrendous artwork. My bookseller vision honed by such bloggery, I was recently astounded by the bizarro qualities of this little number at the bookstore:

There is much that is heinous and puzzling about this cover. First, the subject (the author?) has an unnatural tilt of her left hand and this, coupled with the array of red-tipped finger-like lipsticks gives the impression of a many-tentacled amphibious creature.

Second, why are her hair and shoulders that wet AFTER she has applied her makeup, or as the creepy title refers to it, "put on her face". Is this some water-based space alien wearing someone else's face a la cheesy 80s TV show "V" or worse, maybe Hannibal Lecter? People generally put on their makeup after they towel off and get dressed. This cover just weirds me out all around. It's certainly not the glamorous cover you'd expect for a beauty book, unless you are an amphibian.

The Drama of Life in my Open Shop

2008-06-02T16:09:00.005-04:00

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

Friday was a real trial for the Book Trout at Ye Olde Book Shoppe. The weather was spongy and muggy with intermittent torrential rain so I had few people in. Of these valued customers, all were were difficult in varying shades: one Baroness requesting title after title and when I would find them, sniffed that they were not in the right edition or condition; the Overbearing Daddy who followed around his poor kid with a negative comment about every single book the tyke picked up and a constant reminder that he only had $6 in his wallet; the Time Waster who spent half an hour chatting me up about the state of the book biz and disparaging those who don't support local stores and then left with a 50-cent bargain rack novel, and several folks who just wanted to step out of the tropical downpour, kill time while waiting for their hairdresser appointment or just take a stinky bathroom break.

I came home contemplating an office job, only to find that my two lovely spawn had each planned a sleepover, AT OUR HOUSE, and promptly hit the Pinot Grigio.

Saturday dawned and I scuttled off into the garden to pull weeds and contemplate another ho-hum day at the bookstore. Things improved when I found out that my two borrowed offspring were now taking my daughters away for a 24-hour respite. I could at least look forward to a snuggle and upscale conversation on the couch tonight with my hubby.

I opened the shop and set out my book carts on the sidewalk on a now sunny and pleasantly breezy day. After a slow start, a herd of lovely bookfolk starting showing up. I immediately sold an antiquarian local history book for a Trout-pleasing price, and which went to a very appreciative home. Ah. A family of inveterate readers stopped in for a first time visit to Old Saratoga Books and were enthusiastic about our selection of classic fiction and children's books. Ahhh.

Other sweet and endearing repeat customers came by to request a favorite title for a gift or for themselves and I had most of them to ring up. A bookselling colleague came in with his wife and a mystery-loving friend and we had a great stretch of convivial shoptalk. Ah indeed.

The showstopper occurred 10 minutes to closing, a time when I usually strain to paste on my welcoming grin, accompanied by meaningful glance at our store hours poster in the front window. A smiling gent came in to ask whether we had a vintage paperbacks section. But of course! That's one of Dan's babies. He loves the range of cover art, the more lurid the better, and lovingly encases these bodacious beauties in see-through sleeves and spends hours shelving them alphabetically by publisher and then by author.

Over the winter we bought ten boxes of these retro numbers and greatly expanded our vintage pb section. My customer was beside himself. He had been out booking all day and had scored several new books for his collection, but this was overwhelming. It turns out that he is a painter and is friends with John Leone, who started out as a pulp fiction illustrator but now paints horses and hunt scenes at his studio in nearby Schoharie County. He was delighted to pick up a couple of Leone covers to add to his collection and we had a great time talking about art and books.

While we were yakking, in came one of my favorite Saratogians, an artist and photographer who was looking for old botany books for an upcoming show. He was delighted to find some great books for his project and some new arrivals from the photography shelves. I introduced him to the other artist and they had a swell time talking about things cultural.

Amazing. From Grouchy Bathroom Attendant to Literary Salon Owner in 24 hours.

Free Book Giveaway from the Book Trout

2008-06-01T12:42:00.006-04:00

Last month I announced that The Book Trout would be giving away a free copy of Sheridan Hay's great novel, The Secret of Lost Things, here at the Book Trout. All entrants had to do was a post a comment about our original posting. We received nine entries, so I had Sam the Store Cat determine the winner by placing nine books on our front table and seeing which one he would park his fat and fuzzy behind on. The winner was Lucky Number 2! Congratulations to Kathryn, who will be notified posthaste.

The Book Trout has lots of love to spread throughout the blogosphere, so I have decided that this contest will continue as a monthly book giveaway. On the first day of each month, I will pluck a new title from the shelves at Old Saratoga Books, our used and rare bookstore, and offer to ship it anywhere in the world to one of my loyal readers. All you need to do is leave a comment at the end of this post by June 30th, midnight, to enter. I will have another highly scientific and random method of determining next month's free book winner, so don't all scramble for the second berth below. In the meantime, Sam and I will be in consultation about a new and improved Prize Patrol methodology.

For June's monthly Book Trout freebie I am offering a copy of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, a novel which fleshes out the story of Dinah, in the Bible's Book of Genesis. She is the daughter of four mothers, Jacob's quartet of wives, and is reared lovingly, if sternly, by them. This book has received numerous critical acclaims and many a book club has picked this for a reading selection. Good luck everyone.......

Giant Handbag of Doom

2008-05-30T15:08:00.004-04:00

So I'm walking on Broadway in downtown Saratoga Springs (known to us upstate types as "The City") with my lovely daughter on our way to scoop up her third prize in a Congressional District art contest for high school students

(Yessir, that's my baby)

when we were beset by a giant pink handbag.

Luckily we and all other pedestrians were unharmed.

I will keep you all apprised of further encounters with oversized fashion accessories.

Biblio Porn

2008-05-28T14:15:00.003-04:00

There are those food porn guys who bring us photos of their sexy, sweaty food, glistening under the hot lights, exhorting us to eat their dewy berries, their petits fours, their glistening shrimps. You know, those exhibitionist types at Tastespotting, Foodporn ("Hot Fish Got De-Boned!") and their food blogger ilk, hovering about the kitchen with their soft-focus lenses and spray-nozzle hip flasks of oil ready to glisten up innocent racks of lamb and baby artichokes.

Those purveyors of food filth may make my stomach growl but they certainly don't make my knees weak like those Bibliopornographers, those pushers of things leatherbound.

Witness Exhibit A: Red Hot Library Smut! The Nonist has no shame in revealing "full frontal objectification of the library itself", --oh the horror!-- with glossy photo after photo of the world's most achingly beautiful libraries from author/photographer/bibliopornographer Candida Hoefer's magnificent book "Libraries".

And now to part the velvet curtains for a look at Victorian clothbound biblio-porn with Exhibit B. The biblio-fetishist will find hours worth of images of rouged-up books from the golden age of book design.

Exhibit C points to the utter shamelessness of Bookseller Brian Cassidy and his beastly collection of biblioporn links, which features a grainy video of an antique, yet still curiously nubile, children's book. Juvenalia in flagrante delicto!

It just gets worse: Exhibit D, The Rough Papers of Exhibit E, Exhibit F....

Well, after all this biblio-frisson, I am too hot and bothered right now to type away any more, so I will just leave you all with the news that the domain name of bookporn dot com is still available for purchase. I'm sure some sleazemeister will be trafficking away there shortly.

Book Review: Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

2008-05-21T11:11:00.002-04:00

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera (NY: Harper and Row, 1987).

I had heard so many reader rhapsodies about this novel from my friends. In the bookstore, in a reversal of form, so many customers pressed the book into my hands and recommended it so highly that I brought it home to reside in my bedside town of book piles. It was a long-term tenant, however, just not piquing my interest each time I reached for a new book to read. When I decided to try the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge, in which nine books about nine countries by international authors are chosen, I blew the dust off this novel and decided I would travel to Czechoslovakia before and after the 1968 Prague Uprising for the second leg of my around the world trip.

After having read it, I am of two minds about the book. I think it is an interesting and thoughtful book, one with many provocative images and unusual relationships and ideas. For someone who enjoys novels of ideas or who enjoys reading philosophy or poetry, I can understand how one could have such passionate views about it. I am not such a reader, preferring characters with lots of depth or unusual descriptions of time and place.

The book follows two couples throughout the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the immersion into that historical era was interesting to me, so I kept slogging on, despite my lack of interest in the four main characters and their endless loop of: A) self-doubt and unhappiness driven by philandering lovers or B) sexual/psychological domination while wearing unusual haberdashery.

Kundera is certainly a vivid writer. I was struck in particular by two images he portrayed: a description of the human body as a machine with a nozzle for oxygen intake and the face as instrument panel for the clockwork brain; and a sad chapter about a dying crow, buried up to its neck in rubble by street urchins and rescued by Teresa, the most tormented main characters.

I wouldn’t state that I enjoyed reading this book, but I am glad that I learned more about that era in Czech history and I can at least converse intelligently with my buddies about this book. I do, however, look forward to my next armchair journey on this reading challenge, to a sunnier Egyptian climate, with Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz in The Harafish. Onward!

Vintage Book Coasters

2008-05-19T13:41:00.002-04:00

Our little village thrift shop, Second Hand Rose, is a treasure house for vintage stuff and I'm always treating myself to a visit. I don't usually find too many great books, but the old linens, dishware, funky sweaters and tschotchkes never disappoint. I'm also usually lucky at sniffing out a great adornment for the bookshelves at the shop, like little statuettes of kids reading or homemade pottery, and this last week I picked up this gem which I thought was just a wooden trinket meant for a teachers' gift with little wooden book replicas. It turns out they are drink coasters. But now I'm wondering what the deuce is up with the half of a toothpick glued to the top of this coaster holder. A memento from a really great cocktail onion?

The 100 Manliest Books

2008-05-14T15:54:00.003-04:00

There is an amusingly edifying post over at The Art of Manliness about the blog's Top 100 Essential Books for the Manly Library. The authors not only provide an interesting commentary and meaningful quote from each member of this masculine century but incorporate often imaginative photos of each title.

Here's how they summarize Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray":

Packed with impeccable wit, clever one-liners and an excessive amount of egotistical vanity. At the very least, this book will show you the glory and the pitfalls of being the best looking chap around.

and now I don't have to read Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" with this succinct wrap up:

Written from the perspective of Lieutenant “Tenente” Frederic Henry it is a novel of epic manly proportions. As an American ambulance driver with the Italian army in WWI, Henry is injured by a mortar and while in the infirmary falls in love with his British nurse, Catherine Barkley. After healing and having impregnated nurse Barkley, Henry returns to his unit, only to narrowly escape fratricide. Henry goes AWOL and he and his bird flee to neutral Switzerland where they live a peaceful existence until Barkley dies during childbirth. In typical Hemingway fashion, he mourns her death by simply walking back to his hotel in the rain.

A Tartt in the Face

2008-05-10T07:33:00.002-04:00

Clever Keltie from Canada has started a blog, 365 Masks, to make a mask from different materials each day this year. Mask #103 is made from the pages of Donna Tartt's "The Little Friend", helpfully pre-shredded for the artist by her two naughty cats. There are lots of other great masks on her site and I especially like the spiky mask made of toothpicks and the creepy minimalist spider one.

Bookstore Housekeeping: Washing the Windows

2008-05-09T11:13:00.003-04:00

The Bookshop Blog has posted a cranky article I wrote about the glamorous life at the old open shop and washing up the windows. Here's the opening paragraph:

Yet another customer sighs and notes that owning a used bookstore is the ultimate dream job. She muses on how lovely it must be for me to be surrounded by books, reading in between helping readers pick out the perfect novel; absentmindedly petting store cat Sam and sipping herbal tea while ringing up stacks of books.

To read more check out this link.

A Book Signing and Free Book Contest

2008-05-07T10:10:00.003-04:00

It had been a few years since we had an event at our bookstore and this past Saturday we hosted a book signing with Sheridan Hay, author of the biblionovel "The Secret of Lost Things". This literary novel focuses on the arrival of a young Tasmanian transplant, Rosemary Savage, in Manhattan and her interaction with an exceedingly eccentric cast of characters at a used and rare bookstore. Dan and I were thrilled to welcome Ms. Hay and her lovely family to our shop and it was nice to have everyone talking, snacking and having a good time prowling around. That's Sheridan Hay below on the left with one of our fabulous bookstore customers.

We have a few signed copies of this wonderful book available and I thought it would be fun to offer a free copy to one of my loyal Book Trout readers. Just leave a comment after this post by May 31, 2008 and I will randomly pick someone to receive a free copy sent to you in the mail.

Armed Services Paperbacks

2008-05-04T11:12:00.003-04:00

Our upstate New York colleague Dan Weaver, of the Book Hound, has an interesting article on Armed Services edition paperbacks at Biblio Unbound. Dan used to have an open shop in Amsterdam, NY, but now sells online exclusively. The Book Hound specializes in religious books, New York State history, particularly Mohawk Valley history, and older children's books. He also finds time to blog about things bookish on Bruised Reads, which I recommend for its down-in-the-trenches library sale reports and thoughtful book reviews. Lots of interesting reading!

Book Review: FAR AFIELD by Susanna Kaysen

2008-04-27T17:43:00.003-04:00

The first leg on my Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge is complete and it was a fantastic voyage. I read "Far Afield", by Susanna Kaysen (NY: Vintage, 2002), the author's second novel, originally published in 1990 and reissued after the huge success of her memoir about time spent in a mental hospital, "Girl, Interrupted", later made into the Wynona Ryder vehicle of the same title.

"Far Afield" took me and the hero, Jonathan Brand, to the Danish territory of the Faroes Islands, a cluster in the North Atlantic, located between Iceland and Scotland. Jonathan is a Boston anthropology student doing fieldwork on this Scandinavian nation, to the dismay of his professors, who don't feel that cultures with newspapers deserve study. He perseveres and diligently studies the Faroese language, folkways and history. This meticulous preparation by the introspective and quiet Jonathan is in contrast with the other two Americans he encounters while on assignment: Wooley, another anthropology grad student (blasted luck!), whose breezy California manner and mangling of Faroese get the same local reception as Jonathan's self-conscious reserve; and Bart, the chain-smoking consumptive and presumed CIA agent, who tucks into Faroese cuisine with gusto.

Food comedy is peppered throughout the novel. Jonathan's first local contact is the outrageous Eyvindur Poulsen, a painter/politician/free spirit whose constantly tests poor Jonathan's stomach with the wildest Faroese delicacies: Spik (whale blubber), Turrur Fiskur (rotten halibut), Kjot (rotten lamb), boiled sheep's head and roast puffin). Jonathan is put off by this endless array of boiled fish and mutton and lack of vegetable accompaniments:

"Cod it was, cooked beyond necessity--beyond conscience--to a bleached stiff mass. Jonathan shut his eyes and wished for an artichoke, a little pot of hollandaise, a goose sausage, an endive salad: a roadside inn near Nimes. The last green vegetable that had touched his lips had been an Icelandic one, many weeks before. A slow cementing process was occurring inside him; each day the amount he expelled decreased in comparison to the amount he ingested. Soon, at this rate, he would lose the ability to excrete."

Brand does eventually use the bathroom and it is this most unglamorous of human functions that leads to his entree in Faroese society. Poor Jonathan clogs up the toilet in his rented flat and discovers that he must empty the septic tank. His neighbors crowd around to silently watch him dig and fill up his wheelbarrow with the noisome leavings. Old Jon Hendrik needles him first by remarking "In America, you hire people to do this, hah." Jonathan retorts with a shot about having proper sewage systems in the U.S, but Jon Hendrik reminds him that he is not home. Jonathan keeps shoveling and spits out in perfect Faroese "Vaelkomin til Foroyar" (Welcome to the Faroes). With that magical phrase and mordant acceptance of life's indignities, Jonathan is one of the gang. From then on he is invited to dinners and tea (temun), he is set up with potential girlfriends, gets a new soul-searching, bad-boy buddy, Hedin and government-rationed booze, formerly completely unavailable, is now proffered.

Warning****Plot Spoilers Ahead**********

Toward the end of Jonathan's year of study, fishing boats spot a herd of whales and Jonathan's neighbor, Sigurd, hurries the American into his patched up car for a trip over the hills to the grind, the whale hunt. The whales are herded towards the beach by Faroese fishing boats. Once the leader of the whales is beached, the others ground themselves on the shore en masse. Jonathan is staggered by this sight but has no time to jot down field notes when he is dragged into the kill by Sigurd and Hedin, and shown how to straddle the man-sized whales and sever their spines. Drunken and violent revelry at the village hall with Hedin continues all through the night.

Jonathan has finally achieved that which he carefully researched and sought; acceptance by his Faroese comrades. He has had doubts about whether to fully integrate with his new friends and stay on as a permanent resident. Much of the book contains this internal debate and his feelings of being an outsider in American society, too. The debate ends with the grind and another unsettling incident when a cat is tortured to death by a young neighbor and this is shrugged off by everyone as a old custom, something that kids just do.

The book reminded me of another great novel, Annie Proulx's "The Shipping News", with its weary, tragi-comic hero, maritime setting and eccentric characters. I recommend it to others with the high praise that my copy is staying put in my home library and will not be traveling to our used bookstore for resale.

Next on the Orbis Terrarum reading itinerary is the Czech Republic with Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". I'll report back soon.

In Which I Win 50 Sad Chairs

2008-04-23T21:06:00.003-04:00

Amazingly, I won a contest. I got a great little art photography book by Renaissance Man Bill Keaggy, "50 Sad Chairs" (Pittsfield, MA: Blue Q, 2007) after trawling through his website, admiring his collection of found bookmarks . Keaggy is the author of "Milk, Eggs, Vodka: The Lost Grocery Lists of America" and has many interesting projects to check out on his mosaic of a website. His photos of rocks shaped like shoes is mesmerizing and hilarious. I think I had a similar collection when I was a young naturalist. He also generously gives out free copies of his books to his email subscribers, so you may want to emulate me and check it out.

"50 Sad Chairs" is a gem. It documents three years of color portraits of the abandoned chairs of St. Louis, Missouri, and these studies of kicked-to-the-curb keister-holders, whether upholstered and plastic, discarded from offices or homes, may look defeated at first, but the author's snappy captions show their spunk. This book would make a great gift for anyone interested in photography or design or anyone who enjoys a good relationship with their furniture. Snap one up from Keaggy's website, or if you're feeling lucky, join his email list and win one like I did. This book's a keeper, so don't look for it on the shelves at OSB, grab one for yourself.

Earth Day Gardening

2008-04-22T16:51:00.005-04:00

In celebration of Earth Day, and because I had the day off from the bookshop (we're closed Mondays and Tuesdays), but mostly because I had procrastinated quite a bit, I spent this warm day in the sunshine, barefoot and bent over, planting my spring vegetable garden. Yesterday was the back breaking part, edging my 25 x 45 foot plot with the square spade. It started out Monday morning as a 23 x 44 footprint, but I kept veering off crookedly, so there's more room to plant.

Today was a perfect seed planting morning. Our soggy soil had dried up enough to resemble chocolate cake crumbs, which I read somewhere once is the perfect loamy texture to inaugurate the garden season. I managed to get in my spinach, climbing peas, lettuce, radishes and Italian dandelions. Dandelions! Yes, dandelions, because I like my braised veggies with garlic and oil and this is some fancy Italian chicory that is a new resident in the garden bed. I already had some returning chives, Oriental poppies (from a mixed wildflower seed packet from four years ago that keep on showing up), cilantro, lemon balm, thyme and oregano. No spears up in the asparagus bed yet, but they'll follow the sun soon and then we'll get to gorging ourselves on them, roasted with garlic and herbs.

If you fall in love with your garden each year too, then here's a book I have recommended and placed in customers hands over and over again. I buy it every time I see it when I'm out book hunting, and it never fails to find a good home. I have one copy for sale at Old Saratoga Books at present, but you could also probably find a copy at your local library too if you want to "test drive" it first.

This book gem is:

Cooking from the Garden, by Rosalind Creasy (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club 1988). A gorgeous, photograph-packed book for home gardeners and cooks to drool over. Creasy thoroughly details theme gardens: Heirloom, Native American, Baked Beans, Cajun, Asian, French, Mexican, German, etc. and offers planting advice, recipes, interviews with gardeners, and a wealth of new ways to enjoy vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. The emphasis is on vegetables and herbs that taste and look good, and you'll find plenty of new varieties to try.

Q & A with Sheridan Hay

2008-04-17T13:54:00.003-04:00

Sheridan Hay, author of the biblionovel "The Secret of Lost Things" will be signing copies of her book at our shop on Saturday, May 3rd at 5 pm. We will be in full party mode with refreshments, live music and two art gallery openings that evening so plan to visit our historic and cultural village. Here are some interview questions with Ms. Hay from the HarperCollins U.K. edition to whet your appetite in the interim:

Did you enjoy writing The Secret of Lost Things?

Writing is difficult and takes time and discipline but it is intensely satisfying. When I look up after a day of concentrated work and realize that I've been enfolded in an envelope of time -- hours pass in one attenuated moment -- that is what I really enjoy and I came to that eventually with The Secret of Lost Things.

The Secret of Lost Things feels like a fairy tale or fable at times, at other times a compelling detective story. Did you consciously use different genres?

I was conscious of trying to write a sort of personal fable -- one girl's "myth" of her beginnings -- and that the structure of the bildungsroman was a form I wanted to employ. An exemplar of the form is Great Expectations, and I've always been taken with Dickens' ability to make "types" wholly compelling as characters. One doesn't really question, for example, the "believability" of Miss Haversham remaining in her wedding dress or not throwing out the cake after half a lifetime! I am interested in the emotional impact of theatrical "reality" -- the staged piece that none the less moves one to tears. So there is an element of the theatrical in the novel -- the characters are playing, to some extent "roles" in Rosemary's play, and the Arcade is both theatre and bookshop. The "mystery" element owes less I think to a detective genre than to my interest in Borges and playing around with truth and ideas of history.

Melville was brilliant in his manipulation of different forms and very early on was moving between genres. In Moby- Dick, he made a new form using combinations of established forms which is interesting to me.

Did you like using factual material in the novel?

I love letters and what they communicate and what they leave out. Letters are the best kind of history because they record thoughts. It was only as I sat with the material over a couple of years that I saw how Melville's lost novel and its theme of abandonment and remorse could amplify Rosemary's story of becoming herself. The factual elements of Melville's story, research into the lost novel, as well as things like the cabinet of curiosities and the arcana of collecting, meant that I couldn't wait to get to work each day, that there was always something interesting to find out about and to find a place for.

"[Australia]. That great America on the other side of the sphere...given to the enlightened world by the whaleman". What was it like to come from Sydney to New York? Do you miss Australia and will you ever return to live there?

After more than 20 years in New York, I think what I miss about Australia has less to do with what I might find if I lived there again than with what lives in my imagination. At 46, I've lived away almost as long as I lived at home. There are great advantages to being an ex-patriot but I'm never sure if the underlying sense of loneliness and isolation I occasionally feel describes my nature or my displaced condition. I have family in Australia, so I will always return to visit but I've made my life in America and have an American family of my own. In that sense I think the children of an ex-patriot become her roots rather than the more conventional way ones parents root one to geographic place. Both my parents are dead and that changed profoundly my idea of Australia as a home to return to.

Rosemary says of her mother's death "Her death had called me to my self". Have you any personal experience of such grief?

My mother died just as I began the novel and for some time I felt that in describing Rosemary's fictional anguish, I was describing my own. I had a feeling throughout that my mother was keeping me company as I wrote, and the sense of loss that pervades the novel is perhaps its most autobiographical element.

Oscar is an original and intriguing character. Did you want his ending to remain enigmatic?

Oscar, in part, stands outside the action of the novel, so having him "escape" its ending is intentional. Oscar is not touched by the lives of others but is driven by a fascination with his own subjectivity. I see this as less narcissism than retreat. He will turn up in a situation that suits his purposes. I think there are people who find intellectual immersion and the accumulation of knowledge a way to remain beyond the realities of emotional demand. The fact that Rosemary imagines he can return something on the order of affection to her is an indication of her naivete, and her optimism.

What does Rosemary learn during the course of the book?

Well, Rosemary learns many things but mostly she learns how to live free of the projections of others and a bit closer to the notion of her own truth. She is on the way to learning the hard lessons of resilience and independence, and we have to assume she gains them as the narrative is told in retrospect and the older and wiser Rosemary looks to this particular year and its experiences to illustrate those gains. She learns that the way through grief is to remember and to live as best she can. It is her imagination that saves her.

Apart from Rosemary, who is your favourite character in the novel?

I love all of them -- you have to like your characters to spend so much time with them. Lots of people have mentioned finding Geist either disgusting or repulsive but I find him neither. To me he is heartbreakingly lonely and isolated. Rosemary's encounter with him is an encounter with otherness and he stands, in a way, for the inevitability of such reckonings. A sexual encounter appeared to be the most dramatic way to depict his utter remoteness: his complete incapacity. That incapacity is something he shares with Oscar only it takes a different form. I know the scene in the rare book room is disturbing, it would have little impact if it wasn't disturbing. But it is Geist who is revealed in that scene rather than Rosemary. It is his suffering that we discover. Readers have told me that they love Lillian and especially Pearl. I imagine that's because they are both capable of loving. All the characters are flawed and sort of in disguise -- each has something to "give" Rosemary (almost like tasks in a quest) but it isn't necessarily something she can anticipate -- or want!

The theme of memory is threaded throughout the novel. Rosemary's name is the symbol for remembrance. And the Arcade functions because of the booksellers' use of memory. Do you think the new technologies will necessarily alter our use of memory for the worse?

I know they will from my own experience. Memory is internal not external and the process of recall is idiosyncratic and entirely human -- that is the point of the Who Knows? game in the novel. My way of writing is associative and depends on reading and the experience of reading. If the novel fetishizes books as magical objects, then it is certainly no more than the computer is perceived by some as an object of enchantment. Perhaps both things are true, but I wrote an old-fashioned novel because my ideas about these things are, I suppose, conservative. I don't want to witness a transition from the medium of books to some other technology and I don't see why that should be the case. It isn't either or, but both serving different purposes.

I do feel that technology is having its impact on bookselling and publishing, and the novel is an intentional homage to a sort of life I feel has largely passed from the culture. It is that feeling that makes the novel have a fairy tale aspect -- that it in part takes place in another time where things were done differently. But that elegaic quality might be intrinsic to the pastime of selling books itself: it is a business forever in decline, and its demise has been predicted for as long as I can remember.

There are many eclectic references in the novel: to Shakespeare, to Auden, to Borges and of course to Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Do you see any parallels between being a writer and being a 'collector' like Peabody?

Absolutely. I like to think about the Australian species of Bowerbirds -- they build an elaborate nest and fly around looking for shiny bits and pieces to decorate the nest and make it beautiful. If you ever find a nest it's full of bright things like tin foil and bottle caps, the odd earring, shells and even berries: sometimes hundreds of dramatically colored objects that the Bowerbird sorts through obsessively. I think my writing style is something like that. I'm on the lookout in everything I read, I see, I hear, for "shiny bits." I keep copious notes on these bits of treasure and look through my pages of fragments before beginning writing each day. That way my mind is working on associations, on the stuff of my preoccupations, on things that caught my eye in another context, while I concentrate on moving the story forward. This is exactly like collecting objects except that I'm the only one who values the bits I've found. They don't have any other value until they're strung on the thread of story.

Are you working on another novel?

Yes, an historical novel set in the middle of the nineteenth century in America and England. The novel's protagonist is a very minor historical figure, an obsessive and an unreasonable woman. She was a writer. I've been researching the book for a year and am now writing the first draft

Somebody Looks Guilty

2008-04-17T13:28:00.004-04:00

This charming easy reader about a fat grey and white cat who trashes artful book arrangements with his feline bulk looks familiar.....

Schuylerville Lilac Festival, May 10-11

2008-04-16T13:48:00.003-04:00

The Schuylerville Area Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring A Gardener's Weekend with Lilacs on May 10-11 with lectures, a garden club plant sale, demonstrations and workshops on container gardening and making wind chimes. For more information check out the Chamber website.

Field Report: The Book Fair in Burlington, VT

2008-04-14T15:10:00.008-04:00

It's been ages since Dan and I attended a book fair, as we are chained to our open shop like a quarto in a medieval scriptorium. Yesterday, however, St. John of God, the patron saint of booksellers, rearranged the heavens to allow us entry within the gates of the Burlington, Vermont Sheraton Hotel, where the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association (VABA) was holding its Spring Book and Ephemera Fair. We were on a research field mission for the day when our kids are out of the house and we are more into rare and antiquarian books than the general stock we carry at our open shop, Old Saratoga Books.

We arrived an hour into the Fair and it was nicely crowded, although mostly with grey-haired bibliophiles. Even at the stately ages of 46 and 48, respectively, we definitely skewed the median bibliophilic age downward, but there was a sprinkling of pre-Baby Boomers buying and selling books, which bodes well for the continuation of bibliophilia.

My book mojo was primed right at the ticket booth where previous VABA Book Fair posters were for sale for a mere $1 and feature the woodcut art of Caldecott Winner Mary Azarian. I got a great bookish design of a woman reading and reclining on a divan with her cat and dog to frame for our shop.

There was a nice range of book and ephemera in a variety of price ranges at this fair. One could spend thousands of dollars or under $10 for the VABA wares and this made it all the more interesting to peruse the tables closely for store stock and my home library.

We got a couple of books about the Battle of Saratoga to replenish the always-hungry local history section from some friendly dealers at the Book Shed (Benson, VT) and Hermit Hill Books (Poultney, VT) and then Dan scored Edward Hoagland's first book "Cat Man" from poetry and first edition specialist Mark Alexander (of Alexander Rare Books, Barre, VT). "Cat Man" is a novel based on Hoagland's experience as a wild cat tamer with a traveling circus and that should be some lively reading. That's Mark on the left chatting up modern firsts with a nice customer who pointed out a poetry broadside about a trout by Raymond Carver, which of course tempted the Book Trout no end.

We picked up a book on Adirondack Style featuring the great "camps" (think palatial, not rustic Army pup tents) from Speaking Volumes, who had the best business card of the whole show with a beautiful woodcut illustration of a Victrola, bookshelves and a vase of flowers. Speaking Volumes, interestingly, advertises and sells with a Myspace page, something to think about in this Internet age and to market books and music to the GenXers, Slackers or whatever young folks are called now.

There were lots of Vermontiana, hunting and fishing titles, gardening, and books illustrated by Edward Gorey in evidence, including a Son of the Martini Cookbook I'd never seen before offered Peter L. Stern & Co. of Boston. Dan and I also enjoyed seeing many books we've had over the years and nostalgically thought about buying some back, but remembered that we can't fall in love with our wares too obsessively or we'll go out of business. He and I kept a running tag of how many copies we saw exhibited of Vermont history volume "Mischief in the Mountains" (we saw at least five) and Lynd Ward's woodcut novel "Mad Man's Drum " (three without jackets, one fully dressed).

Rachel scooped up an interesting memoir by a Vietnamese-American writer, Bich Minh Nguyen, called "Stealing Buddha's Dinner" after visiting the Asian Steppes booth (Pittsford, VT), people by husband and wife world travelers Bill and Sarah Bastick. Bill was a consummate salesman, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about his books and the Asian countries they represent. He was apologetic to me in describing the book, as he had not read it himself, as he apparently has read most of his stock, but our conversation was so interesting (and an English accent doesn't hurt, either) that I just had to buy it, even as my inner cheapskate yammered on about nabbing it more inexpensively in a year or two. Most of Asian Steppes books are antiquarian books on travel and Asia, although there are a few more contemporary titles in the mix.

Dan had a great time speaking with Alex Henzel (South Royalton, VT) whose delicious collection of lurid vintage paperbacks and eccentric titles was a treat to linger over. There was a curious wooden Indian Club-shaped item in one of his glass cases and he was kind enough to pull it out to show us that it was a tourist memento that accompanied an olive wood-covered book of snapshots from Jerusalem (circa 1920s?). He unscrewed the Club and showed that one end was a hash pipe and if you squinted into the other end you saw a tiny negative with the image of a Rubenesque naked woman! The Holy Land, indeed!

The highlight of the journey was meeting Donna Howard of the Eloquent Page Bookshop (St. Albans, VT) who was wonderfully busy making sales and chatting with customers and fellow book dealers throughout the whole of our book fair perusal. I know Donna from the Bibliophile List, so I was very happy to zoom in and speak with her during one of her infrequent breaks. She and her mother and business partner, Marilyn Howard, had a nice array of jacketed vintage children's books and had customers buzzing throughout my short interview with her. Here's her photo, showing off her impeccable fashion sense with her Edward Gorey T-Shirt.

Overall, an impressive turnout for this book fair, something that was seconded by the several colleagues I queried, although a couple did mention that attendance is not like the good old days (pre-Internet). I saw lots of happy browsers with purchasers in tow, so I assume the sales were good also. Donna noted that VABA also has a Summer show, so I would be interested in attending that also, given the diverse, interesting and reasonably-priced book offerings.

After a glorious couple of hours at the VABA Fair we headed into downtown Burlington, thinking it would be easy to find lunch for my gluten-free husband, but the restaurants were in full brunch mode, with muffins, pancakes, and extra-wheat-infused artisan breads in abundance. No great dining options presented themselves after a half-hour's walk, so we drove back south. It was a hour later when we staggered into Middlebury and I and my now extremely grumpy sweetie held forth at an Indian restaurant and ten minutes before they closed for their mid-afternoon break, but we wolfed down spinach curry and basmati rice in record speed. If anyone has a good gluten-free restaurant recommendation for our next visit to Burlington, Vermont I'd be glad to hear it.

Entomophagy 101

2008-04-11T18:21:00.004-04:00

I guess I have never outgrown my juvenile gross-out fascination phase, because the moment I spied it, I had to buy "The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook: 33 Ways to Cook Grasshoppers, Ants, Water Bugs, Spiders, Centipedes, and Their Kin" (by David George Gordon, Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1988). I'm not soon planning to cook up any Scorpion Scalloppine, Cream of Katydid Soup, Pest-O (groan), Alpha-Bait Soup or any other entomological delights, (I'll leave that up to the pros) but it is really a great read.

Gordon has a breezy, funny writing style and his food stylist makes the leggiest, spiniest, most horrifying accompanying photographs. I found myself riveted to my reading with facial rictus (I know, because my muscles ached afterwards). I (and Gordon apparently) have also never lost our delight in puns, which pungently spice up this creepy, crawly smorgasbord.

If you are tempted by this paean to insectivore cuisine you'll have to procure your own copy, because I'm not selling mine. It's too much fun. You can sample one of Gordon's recipes for Sheesh! Kabobs here, with humorous cooking tips such as "Assemble each kabob, alternately skewering the insects, red pepper, and onion wedges to create a visually interesting lineup." It is just a scream.

Gordon has his own engaging website where you can read about his other science books, (now I have to buy his slug book), check out his author appearances and lectures and follow him on his travel blog, "Travels with my Ant", where you can find out how the Boston Health Inspectors wouldn't issue a permit for his bug cookery, while their Seattle counterparts mandated a cooking canopy to prevent raw insects from falling down on their brethren en flambe.

If you do want to add some insect protein to your diet and your backyard lacks biodiversity, then you might also want to check out this mail order house of horrors where you can order Antlix Lollipops (ants add a chili kick to these peppermint pops), Worm Crisps, Thai Curry Crickets, and big, juicy Mopani worms from South Africa.

If you prefer your insects alive, unchewed and behind glass, I and my family can heartily recommend a visit to Montreal's Insectarium. Several years ago this was one of the highlights of our trip North, where we were fascinated by roomfuls of shiny beetles, foot-long walking sticks and a see-through beehive. The building itself is shaped like a giant ladybug for extra child-fascination points. Here's one of the photos we took when we there. See if you can find the bug in this photo:

So, saddle up to the bug buffet...it's good for you.

Caught Reading!

2008-04-10T15:32:00.002-04:00

There is a delightful, sociologically interesting blog, People Reading, which documents the conversations Blogger Sonia Worthy has with the San Francisco residents she catches reading each day. She is a great interviewer and notes why people are reading the books she spies them with, what favorite books they have, what books they loved as children, what books they might write themselves. It's fascinating stuff and the intrepid Worthy One certainly reaches a wide cross-section of book lovers, from toddlers to retirees, homeless folks to the well-heeled. I love this new blog find so much I've added it to the Book Trout's honorary blog roll.

As a bookseller I am happy to know that there are so many noses still into books. As Worthy notes:

Cell phones, iPods, and sudoku may continue to occupy the BART platforms, but books are everywhere, too. San Francisco, not surprisingly, is a very well read city. I don't pretend to be well read myself--this blog is more of an attempt to live vicariously through others--though I do read and I'm very interested in why we read what we do and what makes a good book good.

Vive People Reading!

Bookish Art Contest

2008-04-10T10:15:00.003-04:00

Kimbooktu is holding a bookish art contest over at her wonderful blog about books and book accessories. She and her husband have bought a house and want to furnish their new library with a piece of artwork that is literary in nature. The contest ends May 1, 2008. Check out Kimbooktu here for more details.