Last week a book made an unexpected jump from the arts and entertainment section to the front page, playing a minor part in an amazing story of survival. William Hickman, a thirteen-year-old boy on a hike with his father, fell into the rushing waters of the Wallace River near Gold Bar, Washington, and was swept toward the 265-foot precipice of Wallace Falls. As he was carried downstream, he remembered advice from a fantasy novel he’d read in which the main character was in a similar predicament: “Go feet first, stay to the side, and kick off the rocks.” That’s exactly what he did as he went over a preliminary ten-foot drop, and he stayed upright and alert enough to grab hold of a ledge on the other side. Clinging to that rock, just a few feet from the main falls, he was subsequently extracted by a helicopter search-and-rescue team.

The book he had in mind was part of the Pendragon series by D.J. MacHale, and when the author heard about the role his fiction had played in the harrowing events, he contacted the recovering Hickman, who described the conversation as “awesome.” Nice to know that teenagers stay teenagers even after something like this. MacHale was of course delighted that everything turned out OK, but also pleased about the positive response from the media: “I just had a conversation this past weekend with another author. We were lamenting that we’re given a lot of caution about what we write in books for fear that kids will get hurt. It’s nice that it can work the other way, too.” 

It’s true that books for young people are often lambasted for putting dangerous ideas in the heads of their audience, as though no child has ever fallen off a roof without reading about it first. Fiction can be a safe space for kids to encounter dangers that parents hope they’ll never have to face in real life, and there’s a benefit to confronting them that’s often overlooked in these protective times. Plenty has been written about the loss of the necessary free time and open space that allow children to develop physical skills and, more importantly, the ability to make good decisions. Just for starters, there’s The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv and 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do by Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler. 

We at Island Books were inspired enough by William Hickman’s hopefully-never-to-be-repeated adventure to put together a display of some of our favorite stories of kids and their powerful encounters with the wild. Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain trilogy, among others, shared a table under a sign that read “Are Your Kids Ready for Summer?” Not that we expect or hope for trouble—just the opposite—but it’s good to remember that raising them right means eventually turning them loose on the world.

—James

It’s true, the Phantom of Island Books exists. I am the Phantom, and no, you probably haven’t seen me around the store. Or if you have, you probably didn’t realize I was an employee, since I have a habit of browsing the shelves and interrogating the booksellers just like a customer. Most of my work happens behind the scenes.

I write this post in response to a note from my esteemed colleagues, who mentioned to me recently that several of our loyal customers have sheepishly asked over the counter at Island Books, “Which one of you is Miriam?”

I have to say, I’m flattered, touched, and humbly embarrassed to hear that’s happening. But it makes sense. I’ve been blogging, writing newsletters, and working on our website for nearly a year now, so if people are asking who I am, it means what we’ve been up to is working. And if that’s the case, I’m elated.

The short explanation is, after my husband and I moved to Mercer Island from Capitol Hill about a year and a half ago and I left a four-year stint at “that-online-bookstore-that-will-not-be-named,” I realized that every time I stopped in or drove by Island Books, I wanted to work there. After eight years spent in the publishing industry, both in New York and Seattle, I longed to get back to my love for books and away from corporations and the politics of big business. As our loyal customers know, Island Books has always been about comfort and caring. That’s what I felt from the store, from the very first time I walked in and Roger Page said to me, “What can I do for you?”

After all, isn’t that what a book says to you every time you open it? Authors try their hardest to entertain, inspire, and educate us and all they require is our willingness to show up. The same is true of Island Books. So I thought, what could be more fun and rewarding than showing up to this special bookstore and helping spread the word about it? So that’s what I do. And trust me, I fought for this job. The Island Books staff works so hard to connect with customers in the store that moving into the online sphere used to be beyond their bandwidth, although Roger and the real web guru of this team, James Crossley, had already begun when I showed up on the scene. (James also happens to be a phenomenal writer, if you haven’t noticed, so feel free to join me in nagging him to write his own book.) Basically, I’m just the person who had the good fortune of showing up at the right time, and the tenacity to keep after Roger until he realized it would be easier to keep me than send me away.

If you’re curious about some of the other hats I wear, you can read this recent article that appeared in the Mercer Island Patch, or follow my new monthly NWBookLovers blog starting in June. I’m also the author of two ballet-themed novels, Girl in Motion and the just-released sequel, Breaking Pointe (both available through Island Books).

First and foremost, readers here should just know me as one of the many book lovers on the team (and the most junior). If you ask me, you’re lucky you can catch the far more experienced experts like Roger, Nancy, Lori, Cindy, Kay, James, Marni, and Garry in the store. They’ve been making Island Books the treasure it is far longer than I’ve had the pleasure of spreading the word. Together, our goal is to do whatever we can to make your experience at Island Books as warm and cozy as curling up with a good book. So thanks for staying connected. We appreciate you and consider you part of our family.

Have I mentioned how much I love this special store? And reading. Oh how I love reading. And I know you do too.

—Miriam

Adapting literature into films and TV shows is apparently a trend again. The Twilight series was a great success, The Avengers has been an absolute blockbuster (comic books are at least as literary as Twilight, if not more so), and even the art-house crowd is on the bandwagon. Reports indicate that the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is likely to go to an adaptation for just the third time this millennium. The hottest property of the moment, though, is probably the BBC series Sherlock.

In case you’re not already familiar with it, Sherlock updates the classic Arthur Conan Doyle detective stories and brings them into the present day. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is as uncannily capable as the original character, but his performance accentuates Holmes’s prickly arrogance and the strain of dealing with the lesser intellects around him—which is to say, everyone else in the world. Contemporary diagnosticians would call his manner pathological, perhaps assigning him a spot on the autism spectrum, and the show is not afraid to mention that issue. Similarly, modern sensibilities find the intense connection between Sherlock and his sidekick John Watson (played by Martin Freeman) difficult to digest, and the duo becomes the subject of jokes and the object of sidelong glances. Hearing about these updates before the series aired, I was afraid that the result would be a descent into gimmickry, with an essentially Victorian figure who would try to juggle a meerschaum pipe and a cell phone for laughs, but that’s not at all the case. Sherlock’s Sherlock pays tribute to his predecessors, but he’s his own man, which is as it should be. Why remake something if you’re going to slavishly copy it or tear it completely apart in the process?

There’s something special about the character that makes him endlessly renewable. The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as the most frequently portrayed figure in film, with over 75 actors taking on the role in 211 movies. Writers, too, have felt free to try on the deerstalker cap and solve the crimes that they commit to paper. There are versions of the great detective who must not only cope with the unusual, but also the fantastical, as in the stories collected in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, and others pit their hero against ghosts, extinct dinosaurs, and even malicious deities—successfully, natch. The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures is an anthology that plays things a little straighter, if you prefer that your investigations remain on more realistic ground. Maybe the most notable incarnation of Holmes in recent years is Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution, in which an aged and misanthropic beekeeper picks up his magnifying glass one last time to unravel the secrets of a young escapee from Nazi Germany, and in so doing, confront the greatest crime of the 20th century. 

Of course, the original tales are the place to start, whether you’re newly introducing yourself to the character or paying him a repeat visit. Almost all of them are in the public domain, so there are dozens, if not hundreds of different options available. The most pleasing might be these beautiful, fully annotated versions of the short stories and the novels. When you think you’re ready to match wits with the master, you can pick up Pierre Bayard’s Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, which attempts to show how Arthur Conan Doyle himself couldn’t keep up with his creation. None of us can, really, not even the evil genius Professor Moriarty. Sherlock’s been going strong for 125 years now, since long before any of us were born, and he’ll undoubtedly be connecting clues long after we’re gone. 

—James

Nancy Stewart and her longtime singing partner MaryLee Sunseri are returning to Island Books to perform as our last P.J. party entertainers of the school year on Saturday, June 2nd at 6:30. With our oldest graduating from high school less than a week later, I can’t help but be sentimental about their music. Wasn’t it only yesterday that the Pages couldn’t leave the house without “Goodnight Sleep Tight” or “Oodles of Animals” in the car CD player? And what about the five-year-old’s birthday party where Roger dressed up in drag and tried convince the wee ones that he was Nancy Stewart until she showed up strumming her guitar and pushing the imposter aside to gales of laughter and relief from all?

There are no musicians more joyful and talented than these two and we are extremely honored to have had them singing inside our four walls for over twenty years. That puts our bookstore in a league with Carnegie Hall, where they performed with the likes of Burl Ives, though you would never guess by the youthful duo’s beauty and energy that they could have shared the stage with him so long ago. Please come join us if you can and remember, pajamas and teddy bears are always welcome but not required!

—Nancy

I’ll be honest. I’m a snoop. I love opening up an old copy of a book and finding notes written in the margin, or any other sort of clue as to what someone else felt while reading. Roger has some really cool old editions tucked around the store even though they’re not for sale. Next time you’re in Island Books, ask him about them. His stories will be worth your time.

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in new books coming out that I forget to look at the old ones, but the other day I was straightening up at home and found myself staring at the bookshelf in this picture. These old Nancy Drew books belonged to my husband’s mom when she was a kid. Since she’s no longer with us and I’ll never get to meet her, I got this idea in my head that maybe, just maybe, she had written something in her old books.

A few hours later, I realized that she must have been far too polite to tarnish the pages. All I could find was her name, written in clean cursive on the first pages. I was disappointed, but not surprised.

Then I turned to another shelf and zeroed in on my dad’s old collection of Jane Austen novels. He’s still around, but even he can’t read his own handwriting. (Yes, apparently my dad had to read Austen in college. Men do occasionally pick one of these up! Although I don’t think he had regrets about giving his copies away.) Look how old these editions look.

Another hour wasted as I sifted through more yellowing pages, looking for clues. Here, I had more luck, sort of. He underlined phrases and made notes, but the problem was, his handwriting is, and always has been, illegible. I think he might have even scribbled a grocery list in there, although I can’t be sure if the first word was “beloved” or “bread.” The most legible writing was this list comparing Emma’s character with Miss Bates. The pencil was so faded it was difficult to get it to show up in a picture, but I tried. Don’t give yourself a headache trying to read it.

From what I can tell, he noted that what Emma and Miss Bates had in common was that they were both unmarried and smart. That’s where the similarities ended. Emma was clever, attractive, and proud, while Miss Bates was simpler, plain, and humble. On the next page (not shown here), he drew an elaborate chart that seems to show how their character traits influenced the direction of their lives. The problem is, I couldn’t make out what it said. Frustrated, I gave up and started reading the book myself (for the eighth time), because if you can’t coast by on someone else’s notes, might as well make some of your own, right?

Enough about my own library. Will you take the time to share some of the best scribbles you’ve discovered in old editions?

—Miriam

Previous installments of First Line Friday have been dominated by fiction, which probably shouldn’t be too surprising. Non-fiction writers tend to be concerned with having a sound basis for their arguments rather than worrying about the sound of their sentences. But many in the reality-based community marshal their facts in a stylish and memorable way, so I thought it was time to give some of them their due.

Memoirs generate a fair number of great opening lines, and one of the best is from a real master, Vladimir Nabokov. His Speak, Memory is considered a monument of the form, and its beginning lives up to the billing: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Portentous, isn’t it? He’s going to talk about his own life, but first he has to sum up our timeless existential condition.

Augusten Burroughs might not be so high-minded, but his opener for Running with Scissors is at least as catchy: “My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick.” Where Nabokov was universal, Burroughs is specific; the perspective of a child and the era in which he lives are immediately apparent. 

Speaking of specificity, Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face starts with a literal bang: “KER-POW! I was knocked into the present, the unmistakable now, by Joni Friedman’s head as it collided with the right side of my jaw.” That’s so on-target it almost hurts. 

There’s some marvelous scene-setting at the beginning of another memoir that was written by a young man who went on to have a pretty significant career outside of literature. It starts off almost like a hard-boiled mystery:

A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news. I was living in New York at the time, on Ninety-Fourth between Second and First, part of that unnamed, shifting border between East Harlem and the rest of Manhattan. It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-covered walkups that cast a heavy shadow for most of the day. The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.

That’s Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama. 

Writing about yourself seems to make arresting introductions easier, but biographers, science writers, historians, and other non-fiction authors have managed the trick:

• Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man: “By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.”
•  Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter: “It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”
• Diane Ackerman’s An Alchemy of Mind: “Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredrome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag.”
• John Hersey’s Hiroshima: “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.”
• Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “We were somewhere outside of Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Not sure what non-fiction category to put that last one in, or even that it isn’t really fiction underneath, but that’s a good segue. You didn’t think I’d let you go without peppering you with some eyeball-grabbing openers from novels, did you? Let’s kick off this section with a few titans from the middle of the last century.

Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976, could write circuitous sentences with the best of them, but he could be concise when he wanted to be, as he was when he began Herzog: “If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.” The Adventures of Augie March is more characteristically prolix and swaggering: “I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”

Philip Roth is still with us and may match Bellow’s Nobel yet. His tribute to onanism, Portnoy’s Complaint, was shocking in its time and remains influential today: “She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.” Augusten Burroughs may have had that line echoing in his head when he picked up his pen, in fact—see above. Roth hasn’t softened with age, either. His recent Sabbath’s Theater raises eyebrows right away: “Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over.” You won’t see lofty vocabulary crash into the gutter any quicker than that. He transitions from elevated diction into earthy Anglo-Saxon without an intervening word.

J.D. Salinger, that shrinking violet, would never dare be so explicit, but he’s quotable nonetheless. Franny and Zooey commences as follows: “Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone hoped it would stay for the big weekend—the weekend of the Yale game.” 

Going back even further, we have Isak Dinesen’s atmospheric Out of Africa: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” The location is doing a lot of work for her there, of course. Probably wouldn’t have achieved the same romance if she’d said, “I had a farm in Iowa.” 

Contemporary author Joshua Ferris challenged himself with an even less romantic setting than that—a cubicle farm in a corporate office. The dehumanizing nature of the work he comedically describes is comprised by the narrative voice he uses. Instead of featuring a single protagonist in his And Then We Came to the End, he gives us the collective experience of the employees: “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.”

Science fiction has its share of tasty hors d’oeuvres, too. A sampler plate:

• Octavia Butler’s Kindred: “I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
• J.G. Ballard’s High Rise: “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”
• Michael Swanwick’s Stations of the Tide: “The bureaucrat fell from the sky.”
  
• James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah: “The irreducible strangeness of the universe was first made manifest to Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday, when a despondent angel named Raphael, a being with luminous white wings and a halo that blinked on and off like a neon quoit, appeared and told him of the days to come.”

If that angel is an avid reader, he’ll already know what’s in store, but the rest of you will have to wait until the next time First Line Friday rolls around.

—James

Maybe you’re looking for a reason to pay Island Books a visit. If so, Jim Lynch’s appearance on Wed, May 16th, gives you an awfully good excuse. He’s touring in support of his new novel, Truth Like the Sun, which paints a dual portrait of Seattle, showing it as it was in the 1960s and as it is in our current century. Lynch is a Mercer Island product and a gem among Northwest writers, and this latest book may be his finest yet. The event is free, and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. We hope to see you there!

—Roger

It’s time for me to be honest and admit that I’m just about 18 weeks pregnant with twins. As much as I’m trying not to do this, the truth is, the pregnancy and baby books are piling up on my nightstand. I know I should be reading them, but as you know, I’ll pick up fiction any day over those books if given the choice. So don’t worry, as the due date in September looms, I pledge not to devolve into an obsessive focus on all books about babies. I’m telling you this now so if it gets to be a problem, you can protest loud and clear.

This week, however, I’m going to indulge myself with one particular book, Brain Rules for Baby by local author John Medina. I’ve been reading this one with particular care after an intriguing dinner conversation with friends (who are also expecting). As I chowed down on a huge slice of chocolate cake, the husband casually drops this mood killer: “Hey, did you know that the foods you eat during the later part of your pregnancy will influence your babies’ taste buds for the rest of their lives?”

I stopped cold with chocolate smeared across my upper lip. “So you’re saying that if I eat a lot of chocolate that’s what my kids will want to eat? Who says?”

“All I’m saying is you might want to focus more on the vegetables,” he replied. “I’m reading this fascinating book. It’s based on scientific research and explains a lot about early formative experiences.”

The book he meant, of course, was Brain Rules for Baby, which my husband decided belonged on our must-read list. I suspect he thought it would teach me all the things I should be doing to make sure our kids come out okay in the long-run.

But the joke is on him, although he doesn’t know it yet since I read the book first. Not only does Brain Rules for Baby frighten pregnant women out of eating ice cream sundaes, it also offers a compelling case for why men should do more housework. A big part of the first section of the book explains how seriously a baby’s arrival can damage the quality of a marriage. Let me warn you now, some of the research is downright depressing and scary. That said, it’s also informative. For all the people who are telling me that playing classical music for my stomach will make these kids smarter, there is no scientific evidence that’s true.

One great tip that resonated with me was that we should praise our kids for effort rather than achievement. If we can teach them how to persevere at tough things, they will be more successful both in school and in life. It’s an important distinction, because it shows you recognize and respect inner drive more than an “A” on a report card. And if they know that’s what valued, they will put more of their energy into working hard rather than freaking out if they don’t get the grade they think you expect.

That’s also a great tip for raising good readers (which, as you can imagine, is an essential on my list). Smart readers know how to persevere and can push through a 500 page books even if it takes effort. A kid who doesn’t know how to do that will never have the patience or see the reward in putting in that kind of energy. So the minute my kids read the first sentence of a book all on their own, I plan to throw them a parade.

—Miriam

My family went to the beach without me this last sunny Sunday and stayed late, so I was at loose ends after I finished work. I parked myself at a tiny table in a restaurant near a wide, open window, where I slowly consumed a burger, a beer, and a book, pausing between bites, sips, and chapters to watch the passing parade. The decor was a mix of old wood and new metal that the menu describes as “steampunk atmosphere,” and the crowd that grew during my meal was uniformly closer to the bleeding edge of fashionable anti-fashion than yours truly. Tucked quietly in the corner, I was in a virtual duck blind and fortunately didn’t spook any of the flocking hipsters, who undoubtedly would have wondered what strange, silent technology I held in my hands. 

It was still light out when I finished the meal, and ordering another solitary drink seemed too decadent, so I wandered over to browse the aisles of a neighborhood bookshop. (Yes, I often spend my time off in other bookstores. That’s not weird, is it?) While I was subjecting a novel to the first line test, a young woman—I might even say a girl—approached and said, “Excuse me.” When I looked up, she continued. “This is kind of embarrassing, but there’s a book I really want and I’m a dollar and seventy-one cents short.” 

If this had been a scam, it would have collapsed with my question: “What’s the book?”

“Um, it’s called Fifty Shades of Grey.”  

Wow. Bold. “Are you even old enough to read that?”

“Probably not. I mean, I am, but I know what you mean. It’s dumb, but I just need something to de-stress with … well, I mean something escapist …” It’s escapist all right, so much so that it’s been banned by libraries in three states. Now, these are library systems with particularly retrograde sensibilities, mind you. The book is steamy, but not outside normal community standards, at least judging by its popularity. It’s a downright phenomenon, in fact—we’ve had trouble keeping it in stock, and I have a Facebook friend who hosted a Fifty Shades-themed party. When she asked for suggestions about what to serve, I came up with oatmeal, uncooked squid, and poi. I told her she just needed forty-seven other shades of gray food and she’d be home free. Needless to say, these did not eventually grace her table, but the response to another suggestion—gingerbread people with strategically placed dollops of frosting—was strongly positive. Would that the party had been held on my side of the country so I could have seen how it turned out.

My panhandler was waiting, and I knew I had two singles in my wallet, so I put her out of her misery and handed them over. “Anything to promote literacy,” I said, and went back to my reading as she walked away thanking me. I was thinking that if I lived inside Fifty Shades of Grey this would have been a very different kind of encounter that wouldn’t have ended quite so quickly, but in real life I mostly wanted to tell her, “Honey, you really shouldn’t go up to strange older men and ask them to buy you books about leather whips and corsets.” 

After a few more paragraphs, my book passed muster, I decided, so I took it to the counter to pay for it. (Yes, I often buy books from stores other than my own. I guess that is a little weird.) When I got there, she was still sheepishly skulking nearby, a crumpled pile of bills in front of her.

“I miscounted. I still need a dollar.”

I was out of ones, but she looked so bereft that when the clerk started ringing me up, I told her, “Well, fork it over.” She shoved her cash in my direction, and I charged her book along with mine. After more profuse gratitude and considerable teasing from me and the clerk, she left with her prize. 

“That was worth it just so I could say that really happened,” I told the other bookseller. And it was.

—James

In honor of National Poetry Month, we sponsored a poetry contest (along with the Mercer Island Arts Council) on the theme of “What I Can Touch” that ran all April long. We received emails and took submissions over the counter throughout the month, and now that May is here, we’re ready to announce the winners and share their work.

Without further ado … .

The Children’s Winners: 

K through 3rd grade: Luca Palermo, Grade 2, for “Shoes”

4th & 5th grade: Gregory Larrabee, Grade 5, for “The Straight Blade Razor”

Middle & high school: Paulina Glass, for “Touching Tension”

The Adult Winners:

Limerick: Werner Glass, for “Whoever among the literati sits”

Haiku: Charlie Neff, for “Touch the Mountain Wind”

Congratulations to our winners. Below are the poems in their entirety. Enjoy!

—————————————-

“Shoes” by Luca Palermo

Shoes
Are like
Leather
Socks,
They shelter
Your feet
And arrive
In a box,
Shoes
Get shipped
To different
Places,
You can run
With shoes
At different
Paces,
But the mileage
On each shoe
Always
Differs.

“The Straight Blade Razor” by Gregory Larrabee

A light, mottled ten hilt with a cracked and broken blade,
Each every morning my great grandfather would use this blade,
Carefully and slowly at the crack of dawn,
His only moment to think
would come.
Around the sod hut on the prairie work is endless.
Watching his sleeping family in the tiny hut
ready to begin work, he steps outside
to plan his rows of plants.
After a long, grueling and shadeless, day plowing and planting,
he climbs into bed and thinks once more about that moment of peace.
Holding that knife I think back on those days
And the stories of my Dad’s grandpa
Told to me on long nights
Before bed.
This blade,
more valuable to me than anything else,
The only object that connects me
to the grandfather I never met.

“Touching Tension” by Paulina Glass

I’ve got too much lip
white teeth tongue flick
enamels like stilettos click
voice dip sly smirk quick.

You’ve got two green eyes
sarcastically bide time
eyelashes intertwine and fly
crinkled corners convey no lies.

I jab my thumbs in my pockets
your fingers fiddle with your wallet
nervous noise makes tactless rackets
betrayed by old anxious habits.

The war dance flip acrobatic
too thought through not automatic
all efforts to speak flow not spastic
flighting flashlight search avoid the tragic.

Curled lip hiccup surprise chuckle
green eyes search mine and knuckles skim knuckles
slowly I drift into the weightless peace that consumes me and I escape the binds of loose rhyme
or staccato words that all beat in time and it feels like instead of snapping the words off the whip of my lips
I can let them respire, never sputter or spit, tumbling and spilling from the smile place within the whites.
Playing duckling to the easy current which weaves between us.

“Whoever among the literati sits” by Werner Glass

Whoever among the literati sits
And then a limerick commits,
Should touch no quill
For good nor ill
But tear his poem into little bits.

“Touch the Mountain Wind” by Charles Neff

Touch the mountain wind
Swirling, too, round dear ones below
Breathe deep love touches me.

—Miriam

Delayed by delightful events, it’s here at last: a new post highlighting art from around the world that incorporates books as objects. 

Alicia Martín is a Madrid-based installation artist who’s been described as “book-obsessed.” She operates on a grand scale, and her work tends to emphasize the untrammeled power that books possess, especially when they band together. 

You can see more images online via her gallery.

Guy Laramee’s sculptures don’t take up quite as much room as the cascade above, but they suggest far larger processes geological in scope. As he puts it, “The erosion of cultures—and of ‘culture’ as a whole—is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice.” Stacks of accumulated knowledge seem to be organically weathered, sandblasted by time until they’re almost completely transformed.

It’s hard to say whether the message his art sends is about the noble futility of human achievement or about the unintended residue of it that will outlast the natural world. A portfolio of Laramee’s work, some of which was exhibited in 2009 at the Bellevue Art Museum, is available on his own website.

Fellow Canadian Joel Robinson’s digitally altered photographs may lack gravitas in comparison, but make up for it with extra whimsy. It’s refreshing to see state-of-the-art visual technology used to promote a more traditional medium.

Robinson sells affordable prints through his own Etsy storefront. 

Down in Argentina, Raul Lemesoff took a 1979 Ford Falcon, the same model that formerly served his country’s armed forces, and converted it into a Weapon of Mass Instruction. He uses it to distribute free books to people on the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities and towns across the nation.

You can see his awesome machine in action in this video, contributing to “peace through literature.” In one important respect, Lemesoff’s treatment of his subject is superior to that of the other artists presented here: the observer can access the content of many of these books. The best book-related art is still between the covers, after all.

—James

After reading it in two nights, I’m willing to bet that many Rosamund Lupton fans will like her new novel, Afterwards, even better than her bestselling debut, Sister. I did. The new book is part psychological thriller, part literary fiction, and part tribute to the power of the mother-daughter relationship.

Grace is the mother of Jenny, seventeen, and Adam, eight, both students at an exclusive private school. An arsonist sets fire to the building while Jenny is inside, and Grace runs inside to save her daughter. Both Grace and Jenny end up in the hospital in critical condition.

The story begins when Grace wakes up and realizes she’s hovering over her own body in the ICU. She soon finds Jenny, also wandering the hospital in an out-of-body experience. Together they try to piece together what happened.

Over the course of the novel, the truth challenges the ties that bind their family. When the police accuse Grace’s young son, Adam, of starting the fire, both Grace and Jenny know he’s innocent. As the investigation heats up, the doctors suggest that both Grace and Jenny’s medical conditions might be fatal and irreversible. The clock is ticking.

The mystery is only part of the story, and what Lupton does so well is make the pressure of the situation test the distance Grace will go to save her children. Being a parent means making sacrifices that can seem unimaginable, but when the time comes, Grace will go the distance. That’s what makes the book so moving.

Afterwards is a clear progression of the writing ability Lupton displayed in Sister, which was a story about Bee, who is devastated when her sister Tess is found dead. The police are convinced Tess committed suicide, but Bee is certain her sister was murdered and sets out to solve the crime herself. Lupton takes a similar angle by examining the relationship between sisters as Bee crosses boundaries she could never have imagined. Bee’s love for her sister drives the book to a shocking conclusion.

Both books are told in the voice of the protagonist speaking to their loved one (In Afterwards, Grace telling her story to her husband, and in Sister, Bee addresses Tess). Since the way we speak in our closest relationships is so much more intimate and personal than the way we speak to others in our daily lives, the premise creates an intimacy and deep understanding of the characters that can’t be gained from a third-person or even first-person-speaking-to-reader perspective.

I loved Sister when it came out, as did the public, but I loved Afterwards even more. Often writers who make a big splash with their first novel buckle under the pressure and write a sub-par sophomore effort, but that’s not the case here. It makes me hopeful Lupton is only going to continue to get better and I predict she’s got more good stuff where this came from.

Now that your interest has been piqued, we’re going to give away a free galley of Afterwards. If you’re interested, just comment on this blog post or our related Facebook or Google+ notifications. The winner will be randomly chosen and announced in a few days. Then you can come pick up your loot in the store. And if you don’t win, you can still come by and purchase a real copy of Afterwards. Let us know what you think!

—Miriam

Monday was a typical bookseller’s day for me—unpacking a box of books and putting them in the hands of readers. Except that I was wearing an outfielder’s glove and standing on a sunny softball diamond. Why? Well, April 23rd was World Book Night. It’s an annual event that was created last year in the UK and celebrated for the first time in the US this week. The concept is a simple one: spread a love of reading by giving away free books. The way it’s executed isn’t much more complicated. 25,000 volunteers, including me, signed up some months ago to distribute half a million books, first choosing a title from a list of thirty crowd-pleasing options, both fiction and non-fiction. Those books were produced in special paperback editions by their publishers and donated to the cause; they were delivered to drop-off points by delivery agencies that donated their services; and we volunteers fanned out on the evening of the 23rd to find would-be readers outside of the typical venues of bookshops and libraries. 

The book I chose was Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and is one of my favorite novels of the past decade. It centers on the struggles of an overweight, nerdy Latino kid growing up in New Jersey, trying to live in an imaginative world of fantasy and SF adventure, but caught by the quicksand of his family’s history under the dictatorship back in the Dominican Republic. It’s incredibly witty, chockablock with pop and high cultural references alike, and it’s narrated with tremendous panache, full of slang and Spanglish coinages. I once wrote a recommendation for it that described the writing as “so robust it’ll kick in your door, and so charming you’ll invite it to spend the night afterward.” It’s edgy, energetic, and not at all sleepy or stuffy—the perfect antidote for the poison of “books are boring.”

You’d think a book like that would be an easy sell, especially at the low, low price of nothing at all, but that wasn’t my experience. When I enlisted as a volunteer, I planned to hand out books to the players in my softball league, since I know they’re a bright, engaged group that nonetheless doesn’t spend much time reading. And so I lugged my box of books along with my bat and ball as I headed out to shag flies and hit fungoes, only to be met with a rather tepid response. A few people cottoned to the idea right away. Though they hadn’t heard of World Book Night or the novel, they were happy to give it a try. Many, however, stayed suspicious even after they realized I wasn’t angling for money or peddling religion. I could see them thinking, “A book? Do I have time for that after work and family and Mad Men on the DVR? I’m not even sure I have a place to put one.”  After pitching to everybody, my average was just over .400—great numbers for a batter, but less so for a distributor of free samples. I went home with more than half the books I started with.

I was a little surprised, but not really demoralized. I did pass out the remaining copies over the next few days to people at school, the playground, and the store, so they didn’t go to waste. The experience was a good reminder of why the project exists. I love literature, and the devoted customers who come into our store every day are interested in reading, but no matter how busy it is behind the counter, there are millions who aren’t thinking at all about books. Next year World Book Night intends to be bigger and more global by generating more attention and spreading to other countries, and I intend to be a part of it again.

—James

The final entry in our special series in honor of National Poetry Month features a guest blogger, poet Megan Snyder-Camp. Her first collection, The Forest of Sure Things (2010), won the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Award. She lives in Seattle, where she is the chair of First Book-Seattle.

Thanks for tuning in to the series, and don’t forget that in celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re running a poetry contest open to all ages. The contest ends April 30th, so enter soon.

—James

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This month I have been thinking about how, exactly, poetry fits into my days, especially since this year I didn’t even consider joining in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month, where you write a poem a day). I consider myself a practicing writer, but I also have a four-year-old and two-year-old at home, and a new nonprofit chapter that lives under the dining room table. My experience of poetry is often in passing, often borrowed, often shelved. My “office” is the little cabinet that holds the printer. My goal for National Poetry Month was, I thought, feasibly low ball: to read one poem a day. That’s happened maybe twice.

Here’s how the week really went, and where the poetry fit:

Monday: While making dinner, thumbed through the April issue of Poetry. Found this beauty, by Vera Pavlova (tr. Steven Seymour):

Poetry should be written the way adultery is committed: on the run, on the sly, during the time not accounted for. And then you come home, as if nothing ever happened.

Tuesday: Volunteered at a large-scale children’s book distribution. Noticed that none of the books were poetry, and thought about how perilous many people’s introduction to poetry is: often in school, sometimes by a teacher who doesn’t much love it. I remember being taught that poetry was orange juice concentrate; prose was the jug. (which would you rather reach for?) Thankfully nowadays that image reminds me of the bright certainties in the poetry & art of Douglas Florian, one of my favorite childrens’ poets. Whom I still haven’t read to my own kids … what am I waiting for? Need to request his honeybee book at the library.

Wednesday: At a light, I looked up and saw what I thought was a seagull—white, high. But it was a long light and the bird never flapped, just spiraled lower until I could see a wide gray tail, thick body: a snowy owl! I’d heard about the irruption a while back but had given up looking. Almost wrecked the car. That night, waiting to meet a friend at a bar, I brought out my library copy of Susan Stewart’s Red Rover and found on page one:

THE OWL

I thought somehow a piece of cloth was tossed
into the night, a piece of cloth that flew

up, then across, beyond the window.
A tablecloth or handkerchief, a knot

somehow unfolding, folded, pushing through
the thickness of the dark. I thought somehow

a piece of cloth was lost beyond the line—
released, although it seemed as if a knot

still hung, unfolding. Some human hand could not
have thrown that high, or lent such force to cloth,

and yet I knew no god would mind a square
of air so small. And still it moved and still

… and then my friend walked in. Goodbye for now, serendipitous owl. At the table we talked about the donations my friend was helping secure for our nonprofit’s May 19th Read-A-Thon, where Martha Silano and Daemond Arrindell will be among the poets (and other folks) reading aloud the first books they loved as kids. One auction-headed gift: Heather McHugh’s beautiful and scary-looking copy of an old fairy tale, with a long and poetic inscription about falling in love with this book at the age of four.

Thursday: For a freelance gig, I got to research (and discover) Bulgarian poet Nikola Madzirov. Here’s him on translation, in an interview for the California Journal of Poetics:

There are many poems in which we can recognize ourselves without having written them, just as there are cities where we have imagined ourselves much earlier before we travel there. The translator is a silent deconstructor, a night guard of the bridges of difference and understanding.

Wow! Adding the title to my wish list. 

That night, I hosted a poetry reading for the very first time. Thanks to Lacey Jane Henson who runs the celebratory and always-packed Off Hours series, I had the pleasure of inviting three Seattle poets who work has served as a model and inspiration to me: Melinda Mueller, Christine Deavel, and Sarah Steinke. I hadn’t realized what an emotional experience it would be, beginning with my struggle to write intros that would be good enough, that would share some of what it was they’d each taught me and why I return to their work again and again. But finally, intros in pocket, the pure joy of hearing, one after another, those voices rise from the page with powerful new work. It was like a jukebox from heaven. The experience reminded me that I should make more time to let writers know when they move me—send an email, mail a note to the publisher. Or my resolution for 2012 (2013?): write a full-on review! Join the conversation.

Friday: Heard Sierra Nelson read at Open Books from I Take Back the Sponge Cake, her lovely new collaborative choose-your-own adventure poetry book. We got to vote on each page-turning. Awesome.

Saturday: Got a rejection from a long-shot journal; now to find somewhere else to send that batch. Worked on a grant application during kids’ nap. It’s not writing poetry, and not reading it either, but still, what I love about grant applications is how they can cover for prayer in a pinch: the work of having to articulate exactly what you want, what it would look like, why you need it so bad, to research the plane fare and look into museum hours. Fingers crossed.

Sunday: Stole another hour for the grant application. Packed brave & lovely Darcie Dennigan’s new book, Madame X, along for the ride, but still haven’t gotten to sink into it. Waiting. Impatient.

—Megan Snyder-Camp

I’m not talking about Nancy Page, the gracious and lovely co-owner of Island Books. I mean that other Nancy, the one girls everywhere love and have admired through dozens of charming picture books. Fancy Nancy just graduated to chapters, and now she’s grown up into Nancy Clancy: Super Sleuth.

There are more than 36 books in the Fancy Nancy series. Nancy gives celebs a run for the money with her over-the-top outfits and posh bedroom. She brings out the side of little girls that loves all things girly and attention-grabbing, from feather boas to high heels. So is she really cut out to be a detective? And will her audience believe in this change of character? Thus far, the consensus is yes. While the chapter book format isn’t nearly as extravagant, girls who grew up with the picture books are devouring Nancy Clancy and appreciating that there is now more to read about their favorite character.

One thing I’ve always liked about the Fancy Nancy books is the way they give parents the opportunity to teach kids bigger words. On the surface these are comedies with an outrageous protagonist, but underneath that, the books glamorize an enlarged vocabulary. Why use “disaster” when you can use an elegant word like “fiasco?” Or “purple” when there’s “fuchsia?”

In all the Fancy Nancy books, the illustrations are a huge part of the magic. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the illustrator, Robin Preiss Glasser, is a former ballerina. There are so many appealing details in the pictures and plenty for readers to discuss. I was worried that energy would be missing from the chapter book, but Glasser is involved in the new book too, and even if the pictures are black and white, the thoughtfulness is still there.

Nancy has been criticized for being self-absorbed, but at the end of the day, she’s a good kid and knows how to apologize when she’s wrong. She’s also industrious and self-reliant, which sets a good example for kids: If you want to be special, all you have to do is make the effort.

—Miriam