Good Time for a Civil War Display

Because I spend so much time brainstorming about how to  find good books to put on the shelves I sometimes forget about the importance of crappy books (to use an idiom common in the trade). Today my first customer came in search of “Vanna Speaks,” which, as you all know, failed to win a Pulitzer in 1989, and is today rarely found within Ivy League curricula. My customer bought the book when it came out all those years ago, but foolishly lent it to an unreliable friend and never saw it again. She was hoping to replace the lost copy that she had once enjoyed so much and, thusly, is a consumer of multiple copies of this book. Sadly, I didn’t have one for her, but I was able to learn how she had come to be such a loyal reader: she thought it was a great job, Vanna White’s assistantship on Wheel of Fortune, and wanted to know how it all happened. Recently she met the now 50-plus year-old letter-turner and was reminded how impressive she seemed back then, and still is. This online review of the book accentuates its lasting merit: “Turns letters, writes books, does sit ups – I LOVE HER!!!”

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The Hannah Interview

by Jas Faulkner 

Sam was laughing when I answered the phone.

“Open your email,” she said. “it’s not one of those screamie video things, I promise.”

Suffering for your art? Hannah knows better. She has  already figured out having written is better than writing.

It was a picture of a hand printed sign that taped to the front door of the store with a My Little Pony sticker.  It read: “Book sighing at the back of the store.  Free cookies with book.”

Tab’s niece, Hannah, was staying with her favourite aunts and it looked like she was back in business.  Whenever Hannah’s parents work took them out of town, Hannah packed her suitcase, filled an old knitting bag with her latest sketchbook, lozenge paints, brushes and her latest journal and supplies for her guinea pig, Darla Hood, Darla’s cage and carrier and head over to her aunts.  She found her parents’ penchant for digging up stuff to be tedious and preferred the glamourous world of books.

However, she was having none of this retail or struggling author stuff.  Her goals were twofold: she wanted to reopen Meg Ryan’s bookstore from “You’ve Got Mail” and she wanted to be a rich and famous writer of books with purple covers.  For those of you playing at home, Hannah is precocious eight-year-old.

“We had a signing last Friday.”

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The End For An Historic Library?

Sometimes it takes the threat of an important part of life being taken away, to realize it exists in the first place. That’s how it felt when I googled The Mount Holly Library and Lyceum, and realized I was eligible to take out a card and borrow books. It’s open to all who live in Burlington County, NJ. At least for the moment. Because this historic body, the fifth oldest in the state, is threatened with closure in the New Year if funds are not forthcoming. The local newspaper, The Burlington County Times,  alerted residents to the possibility of closure by January 1 in today’s edition. Alicia McShulkis, vice president of the Mount Holly board of trustees said that unless someone has some ideas for funding, the library can no longer subsist. The director of the library, Michael Eck believes they have a small window still, and they wouldn’t close until “later in the year” but “without township support, we aren’t going to make it.”

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Suicidal Heroines

Crushed by steel wheels.

Anna Karenina has been made into a film. Again. I’m not certain how many times this new production makes, but in my opinion, it’s too many times. There is a finite

Drug overdose.

amount of women committing suicide as a legitimate solution to their problems, I can take. Romanticizing the taking of one’s existence is ingrained into society’s fabric. If the people doing it are beautiful and in many cases helpless women. Greta Garbo standing on the edge of the railroad platform ready to dive, may seem like a

dramatic and tragic ending, but in fact, if viewers were to see her remains after said train’s vicious steel wheels crushed her beautiful face to pulp, and her gorgeous costumes were clotted with skin, bone, and brain matter, how romantic would her death then seem? Sure, she had abandoned her child and husband for a lover who then tosses her aside. And the punishment for those sins in that period of history? Social disgrace, maybe even being thrown on the streets with nothing. But why must the cost of a woman’s independence in the books of that era, always seem to be death?

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The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Best 100 Mysteries of All time

 

Pulp paperback version who lists Hopley as author, and then claims another Woolrich pen name as the real author.

The Night Has a Thousand EyesGeorge Hopley–(Cornell Woolrich)–1948–IP

Of  the numerous novels of suspense Woolrich has written and I’ve read, The Night Has a Thousand Eyescaused the most tense and angst filled moments. The uneasy

The younger Cornell Woolrich.

reality of a Woolrich novel is the knowledge that the conclusion of the story can go either way. A relentless dark hopeless story can end miraculously, or tragically. The reader is unaware of which will prevail until nearly the last words. The journey to the conclusion can be nerve shattering in intensity. In the instance of this novel, it haunted me, and now that I’m rethinking, it still does. It’s a novel of predestination, of a lack of control over life and death, of hope that ekes along, but barely.

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John The Eunuch and Mary Reed, Eric Mayer–10 Questions

Ancient history is not a strong suit of mine. I enjoy it, especially when served up with mysterious mayhem and murder. Still, not having indulged in Mary Reed and Eric Mayer’s highly regarded series of John The Eunuch, I almost felt at a loss as to what questions I could ask. A little research into the books  helped, and the husband and wife writing duo’s detailed answers are filled with all the atmosphere, style, and  history one could possibly need to get started and delve into their work.

The series protagonist is John the Eunuch, Emperor Justinian’s Lord Chamberlain. Set in the Byzantine 6th century Roman Empire, real and fictional characters appear side by side and for those of us who know nothing about that period, an entire new world will open up! The series has received numerous starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, was a finalist for the IPPY Best Mystery Award, nominated for the Bruce Alexander History Mystery Award, the American Library Association’s Booklist Magazine named the Lord Chamberlain novels as one of its four Best Little Known Series. and was nominated multiple times and won the Glyph Award from Arizona Book Publishing Association for Best Book Series. So, take a trip to another time and world with Mary and Eric.

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Victoria Woodhull and The Historically Invisible 51 Per Cent

I heard the name of Victoria Woodhull  in a specialized course, History of American Women, in college. My college years are considered pre-historic, and as such, you would have thought by now everyone  would be not only aware of women who were movers and shakers in our past, but they’d be required study–or–like white males, just plain studied. No, of course not. 40 years more or less didn’t bring both sexes and various ethnic people into the discourse. History still belongs to those who write it and apparently those who write it are white males–or, and I have nothing to back this up except ignorance displayed by the younger among us,  current history books and courses  aren’t current in the sense of inclusion, but in edition number.  When I was in grade and high school, the only women  that had anything to do with our country’s beginnings consisted of one who mythically sewed a flag, and another who served water on the battlefield–oh, and one president’s wife saved some portraits when the White House burned. Betsy Ross’s house is nearby in Philly, and although the story is discredited time and again, the fantasy lives on. Molly Pitcher is immortalized in a touching way–one of the New Jersey Turnpike’s rest stops bears her name. And Dolly Madison churns out ice cream. That’s it, they are the sum total of women who existed with a contribution to our country’s emergence. And if you notice–their notoriety is contained within the domestic arena.

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