A New Year

So far, so good.   The holidays passed for us in a pretty low-key fashion.  Everyone always asks if business picks up at Christmas, and though we certainly do get some orders for gifts, mostly we see an increase in sales at the times of school semesters starting, like now.  Sean and I don't really participate in exchanging presents, but I do like to make a collage calendar to give out at New Year's.  Last year we collaborated on a 13-page black and white calendar with a color cover, but this year we didn't get anything so elaborate together in time.  Instead, I just made a one-page color collage with tear-off monthly calendar pages. So now we're going to work on next year's collages throughout the year, instead of at the last minute.  I have to say, I do like how everything's closed and quiet on Christmas and New Year's Day; a nice break from the otherwise constant work and consumerism of our culture.

Reading Notes
I am in the middle of reading Frozen in Time:  The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by Owen Beattie and John Geiger.  This is a book I decided to read because the cover has a pretty gruesome photo of the face of a frozen body from the expedition, the introduction is by Margaret Atwood, and the first few pages were coming out, making it unsaleable anyway-- hence the reading choices of booksellers.  The Franklin Expedition was searching for the Northwest Passage in the 1840's, but all 129 men on the two ships died, most likely from lead poisoning from eating canned food.  Canning was the big new technology for provisioning expeditions and lead poisoning wasn't yet understood.  This book tells the history of the Franklin Expedition and the subsequent investigations by later explorers and anthropologists in the area who attempted to figure out what happened by talking to Inuit Natives and looking for physical evidence-- both of which also indicated that the expedition members resorted to cannibalism in their desperation.

I also re-read a novel by Anita Brookner, Bay of Angels.  Anita Brookner is a writer I like, but her novels are all very similar, usually having to do with an isolated daughter dealing with her parents' aging and death, all told from a very interior monologue.  Not that much happens, except for daily life, yet her writing is absorbing.

 

Book Desire

 Sean and I recently watched a film based on (and named after) Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire, which tells the history of four different plants and how they have evolved with help from humans:  apples, potatoes, marijuana, and tulips.  The premise is that while we think we are so clever at using certain plants for our own benefit, although plants don't "think", they are using us humans for their own advancement, as our desire and cultivation of them has made their propagation successful.  For instance, flowers are desirable to humans because of their beauty.  The most extreme example of flowers' desirability is shown in the tulip craze of 17th century Holland, when a single bulb sold for as much as a house.

We just received an order from a book dealer in the Netherlands for fourteen gardening books.  We sell quite a lot of books going to other countries, probably about a quarter of our sales, but rarely such a nice big stack going to one person, as shipping the books costs almost as much as the books themselves.  It's a good feeling to have a colleague in Holland, land of the tulip and beautiful gardens, choose books from our stock.


Reading Notes
I just read After Dark, a very short novel, by Haruki Murakami.  I had read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a friend.  Both books had a dreamy (in fact, one of the characters in After Dark is asleep), surreal quality and I kept wanting there to be a clear explanation for what was happening, but to no avail.  In After Dark, this dreaminess was juxtaposed with scenes of modern Japanese pop culture:  alienated youth, cell phones (okay, maybe these things aren't particularly Japanese), Denny's (not Japanese), love motels (Japnanese!), convenience stores, motorcycles, names of songs.

I'm also reading The Penguin Anthology of Short Stories by Canadian Women and Moving Targets:  Writing with Intent 1982-2004 by Margaret Atwood, which is a book of occasional pieces, including many book reviews.

RIP Joe, our neighbor

Joe LaMagno, who lived across the alley from the bookstore and who was a daily presence in our neighborhood was murdered just half a block away last week on November 22.  We will miss him.

Joe Dead

Joe with Simone with the crooked paw out at the gate,
Joe talking, yelling at the dogs, plaintive but not demanding,
Joe talking slowly and having his cigarette,
Joe coughing,
Joe, everybody's friend,
Joe of no evil,
Easygoing,
Joe of no complaint,
Joe with the little pipe and the little stash,
Who would suck until his lungs could get no bigger,
Joe in the cap and the coat, huddled,
Joe of no ambition,
Joe of routine, of stationary positioning,
Joe who preferred the alley to the street,
Protector of dogs,
Of chores and trips to the 7-11,
Joe with his long hair and easy laugh,
Friend to Troy and anyone who wanted to chat,
Joe leaning on the street with two dogs pulling,
Joe who would yell but not discipline,
Joe who reserved his enthusiasm,
Joe who would pour water into a dumpster instead of calling 9-11,
Joe who I never saw eat anything,
Whose place I never visited in the ten years I saw him at the back gate,
Joe who was not a gossip but sometimes had news,
Joe who was not optimistic about life,
Who thought about moving back in with his parents and quitting smoking and drinking,
But liked his routine enough to start it again each day,
Who tried indoor baseball but didn't like it too much,
Who was not old but resigned even so,
Who was not a health nut,
Who smoked and coughed and coughed and smoked and coughed and coughed and coughed,
Who appreciated simplicity,
But was complicated enough to know a simple life was not so simple,
Who wouldn't pick a fight,
Who liked getting high,
Friend to beer,
Whose environmental foot print was quite small,
Who never hit the dogs,
Buzzed sometimes but not drunk,
Who did not demand to be greeted,
Who left without a sound,
Phantom Joe,
But visited, or waited in a pall for visitors,
Who was harmless in every way, but to himself,
Who almost everyone liked,
Joe, pretty content,
Of little means and smaller claims,
Who trained Simone to sit in the open gate but not Jake,
Joe who would praise the sky but not complain about it,
Joe lacking bitterness, knowing humility,
Not unhappy,
Who didn't seize life, but cooperated with most of it,
Whose eye was calm if not always focused,
Who didn't want to interfere,
Joe who would like to help out but was no longer strong,
Who never asked for favors,
Never borrowed a buck,
Who let Simone bark for hours in the middle of the night when she pinned a possum beneath the shed,
Because he couldn't catch her,
"She was wild," he said,
Joe who doesn't expect you to be friendly,
But is always friendly himself,
Joe who not everyone is warm to,
Joe on his way to the 7 -11, walking slowly,
Joe dead on the sidewalk,
Passing quickly into death instead of slowly,
By the hand of someone far more unfortunate than him,
Dead Joe,
Dead Joe,
May his smoke linger in the heavens,
His body mix in the soil,
What does it mean Joe,
That we will only know you now
In our minds,
In our hearts,
In ourselves?

-- Sean Carlson

Holiday Craft Sale

Our friends at Petti Rosso Cafe, 1101 East Pike, are having a holiday craft sale this Friday from 2pm to 8pm.  Several of the Petti Rosso staff  and others will be selling their wares:  lampshades, knitted hats, glass lanterns, laptop / ipad / iphone covers, cards,  cookies and candy, and other delightful items.  I will be there selling recycled ex-library blank books and some hand printed cards.  I have a new batch of blank books ready to go, thanks to the help of the marvelous Troy Carlson, who is also Pistil Books' packing and shipping department.  I take apart the books, cut the paper, and choose any pages that may be re-bound with the blank pages.  Troy is the one who binds the blank text block, first with glue, then with a drill and thread, adding headbands (the colorful decoration at top and bottom of spine), and a ribbon bookmark.  Then I re-assemble the blank text block back into the library binding.  I hope anyone reading this in Seattle will stop by and say hello.

Reading Notes
I just finished another past issue of Granta magazine with the theme  "Women and Children First", which had a horrific account of the inside of a refugee camp in Rwanda, "The Problem Outside" by Linda Polman.  I'm also reading a collection of short stories called Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry, set in an apartment complex in Bombay.  I had previously read Mistry's great novel, A Fine Balance.

Bread for books

I like to barter.  Over the years we've traded books for movie tickets, coffee, picture framing, artwork, restaurant gift certificates, admission to plays, and bread.  Pistil has a baker friend who arrives at our door each week on his bike and delivers his handmade whole-grain nutty bread to us in return for book credit which he uses to purchase advanced chess books.  I've never played chess, but I know from his description to look for books with a lot of notation.  This bread-for-books scheme is a natural one, since "bread" and "dough" are slang terms for money.

Speaking of dough, a recent acquisition which may end up in The Museum of Weird Books is a bright orange scholarly volume by Steve Penfold called, The Donut:  A Canadian History.  Although I've visited British Columbia, our close neighbor, regularly, I had never realized that the donut is Canada's national food.  The epigraph of this book states, "For the historian, there are no banal things."--Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command:  A Contribution to Anonymous History. 

Reading Notes
I've been pretty busy reading since my last post, finishing four books.  Today I read The Bear's Embrace:  A True Story of Surviving a Grizzly Bear Attack by Patricia Van Tighem, from start to finish.  It is one of those books with suspense built right in, since you know from the very title what terrible thing is going to happen, and the first page describes the narrator heading out to a hike on a beautiful autumn day with her husband.  The ordinariness of their trip contrasted with the dreadfulness of what follows creates an engrossing tension from page one.  The book is not only about the bear attack itself, but about the lifelong consequences:  living with facial disfigurement, constant infections and surgeries, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and depression.  It's a powerful, well-written, story, and a good reminder of how much chance, luck, and randomness drastically shape our lives, for better and for worse.

I've also read a novel, a book of short stories, and a non-fiction book about one of my favorite activities, walking:  Nothing is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn by Alice Mattison; Dimanche and Other Stories by Irene Nemirovsky, and The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson.

Filthy in a box

Over the course of the summer, our cat, Filthy, has been transformed from a scaredy-cat mostly indoors pampered white fluffy kitty into a mostly outside rough and tough, no longer terrified of raccoons, beast who spends much of his time in the front yard, sleeping in his basket or hiding in the grass.   His indoor time has moved into the bookstore, as is appropriate for a literary type such as he is (he especially enjoys climbing onto your chest for a drool fest if you're on the couch trying to read a book).  Sean didn't like Filthy sleeping in his chair in the bookstore, though, for some reason not appreciating sitting in a layer of cat hair.  So since he's been banished from the office chairs, Filthy has been restlessly scouting around for a new place to dream of chasing mice, resolutely ignoring the cushion and fuzzy towel I placed on the floor for him.  Today he decided a box newly emptied of books was the perfect bed.

Last week we went to the Moore Theatre to see a screening of the film I Am Secretly an Important Man, a documentary about a local poet and musician, Steven Jesse Bernstein, who performed in Seattle in the eighties, often opening for various grunge bands.  A really funny clip of  Jesse Bernstein being featured on a local television news program after being voted best poet in Seattle by Seattle Weekly (not exactly a bastion of alternative culture) readers opens the film, with the carefully coiffed anchorwoman asking the heavily bespectacled and tattooed-knuckled Bernstein how he would describe his poetry and him replying, "dark."   Although dark it is, his work is often humorous, and can be heard on the Sub Pop album, Prison, with music recorded by Steve Fisk.  A lot of longtime Seattle artists were featured in the film, and many were in the audience.  Left Bank Books collective, who published a book of Bernstein's poetry, More Noise, Please!, in 1996 was tabling in the lobby. 

Reading Notes
I started reading Larry's Party by Carol Shields, but quit about half way through.  I thought it was pretty boring to begin with - the main character was a male florist who becomes obsessed with building hedge mazes, and the story followed his romantic and family life.  But Shields' habit of repeating not very interesting bits of biographical information drove me to quit reading.  I'm not sure what purpose the repetition was supposed to serve, but I found it very annoying.  I'm a bit disappointed, because I was hoping to like Carol Shields just for being a Canadian woman writer, since I'm quite fond of Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Mavis Gallant.

Evil Megalisters

One of the more frustrating and disturbing developments in the online bookselling business in the past couple of years has been the rise (or more accurately, the race to the bottom) of "megalisters."  These are companies that buy books in large quantities--one method they have for acquiring books at library sales is to send in groups of scanner-wielding employees with no book knowledge to scan bar codes and buy the books their device tells them too-- or the megalisters collect donated books by touting their supposed green stance.  They then handle and list their books in the most automated method possible, treating books like widgets, using pricing bots that undercut each other until books sell for the minimum (one dollar on Abebooks and one cent on Amazon) and giving no description of what they're selling except a blanket disclaimer, using "may" and "can".  Here are some examples of megalisters' so-called descriptions:

Paperback. Book Condition: Good. Good: Typical used book. All pages and cover intact (including dust cover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting. Occasionally these may be former library books. Overall you will be surprised at how good our used books are. We just want to remind you that this is a used book. Satisfaction Guaranteed!.

Book Condition: Used. 4th Edition. 4th Edition-Inventory subject to prior sale. Used items have varying degrees of wear, highlighting, etc. and may not include supplements such as infotrac or other web access codes. Expedited orders cannot be sent to PO Box. 

Paperback. Book Condition: Acceptable. Acceptable: may have one or all of the following; light corner bends, scuff marks, edge chipping, may have name written on inside title page and or, missing DJ, some light damage to binding, writing or highlighting on pages, possible light water stains.  

Event Coming Up
Paul Constant, the book editor of The Stranger, is hosting "Get Lit":

It's time yet again for Get Lit, the twice-yearly bookseller, librarian, and book-lover's happy hour! This is an opportunity for book-minded people to hang out, drink, and talk shop about books in a casual setting. Suggested topics this time: Freedom, Jodi Picoult's Freedom backlash, whether Seattle needs a Bookfest, and any interesting gossip you may have heard at PNBA this year. We'll be meeting in a reserved upstairs room at a nice bar just to the east of downtown, The Living Room. It features comfy chairs, stiff drinks, and no television. Hooray!

So here's the skinny, highlighted for your convenience. 

6 pm until whenever. Sunday October 17th.

The Living Room—1355 E Olive Way Seattle, WA 98122—(206) 708-6021

Save the date! And please forward this e-mail to anyone you think might be interested. Get Lit is all about having a fun, laid-back, inclusive time. Literally: The more the merrier.

Reading Notes
I just finished reading Postcards, and I feel like I'm done with E. Annie Proulx for some time.  Her writing is somewhat literary, but it's also quite trashy and sensationalistic (this book had a whole chapter describing shotgun suicides, for instance).  I think it's a matter of what you like to read, but I get bored with such melodrama fairly quickly.  I also read Changing Places by David Lodge.  This was set in the sixties (and written in the seventies); about a British English professor and an American English professor who exchange universities for the academic year.  It's a comedy and a slice of the times, full of swinging chicks, student protests, and the like.  Fairly amusing, and fluffy.