Last Month in Review: March 2018

Image found here.

March was full of so many good books, two of which I actually got around to reviewing already. Out of the nine books, two were nonfiction, one was a re-read, one was an audio, two were graphic novels, and three were by authors of color. I really liked or loved each of them, too, so all the winning for me!

1. Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano. This book was a useful reminder that I should read more graphic novels.  This one follows a young boy named Ebo in his desperate quest to leave Ghana, cross the Sahara, and make his way to Europe to keep his family together and make a better life. It’s an incredible read. Review here.

2. The Ensemble by Aja Gabel. This debut novel follows a quartet of classical musicians from their years in graduate school through adulthood, children, relationships, etc.  It’s a very good book, and one of the few books I can think of that explores the importance of work relationships and non-romantic intimacies when people’s livelihoods are intertwined. The music writing is pretty incredible, to boot.

3. Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett. This is one of the two nonfiction books I read this month and the other review I happened to have written.  I had no idea who Michael Bennett was when I picked this book up to read, but it turns out that he’s a professional football player who is also an activist, and he has some pretty terrific things to say.

4. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple.  I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I read a book that was already published, but I was in a bit of a book slump and not interested in anything I’d brought home from work to read, so I grabbed this one from the shelf.  I liked it.  It has the same wry, bordering on dark, humor that marked Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and the same kind of brilliant and neurotic protagonist, too.

5. America for Beginners by Leah Franqui.  Another debut novel, and this was the right book at the right time for me.  Featuring the widow Mrs. Sengupta from Kolkata takes a trip to the US, where she is accompanied by Ronnie Munshi, her tour guide guide, and Rebecca, her companion (for modesty’s sake). These three unlikely pilgrims make their way across the US, but Mrs. Sengupta has a hidden agenda: to find and meet the partner of her gay son, whom her husband disowned. I love road trip stories, and this one had so many rewarding moments.

6. The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons.  This is another debut, this time a story collection that feels like it’s the love child between Kevin Wilson and Kelly Link.  Each story is dark, leading either to a dark & twisted or dark & titillating conclusion. Lee Boudreaux edited this one, and she’s my favorite editor in the industry.  I will blindly read anything she had a hand in, and a ridiculously high percentage of the time I will come away better for having encountered her books.

7. Sisters by Raina Telgemeier. I can’t remember the last time I read two graphic novels in one month, but the one arrived damaged at my bookstore -- too damaged to sell -- so I was able to take it home to read for free.  So much fun, so much truth about sibling and family dynamics! I had read and loved Telgemeier’s Drama and I’m not sure why I never got around to this one until now.  Good stuff here.

8. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I am a bonafide fiction girl from way back, but this collection of essays just may be my favorite book by Ann Patchette.  This is maybe my third (fourth) time reading this book and this time I was listening to the audio.  Patchett reads the book herself, so hearing her voice in the car on my daily commute made me feel like I was in the company of a friend.  This book is incredibly useful and insightful if one wants to be a better writer, but I actually think it is just as useful and insightful if one wants to be a better human being. 

9. The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar.  I had the great pleasure of having dinner with Thrity and a couple dozen booksellers last week, courtesy of Harper Collins.  This is the sequel, of sorts, to The Space Between Us, which I had read years ago and enjoyed, but this book, after getting off to a somewhat slow start, became a book that I really loved. The politics of gender, class, and sexuality converge in this heartfelt tale of women and the hardships and indignities they’ve had to survive in 20th and 21st century India.

And just because I happened to have found old photos, here are pictures of Parnassus, the beautiful bookstore in Nashville that Ann Patchett co-owns with the marvelous Karen Hayes.  Wouldn’t it be great to revisit your childhood and find a place for kids that is as magical as the children’s space at this bookstore, complete with a child-sized entrance that requires passing through the pillars of the Parthenon?

Ann Patchett Smokes Crack? What?!

Okay, no, not really! But read on to understand what made me say that...

There are many reasons that I love my job, but one of them is the opportunity it provides to spend time with fabulous authors.  Today I drove out to Arlington, MA, to the NEIBA offices to meet up with Diana, my coworker; Anne DeCourcey, my Harper sales rep; and Ann Patchett, an Orange Prize winner and the author of State of Wonder, which released just three days ago in the US. 

Diana and I, along with a few other people on the Odyssey staff, read Patchett's book months ago and simply fell in love with it and unanimously decided to make it our June selection for our signed First Editions Club (you can see what I wrote earlier about it here).  Which is why, then, Diana and I spent the day in Arlington getting books signed.  Ann signed books for us for about an hour, then she signed books for other indie bookstores for another hour or so, and during the course of signing those 700+ books, the four of us chatted about all kinds of things: travel, the demise of Gourmet magazine, opening a new bookstore in Nashville, crack...and the more arduous aspects of conducting her Stone Cold Sober Book Tour.

Never a big drinker to begin with (she confessed that anything more than a single glass of wine would leave her asleep at the dinner table), she recently has developed a rather serious alcohol allergy.  As in anaphylactic shock allergy.  As in "carry an epi-pen or trache me with a steak knife," to use Ann's own, somewhat more colorful phase.  This particular leg of her tour lasts another three weeks, visiting a different city each night.  A daunting prospect, to be sure, but all the more so without any kind of alcohol.  So somewhere along the line we collectively decided that perhaps crack should be her drug of choice, and Ann allowed that it might be good for morphing her reputation as a gracious and mild-mannered writer into something else entirely.  It was decreed that Anne DeCourcey shall tweet it, Diana shall Facebook it, and I shall blog it.  I wonder how long before it goes viral?

Anyway, enough of crack.  Ann is lovely--she's one of those bright and sophisticated and incredibly talented writers who could be very intimidating if they weren't so personable.  And she's passionate.  Passionate about her dog, her family, other writers, Gourmet magazine.  My husband, who has been a long time friend of Ann's, was roundly sorry that he couldn't join us for the day, but I suppose his ears were burning from time time, as he was an intermittent topic of conversation.  The story of how my husband met Ann is a good one, but alas, not one for me to tell here. 

The lovely Ann Patchett

Book Blogger Hop: Most Anticipated Book of 2011

I have been debating whether to answer this week's Book Blogger Hop question, sponsored by Crazy for Books: what book are you most looking forward to seeing published in 2011?  Why are you anticipating that book?

As a bookseller, and more particularly as a buyer at my particular bookstore, I have access to a lot of pre-pub information that the general public doesn't have, but even so, I don't know most of the books being pubbed later than mid-summer or so.  I only work about 5-6 months ahead, so I don't know at this point what is coming down the pike for the fall, when most publishers release their heaviest hitters.  So on the one hand, it's kind of hard to say what I'm most anticipating when I only know the books from the first half of the year--it seems so unfair to eliminate the fall list from consideration!

On the other hand, I started reading 2011 books back in August and September of 2010, so while I *was* anticipating them, I can hardly say that I am still anticipating them after having read them.

And if I had a third hand, I'd probably just say that I should answer the damn question in the spirit it was meant and not sit here and agonize over my answer all day.  It's not like world peace is riding on my correct response here.  So the Anticipation Award goes to...

Ann Patchett is a beautiful writer, in that she is both a writer who is beautiful and someone who writes beautifully.  I'm not quite a completist when it comes to her work (I skipped Taft), but I've read the remainder of her novels, her memoir, her commencement address, and several magazine articles.  She is intelligent and worldly and fiercely loyal and deeply compassionate (particularly towards dogs), and she brings all of these things to bear in her writing. If this seems like a somewhat personal evaluation of her, I suppose it is.  I first met Patchett when I was a bookseller at Lemuria in Jackson, MS, and my boss had asked me to read The Magician's Assistant to see if it would be a good selection for the store's first edition club.  I did, and it was, and I got to spend a lovely afternoon in her company.  Our paths crossed a few times over the years I worked at that store, and later on, I fell in love with a man who has been her longtime friend.   

State of Wonder is slated for a June 2011 publication from Harper Collins, and I happen to be roughly three-quarters of the way through my advance reading copy.  In a word, it's stupendous.  I said it before about one of her novels, and I'll say it again: it hits the literary trifecta of gorgeous prose, compelling characters, and a well-paced plot.  Even now, I'm spacing out and shortening my reading intervals because I can't bear to let go of it.  My long-suffering husband keeps pestering me to finish it so he can have a go at it. After all, it does seem unfair that I get to read it first when she is his friend, and I can just see the mental foot stompings he must be doing over not getting his way.  

I'll end this post with the first few sentences of State of Wonder, just to tempt y'all:

The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope. Who even knew they still made such things? This single sheet had traveled from Brazil to Minnesota to mark the passing of a man, a breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world. 

More radio recommendations...

ANNEXED by Sharon Dogar.  This novel for teens and young adults is a familiar story told from a different perspective.  Peter van Pels is only sixteen when he and his parents go into hiding with Anne Frank and her family.  In love with a girl who was taken by the Nazis, at the beginning of this novel, he would much rather brood and sulk than spend time with the insufferable Anne with the impish eyes.  Soon, however, time is all he has, and he is surprised to discover a kindred spirit in Anne.  Their burgeoning love is full of questions and fear, and even reading The Diary of Anne Frank cannot prepare you for the heartwrenching ending.  This book is a very quick and compelling read, and the two 16-year-olds in my family will tell you the same thing—they both devoured it, too. 

ONE HUNDRED PORTRAITS engraved by Barry Moser, published by David R. Godine.   This is a collection of portraits of writers, musicians, composers, artists, poets, and friends, all beautifully reproduced.  Some of these were commissioned portraits, some of them are published here for the first time.  Moser is one of the world’s pre-eminent engravers and this is the first book that amasses 100 portraits from the books and broadsides of his vast collection, spanning several decades.  The production qualities are everything I’ve come to expect from David R. Godine, and I would be remiss not to mention the incredibly thought-provoking foreword that Ann Patchett provided.  And sure, it just so happens that I'm married to the man, but that doesn't take one whit away from hsi portraits and his ability to look unflinchingly at a face (including his own) and reveal something about the person in a most astonishing way, limned in shadow.