Book P(Review) AND Giveaway: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

One month ago I read Lauren Oliver's Delirium during the great power outage and I was surprised by how little it engaged me.  To avoid much redundancy from other posts, suffice it to say that I thought the book was derivative of other dystopian YA books I'd read.  Yesterday, however, I picked up my ARC of the sequel, pandemonium [sic], and was equally surprised by how hard I found to put it down.

Like many sequels, it picks up right in the middle of things, which I like.  And like Ally Condie's Crossed, the narrative POV switches every chapter, which I dislike.  However, instead of switching characters, it's the timeline itself that switches, so that we get chapters of Lena in the Wilds alternating with her new life in society. While I admit that it's an effective way of building narrative tension, I feel it's a pretty lazy plot device, allowing the writer to jump here & there without having to make the effort to connect the narrative dots.

Fine.  Disliking the POV and the present tense narratives are small enough quibbles.  And readers who are at all familiar with recent trends in YA books won't be surprised with the love triangle and the double-crossing and betrayals as they unfold in pandemonium.  Yes, the book is predictable in those (and a few other) regards.  And I didn't think Oliver's writing was up to par in this book compared to the first one.

That being said, the pacing and the plotting are strong in this second book and it was one I could hardly put down.  Unlike many sequels, it doesn't actually answer a lot of questions left open in book one; it seems more concerned with being its own entity.  Which I kinda dig.  I can't put my finger on why I found this one so much more compelling and readable, but I did.  So be it.  I like it, and that's enough for me.

Now, on to the giveaway part.  I have an ARC of this book, read once, that I will mail to a randomly chosen winner.  If you want to win, leave a comment on this post.  You don't have to follow me on Twitter or like me on Facebook.  I'd prefer it if you became a follower of my blog if you're not one already, but that's not required, either.  The book is published in March 2012 and I will be mailing the book out to the winner before the end of December, so the recipient will have it in hand about 3 months early.  Just leave a comment about why you'd like to read the book early--and if you have friends who might want to get their hands on an early copy, please send 'em here.

This giveaway IS open to international readers and it will close roughly around December 24, 2011 so that I will have time to contact the winner and obtain a mailing address before the year is out.  

Literary Blog Hop: How to Proseletyze for Literature

Once a month, the good folks at The Blue Bookcase host the literary blog hop.  Even if I don't always participate, the responses are always worth reading and I recommend that you check 'em out.  Today's prompt: What work of literature would you recommend for somebody who doesn't like literature?

I'm so glad you asked!  I deal with variations on this question all the time at work.  But there is one book that I have recommended dozens of times to various types of readers that seems to satisfy them all: historical fiction, non-fiction, mystery/suspense, non-fiction, YA, and literature readers alike have all responded positively to this book.

David Benioff's City of Thieves seems to satisfy readerly cravings in everybody I know who has read it.  It's the story of Lev and Kolya, caught out of bounds during the siege of Leningrad during WWII.  Instead of the usual punishment of being shot on sight, they're captured and given a mission: to find a dozen eggs for the kommandant's daughter's wedding cake.  Armed only with letters of permission that expire in one week, Lev and Kolya set out on this impossible mission.  You see, the people of Leningrad are starving and not a single egg can be obtained for any amount of love or money. Along their journey, the two young men witness both acts of great brutality and great generosity.  Equal parts coming-of-age, survival, and war, leavened with humor and romance, and set against the backdrop of important world events, City of Thieves is a book that resonates with every reader I've encountered.

Last Month in Review: November 2011

It's been a fair-to-middling reading month for me.  With the power outage at the very opening of November, I got into a reading slump quickly.  And while I read a couple of books that will really stay with me, much of what I read was, sadly, forgettable.

1. Fracture by Megan Miranda. YA. Girl almost dies, girl recovers, girls falls in love with a troubled young man who may or may not have tried to kill her, girl senses when people are dying, girl almost dies again.  Ho-hum. I thought it would be riveting but it wasn't.  I blame the power outage for getting through it.  Review here.

2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver.  YA.  Surprisingly, I didn't care much for this, at least not the first 200 pages.  The last 150 pages were exciting but overall I thought it was derivative of the myriad dystopian novels I've already read, particularly Matched.  (I freely admit that if I'd read Delirium first that I might have thought Matched was the derivative one.)  Read this one during the power outage, too. Review here. 

3. Austenland by Shannon Hale (audio version).  Picked this up for $5.99 'cause I'd been recycling a LOT of Harry Potter and David Sedaris audios for my commute.  Alas, I'm not sure it was worth the money.  Made me want to pull my hair out, and yet I finished listening to it. 

4. Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai.  Read an ARC of this for work as a possible First Editions Club selection.  Liked the book, but alas, the publisher had sold out of first printings 3 weeks before the official release date.

5. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson.  This was quite the ride: North Korea, military ops, secret intrigues, kidnappings, killer peaches, fishing boats, and loneliness in the dark.  Oh, yeah, baby.  This was good.  I hope to get off my arse and review it soon.  It comes out in January and it will be that month's first edition club selection for my bookstore.

6. The Conference of the Birds by Peter Sis.  I can't bring anything new to the table in terms of discussion and praise, but I will say that it's beautiful on multiple levels and its production qualities are impressive, particularly for the price point.  It also happens to be my store's first editions club selection for December. 

7. I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran.  This was a book of stories I could only force myself to read about 3/4 of the way through.  Everything felt stiff and two-dimensional.

8. The Darlings by Cristina Alger.  This book was a bit of a surprise to me and it acted like a palate cleanser after trying to read a few books and not being able to finish them.  It's the glittery world of privilege and money both old and new, set on Wall Street and the Hamptons, poised at the brink of the financial collapse a couple of years ago.  I picked it up one night to help me fall asleep, but it kept me reading until the wee small hours and I finished it the next day. 

9. Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron.  Holy cow, but this book was good! Forthcoming from Algonquin in January, it's the latest of the Bellwether Prize winners.  Here are some comments I wrote earlier about it, and with luck I'll have a full review for it in the new year.

10. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  Yup, this was the second time I read it this year.  First time was back in April.  Then I got in another reading slump and picked this up to see if the magic was still there.  It was. I have a couple of Night Circus posts on this blog, one of which describes my dedication and dyeing my hair a bright red for the occasion. 

11. Arcadia by Lauren Groff.  I love Groff's writing, which carried me through this book despite its subject, which I dislike and distrust: so-called utopian communities. Review here.

So, two YA novels, one audio, one re-read, one not-quite-completed, and one picture book help comprise my list of 11 books here: not exactly a towering achievement, but that's okay.  It is what it is. And hopefully my reading slump won't carry over into December 'cause I've got a big stack of books I'm looking forward to!

Book (P)Review: Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Let me be frank: I didn't like this book when I first picked it up.  I've been a fan of Lauren Groff's since I read The Monsters of Templeton however many years ago and when I first picked up Arcadia it didn't speak at all to me.  Then I picked it up again a couple of months later when I had less going on in my life and I'm glad that I did.  Groff's writing is amazing, and I wish there was a breakdown of ratings on book review sites like Goodreads similar to what Trip Advisor offers: I'd like to rate it separately for writing, plot, characters, and overall achievement.  But hey, this is my own blog, so I can do what I want!

My issue with this book stems largely from a bizarre distrust of commune-utopian communities and the fact that I'm not aware of any that were actually successful and true to the ideals upon which they were founded.  Despite the forward thinking and the intentions of true gender equality that most of these communities seem to be founded on, they inevitably seem to unravel to the point where women get the shit end of the stick.  Every. Single. Time.

Arcadia wasn't much different in that sense, but as this story follows Ridley "Bit" Stone, first child born in Arcadia, through his childhood, adolescence, and finally middle age (yes there are large gaps), it focuses more on his experience growing up as a sensitive, undersized boy in this alternative lifestyle, living his own particular circle of life, both within Arcadia and in the outside world.

Groff's writing is great, and her character development is just as it should be; that is, they're worthy of all five stars.  I was even surprised by how emotional the last quarter of the book left me, strangely moved by this book's sly spirituality.  I just have a distrust of the narrator, who despite the disbelief expressed by his friends who also grew up in Arcadia, reflects back on those years as golden, conveniently forgetting the poverty, illness, near-starvation, malnutrition, and hallucinogens that scarred their collective experience.

In fact, I think that the UK cover of this book is a better fit for the book's content.  Instead of the psychedelic colors and symbols of metamorphosis and idyllic childhood, we get a waif, solitary and in black & white, not unlike the photos Bit himself is known for exhibiting.  Since Bit's life is mostly lived on the fringes, both within Arcadia and on the Outside, and since he's given to suffer large bouts of debilitating depression and self-imposed muteness, this lone Nature Boy is a far more apt representation of his life.

If you're looking for a book that is chock full of plot, this ain't it.  Arcadia is a book where nothing much happens beyond an ordinary life, albeit an ordinary life outside the boundaries of most readers.  It's quiet and introspective, and like many well-wrought novels, by the time one comes to the end, it feels like a much bigger book than it really is.  With the exception of the constant present tense used in narration (just a personal pet peeve of mine) and an unreliable narrator, I'd say this is a very fine novel indeed--and the moment Groff takes on a more epic, more universal subject and puts all her strengths to bear into writing it, we just might have the first great American novel of the 21st century.

Here are a couple of excerpts that I dog-eared:

"...[Maria] turns away to privately make a four-pointed sign from head to belly to shoulder to shoulder, which Bit mimics again and again from behind a tree, loving the gesture's solemnity.  He doesn't want others to see.  Superstition, snorts Hannah when the others talk about God. Though people here have private rituals, Muhammad kneeling on a bit of carpet during the day, Jewish Seders and Christmas trees, religion here is seen much like hygiene: a personal concern best kept in check so as to not bully the others (41)."

And a semi-spoilery one:

"For a moment [Bit] he has felt relief at the idea of Helle being an enemy of the state, that she hadn't been abducted, sold into slavery, raped, murdered; that she hadn't fallen off the wagon and passed out in some ugly motel room, the needle in her vein under the rubber thong. Worse than those awful possibilities is the thought that she walked away in health and sanity.  And what hurts him most is the gleam of peace he'd had: he would rather imagine his wife tortured in a secret cell than imagine she chose to not love them anymore (192)."

This book is forthcoming from Voice in March 2012 and I read an Advance Reading Edition courtesy of my wonderful sales rep. 

Bookstore Rants, or Lady, You Crazy!

I've been sitting on this blogpost for a few days, wanting to calm down a bit before sitting down to skewer a particular parent I interacted with at the store earlier this week.  Our store is in a pretty smartsy-artsy-fartsy (you like that term?  I just made it up) area, where the population density of people who hold PhDs is higher than average.  Probably much higher than average but I'm not about to spend time researching figures or anything like that.  But anyway, because of where our store is located we're pretty used to parents who come in to buy books for their little darlings who learned to read in utero and are basically culturally sophisticated geniuses who excel in sports, languages, sciences and arts, all in equal measure, and do we have any books that might be good enough for them?

I'm sure you know the kind of parents I mean.  Sure, these parents are tiresome and apparently blind to the fact that their children are frequently nasty little shits in desperate need of a good spanking meaningful time out.  But these parents are completely grounded in reality compared with a mother I was dealing with the other day.

Mommy Dearest: (to me) I'm buying the last book in the Eragon series for my high school daughter because she just loves it, but I need suggestions for my other brilliant daughter. She's nine but she reads on a high school level, so I need a book that will challenge her but also be age appropriate.  (to daughter): Why don't you start looking at the books?

Lowly Bookseller: I understand completely.  Let's take a look over h...

MD (interrupting me): We don't have a television, you understand.  My children have all been readers from a very early age, which is why I've got one daughter at [insert Seven Sisters college here] and another applying to [insert Ivy League college here].  My youngest, though.  She just gets it in her head sometimes that she wants to read something but I won't have her filling her head with crap.  Not like what my students read.  She's better than that.

LB: Uh-huh.  Why don't we look at these books right he...

MD (interrupting again): And don't even get me started on graphic novels.  They're such trash--I can't believe she keeps trying to read those Wimpy Kid books at school. I'd like to give a piece of my mind to the creators of these so-called graphic novels...

LB (hah--interrupting her!): Well, actually, there are lots of great graphic novels, and one that sells well to both children and adults is this retelling of Homer's The Odyssey.  Since your daughter enjoyed the Percy Jackson books, she might enjoy learning more about the classics.

MD (looking down her nose): I don't think so.

LB (to the daughter directly): Sweetie, what others books have you liked besides the Percy Jackson ones?

Downtrodden daughter:  Harry Potter, Emily Windsnap, books about animals, books with f...

MD (interrupting AGAIN): She definitely didn't like those Series of Unfortunate Events books

DD: I thought they were pretty good

MD (to DD): No you definitely didn't like them. And they're too young for you anyway.  (To me):  What else do you recommend?

LB: Well, if you like fantasy stories with strong girl characters, I'd suggest maybe Madeleine L'Engle for a classic or maybe The Emerald Atlas, which is more fantasy-adventure and more modern.  For animal lovers, A Ring of Endless Light is a magical read with all of the dolphins in it, but A Wrinkle in Time is also great--it was a Newbery award winner that pairs well with a recent winner, When You Reach Me.  They both feature smart girls dealing with confusing times in their lives, plus they learn about time travel.

DD: The one with the dolphins sounds pretty good...

MD (to daughter): No, you won't like that one, I don't think.  Too old-fashioned.

DD (to mom): But I like dolphins.

MD (to daughter): No, I said you wouldn't like it.  Keep looking for something else. (To me): What about that Atlas book?  What's it about?

LB: It's a wonderful fantasy adventure about three siblings who are orphaned but come to discover some amazing things in their new ho...

MD (she's the interruptingest!): Orphans?  No, that sounds too much like those other books, those Unfortunate ones.

LB (losing patience): Actually, they're nothing at all alike.  Yes, they are both about siblings who are orphaned, but beyond that they're much more fantastical, with homages to C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Susan Cooper, and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

MD: You mean they're derivative?  I don't want her to read anything derivative.

LB (frustration showing through the cracks): No, actually, I don't mean derivative.  I mean that it uses similar tropes from classical fantasy series in a way that pays homage, but still creates a wonderful story for a young reader to get lost in.  If you don't want books that are derivative and poorly written, you should reconsider that Paolini book for your older daughter.

MD (slightly taken aback): Well.  I didn't mean to offend you.  I just have high expectations for my daughter.  (to daughter): Did you find anything?

DD: This one looks good.  I read the part on the inside cover and then I started reading the first chapter and I really like it.

MD (to daughter): Were there at least six words you didn't know in the chapter?

LB (to mother): Well, if she's reading on a high school level, there's a good chance that she'll know all of the words in this book.  But it's from a very reputable and literary publisher of children's bo...

MD (interrupting again): No, I don't think she'll like this.  She only thinks she will because she's read a little of it so far, but I know her better.

LB (to myself): WTF, lady?  How can you possibly stand there with a straight face, full of righteous indignation, and talk over your child and tell her that you know better, just by looking at the cover of a book, about what she likes to read? You're a monster and a nightmare and I can say these things in a blogpost later, which will make me feel better, secure in the fact that, like Miss Elizabeth Lefoldt in The Help, you'll never recognize yourself.

LB (dejectedly): How about The Mysterious Benedict Society?  Do you think you she would like that?

The lady kept apologizing for her daughter's "talking back" and bad behavior.  I wanted to hold a mirror up to her instead.  She was clearly insane.  And what's more, because it wasn't a school day, there were a handful of children in our kids' area, sprawled out on bean bags and reading graphic novels (mostly Wimpy Kid books, but some of the Origami Yoda/Darth Paper ones, too) while she was talking about how trashy and beneath her daughter they were.

So, gentle readers, have you ever encountered such an overbearing parent, in either a personal or professional capacity?  I've read about them, of course, but dealing with one in person AND still providing good customer service was a difficult row for me to hoe.  

You Are Always On My Mind...

Our girl, Roxanne.  She's a sweet, sweet mastiff. And very large.

It's been a relatively quiet blogging month here at As the Crowe Flies & Reads.  Not too unusual for November, when the days get shorter, the darkness creeps in a little earlier each night, and my attention gets directed towards surviving the craziness of the winter holidays (and the customers who go hand-in-hand).

It has also been a relatively slow reading month for me, for all of the reasons listed above. I'm sure it has nothing at all to do with the fact that my last two weekends have been dedicated to watching the BBC show Being Human, courtesy of Netflix streaming. Nope, not a bit.  And if I were cool and tech-y like Reading Rambo, I'd be providing you little moving photos of the show for your viewing pleasure. But there are two books that are really staying with me, never far from my thoughts, since I've finished them this week.

I was awake very early this morning, courtesy of my dog Roxanne who needed to go outside around 5:00 a.m. She's a big girl, and when she's earnest about going outside, you don't want to call her bluff.  Believe me, she  leaves very big messes behind if we don't read the signs accurately. At first I grumbled about it but then I realized that in fact she gave me the perfect opportunity to finish reading a riveting new book I'd picked up a couple of days ago called Running the Rift. It's Naomi Benaron's Bellwether Prize-winning debut novel, set in Rwanda in the 1990s.  I'd been reading it in 100-page chunks but I didn't want to push through to the end last night when I was so sleepy. 

Well, it was a thoroughly engrossing read.  I'll need to mull it over a bit before posting a full review 'cause right now I'm still reeling from it.  It's one of those books where you know exactly what's going to be happen, even if you don't know the particulars, and the narrative tension builds both from within the story and from without, based on your own knowledge of actual historical events.  Like a novel that opens in Honolulu in 1940, or one that features the Warsaw Ghetto in the late 1930s, you know what you're gonna get with a book featuring Rwanda of the early 1990s.

All I can say is, read it if you believe in the importance of literature in understanding the human condition and the role it plays in creating empathy & dispelling fear.

The other book that has been always on my mind just lately is The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson.  Just finished this book a few days ago after wrestling with it for about a week.  It's a pretty dense book, so despite its political intrigue and rather action-y plot, this was not a fast read for me.

The Orphan Master's Son is unlike anything I've read before.  Then again, I've never read a book set in North Korea before.  The entire country is impossibly mysterious and exotic and disturbing to me.

I'll put more thoughts together on this one later, too, but for now suffice it to say that this is a book that will raise eyebrows and turn heads and generally make itself known in the world.  I think it's poised for something big.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on the Nightstand

Ooh, this is twice in a row for me on the Top Ten Tuesday list.  This week, the good folks at The Broke and the Bookish ask us to list our top ten books on the to-be-read (TBR) list. 

Not every list is as easy for me to compile, but I have literally hundreds (quite possibly thousands, actually) of unread books sitting around my house.  That's what happens when you're a bookseller who gets a generous employee discount and/or have worked as a publisher's sales rep and/or are married to another bibliophile and/or you have wonderful sales reps who send you almost any book you express interest, gratis.  I chose a semi-random sample of them; semi-random in the sense they are books I'd actually like to read eventually, and I tried to get at least one new book and a couple of non-fiction choices on there.  Otherwise I could be listing books ALL night.  Or all week. 

1. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.  I never read this as a kid and my husband read it for the first time last week.  Since this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication and since Norton will be at my bookstore next week for a signing, this book might move very quickly from my TBR pile to the stack of books actually completed.

2. Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks.  I like Brooks's fiction and I was a religious studies minor in college, so this seems like a no-brainer.

3. The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta.  Love his quirky characters and dark humor.  Plus, this is a signed first edition.

4. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.  This has been shortlisted for a few awards already this year.  And it has a pretty awesome cover.

5. Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende.  I love Caribbean literature and I'm a little surprised that this book has languished on my shelf as long as it has.

6.  Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx.  Yeah, this was before she dropped the "E." Another signed first edition that I had to have but never read.

7. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.  I have an ARC of this book that I never got around to.  Maybe one day.

8. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje.  Another signed first edition that I still haven't cracked.

9. One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman.  She gets blurbs from writers I love but I still haven't read her.

10.  The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie.  My oral comprehensive exams in college were dedicated to the Orpheus myth in literature through the ages, which is why I bought this book.  Well, that and the fact that the cover is shimmery-shiny!  But did I read it?  Alas, no. 

It's My Party and I'll Blog What I Want To...

Or, October: In like a lamb, out like a lion

Or, Ode to a Bookish Month

Today is the anniversary of my natal day, which means instead of beating myself up for not writing this post when it would have been more timely, I'm just going to post it and let timeliness be damned.  

October in New England is usually my favorite month, but this time around it threw a wrench (or several) into people's lives.  My DH and I had a lovely time in the Caribbean with our granddaughter during that month, and it's entirely possible that the good weather we had there during the height of hurricane season came back to bite us in our collective ass by the end of the month.  

Our driveway, complete with deer tracks (not taken during this storm)

Our house, buried behind the snowy trees

On the Saturday of Halloween weekend, the first snowstorm of the season hit us with a vengeance.  We had 12" of snow in about 8 hours, and because most of the trees still had their leaves, it wrought all kinds of damage.  We lost roughly one hundred small trees on our property and a handful of very large ones from the weight of the snow.  We even had one tree split into two parts, one of which hit our house, but we were extremely fortunate not to have house damage from that.  Unbelievably, our driveway (which is nearly half a mile long and has three switchbacks) only collected branches and debris that my husband and I could clear out on our own.  We lost power for four and a half days, but worse than that, we lost our running water.  

Here be books

Grey Matter & Troubadour are housed together in this old mill

But aside from our trip to the Caribbean, October was full of other joys, too.  My husband and I spent part of his birthday weekend exploring bookstores, including the best used bookstore in Massachusetts: the combined open shops of Grey Matter books (which, let's face it, should update its website more frequently) and Troubadour (which doesn't have its own website, but this will take you to a groovy blog post about the store).  Full disclosure: I used to work at Troubadour in its Hatfield location, the one shown in the above blog post, so I am not evaluating these places 100% objectively.  On the other hand, I've been working in the book business since 1997 and I've been an avid reader all my life, so I have a large enough sample set to speak authoritatively on the subject. Here are some reasons why Troubadour/Grey Matter together comprise the best used bookstore in the state:

Great selection of LPs, plus a listening station

I mean, come on.  Look at this awesome davenport!

They *always* have some kind of snack on hand for customers

This *entire* section is all poetry, all the time

Seriously--they must have the largest poetry section in the northeast, outside of The Strand.  They even have an entire bookcase labeled The Beats & The Offbeat.  LOVE this place!  And in what other bookstore can you find a bookcase labeled The Circus, Etc?

My DH, rounding the corner next to the chess section

An entire room of art books

Need some medieval art?  Here's an entire case of it!

have you been looking for Loeb in all the wrong places? Check out Troubadour's classics section!

Yes, this is an amazing bookstore.  I can't recall what my DH picked up that day, but I bought a beautiful hardcover edition of Miss Welty's One Writer's Beginnings, Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance, which I confess I'd never heard of, and in preparation for a 2013 trip, The Reader's Companion to Ireland.  So, dear reader, if you are a book lover of the highest order and you find yourself within a day's drive of this biblio-Mecca (almost rhymes with biblioteca, no?), do yourself a favor and make the pilgrimage to Troubadour/Grey Matter books.  I guarantee that no matter what you like to collect or read, you'll find something here to please. 


In other bookish October news, my friend and boss Joan and I drove to Albany, NY, one day to talk about books on the regional NPR affiliate, WAMC.  Every Tuesday morning, God bless 'em, they host independent booksellers to share their favorite titles across the radio waves.  And if you're absolutely twisted and sick and have too much time on your hands, you can listen to us here. 

Though we had to get up *really* early to drive to Albany, we were rewarded with these views.  Technically this is part of the interstate system, but this is an exceptionally pretty stretch:

Heading west on I-90

Not bad, eh?

And in still yet other news, October was the month for the NEIBA fall tradeshow for New England Independent Booksellers.  I love seeing my friends and colleagues that I only get to see a few times a year at these sorts of things.  I lucked up because Broche of Wildly Read (it's a great bookish blog) shared her hotel room with me, which meant I could get books signed by Chad Harbach for our First Editions Club and then stay to enjoy the author cocktail reception. Two out of my three sales reps named Ann(e) promised to buy me a drink, which gave me leverage over the third one.  Gosh, I love bookselling!

Seated: Harbach. Standing: Odyssey Booksellers

 And afterwards, Broche and I were lucky enough to snag an invitation to Algonquin's dinner party, featuring authors Martha Southgate and Hillary Jordan.  It was an intimate venue and smashingly fabulous in every way.  Oddly enough, I don't have many photographs to commemorate it, except this one of author Hillary Jordan and bookperson (and soon-to-be-chef) extraordinaire, Megan (aka Bookdwarf).  Here they are on the streets of Providence, RI:

I love my job.  And I love October.  And that's all I have to say right now.

Bookstore Rants

Not my image. Found at JustforScientists.com

Okay, okay, I know that everybody who has ever worked in retail can lay claim to outrageous/stupid/offensive customer stories and that booksellers have no corner on this market, but this morning I wanted to share with you a few recent encounters I've had that might make you smile.

Scenario I

Woman: I'm looking for a bestseller I read about?  [NB: She used upspeak, indicated by the question marks I'm using for her]

Me: Do you know the title or author?

Woman: No, I can't remember?

Me: That's okay.  Just tell me what it's about and I'll bet I can pinpoint it. 

Woman: Umm, it was about these children and then they grew up?

Me (in my head): So, that covers roughly 75% of all of fiction then. Are you an idiot?

Me (out loud): Hmmm, can you be a bit more specific than that?

Woman: I think they were boys?

Me (in my head): Yup, definitely an idiot!

Me: (out loud): Do you remember where or when you heard about this book?

Woman: I think it was in the newspaper a few years ago. 

Me: Can you give me anything else to go on? 

Woman: No, not really

Me: Was it The Kite Runner? It's about two boys in Afghanistan who then grew up. But in different places and under vastly different scenarios. 

Woman: Maybe.  That doesn't sound very good.

Me (pulling hair out): Why don't I just make a few suggestions for you, then?

Scenario II

Woman: I'm looking for that book about cancer.

Me: Could it be The Emperor of All Maladies, the book about cancer that just won the Pulitzer Prize?

Woman: No, I don't think so.  It's old.

Me: Is it a health book or informational books that tells you about cancer and how to live with it?  Is it a novel?  A memoir? 

Woman: I don't know if it's a novel or memoir

Me: Can you tell me a bit more about it? 

Woman: This woman got diagnosed with cancer and then her friends were sad. 

Me (in my head): So basically every book about cancer, ever written?  

Me (out loud): Anything else you can tell me?  That's still pretty broad

Woman: No, I don't remember anything else

Me: How 'bout I just make some great book suggestions for you, then?

Scenario III

Woman walks into the shop.  She's standing between a large stuffed giraffe with a yellow hat (as in The Man with the Yellow Hat) and a shelf of picture books and toys: Do you have a children's department? 

Me: Why, yes.  Yes we do!

Woman: Where is it? 

Me: Ummm, you're standing right in the middle of it.  

For reference, she was standing between here: 

4' tall giraffe with Yellow Hat (photo from store's website)

And here:

Our hard-to-spot children's department (photo from store's website)

It's too long to include here again, but I happen to have a post for Scenario IV that involved a woman looking for Shakespeare who apparently doesn't know her ABCs.  You can read it here if you'd like.

Top Ten Tuesday: Unexpected Pleasures

It's been quite a while since I participated in The Broke & the Bookish's weekly Top Ten List and this morning I've got a little extra time before heading to work, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  This week asks us to list the top ten books that we've read outside our comfort zone.  I'll have to modify this a little because as a bookseller, I have to read things all the time that I wouldn't necessarily pick up for my personal reading pleasure.  So my list this week will instead be the slightly modified top ten list of books I was surprised how much I enjoyed, considering they were outside my own reading preferences.

1. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson.  I can read dark things all day and into the night, but creepy and scary I do not like.  Thus I was surprised how much enjoyment I got from this YA novel.

2. The Midwife of Venice by Robert Rich.  I don't read a lot of historical fiction, romantic or otherwise, and this book was very chick-lit.  But it was easygoing and fairly engrossing and before I knew it, I didn't want to put it down, despite its not being a particularly good book.

3. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.  Frankly, I wasn't expecting to like this debut novel, despite its literary cred.  I mean, come on--a book about small town liberal arts college baseball and the boys who play it?  But as I soon discovered, it's really a book about life with baseball as the conduit.

4. Chaucer -- almost anything he wrote.  I didn't read anything from Middle English until I went to grad school and I was immensely surprised how much I liked reading Chaucer for the first time.  Part of it the pleasure back then was the challenge of actually reading Middle English, but even now to this day, with academia far behind me, his stories linger in my mind.

5. Jodi Picoult -- So probably the opposite direction of Chaucer, literarily speaking! Until a few years ago I was a big book snob about Jodi Picoult.  Ugh--too commercial, not well written, etc. But then my husband's daughter gave me a copy of My Sister's Keeper for Christmas one year and I read it out of obligation.  You know what?  It was fun and engaging.  A fine prose stylist, Picoult ain't. But I do understand now why she's so well-beloved by so many readers.

6. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.  I've grown so weary of the paranormal romance featuring the vampire or werewolf du jour that I almost passed this book up entirely.  Glad I didn't 'cause it's covered with awesome sauce.  It's chock full of existential philosophy, literary allusions, humor, sex, and violence. 

7. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog.  I don't read a ton of nonfiction, for starters, and what I read is usually out of obligation to my bookstore or to assuage my readerly guilt for being all-fiction, all-the-time. But this book blew my socks off.  I talked about it for days after reading it.  I read passages out loud to my husband.  It's thought-provoking and a good read for anybody, no matter where they are on the vegan-vegetarian-pescatarian-omnivore sliding scale.

8. The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan.  I usually hate gimmicky prose style or structures (Georges Perec and Ella Minnow Pea, I'm talking to y'all) so I was completely ready to dismiss this one until a good friend reviewed it on her blog, Wildly Read, and I thought, well, maybe I should give it a try before dismissing it outright.  Glad I did. 

9. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery.  I can't recall exactly how old I was when I first read this book, but I'd definitely reached the stage when I was all about judging a book by its cover and title and I was going to have none of that.  This book sounded as insipid as Pollyanna and I roundly refused to read it.  Meanwhile, my mother roundly refused to drive me to the library until I cracked it open.  The standoff lasted a while but I eventually gave in and discovered one of the most delightful characters in all of English language literature.  I now re-read this book every other year or so and I recently indulged in watching the mini-series adaptation.  I've rarely been so happy to have my mother be right about something!

10.  What about you?  What's the top book on your list this week?