News & Opinions

Our writers have been around books for a long time and are never shy to share their opinions…

Laughing All The Way To The Remainder Table

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Look on the lighter side? Tardar Sauce would rather not, thank you.

William Zinsser once described the humour section of any given bookshop as the most depressing place in the world to contemplate the state of arts and letters.  When Zinsser wrote that essay in 1966, much of the humour section consisted of anthologies of comic strips, bound editions of comic book story arcs, and ‘ slight parodies based on trends that were long on booger jokes and bathroom humour  and short on actually literary merit.

With the advent of National Lampoon as an outlet for humour writers who had outgrown their incubation space at Harvard and other college-based humour magazines, trade paperbacks featuring cartoons and parodies began to scoot Charlie Brown and Pogo Possum to the edges of the shelves.

The 1970s’ was a time when the elevation as the comic and humourist from a gadfly observing from the edges to an icon and spokesperson made a significant impact on pop culture.  Situation comedies centered around comedians (rather than entertainers who do comedy) began to dominate the network schedules, especially in a culture that had wearied of titillation and violence as prime time mainstays.   The close of the decade saw NBC’s Saturday Night Live , with its Second City alumni-heavy cast peppered with contributions from the BBC’s Monty Python crew  dominate and reshape the genre in television, cinema, and print.

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The End For An Historic Library?

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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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Victoria Woodhull and The Historically Invisible 51 Per Cent

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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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Gifts of the Earth: Vegan and Vegetarian Cookbooks

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by Jas Faulkner

A quick note here, since I have received some questions about this: It’s no accident that many of the books on these lists are older. My purpose is twofold.  I want to point readers to books they might have missed and booksellers, especially resellers, to books that might move off the display table .  The genres I’ve chosen are those I read, enjoy and refer to fairly frequently. 

Before we take a look at this week’s list, let’s consider the supposed audience for vegan and vegetarian cookbooks.  People who choose to live exclusively on plant-based nutrition have gotten a bad rap over the last half-century.  They are the target of ridicule by celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsey and in day to day life they have to dodge and weave around the stereotypes.

The stereotypes.  Do we even want to go there?  Alas, they do exist, those mental images of underfed, pasty, testy, self-righteous types who glare the plates containing a cut of something that once mooed, baahed, oinked, or clucked.  Those Birkenstock and hemp sock wearing culinary pharisees are enough to scare anyone away from the vegetarian shelves in the cookbook section.  This is a pity, especially when so many otherwise good general cookbooks tend to go light on the sides and veggie main courses unless they’re heavy on the starch, fat, and salt.

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A Little Too Embedded

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When does getting close to your biographical subject become too close for the subject’s wife? Or husband, if that ever happens–you know–a 60 some year old female has her 30 some year old biographer fall for her?  Yeah, right, you hear about it all the time–an older woman who has power is simply irresistible to the opposite sex, even if in her 6th decade. Writing a bio for the opposite sex shouldn’t lead TO sex–how often does this happen? Have there been other examples of two collaborators finding their time spent together turning into something other than reminiscences on a page? All In: The Education of General David Petraeus is a first for me–I’ve not encountered this concept before. Unless I’m woefully uninformed and it happens all the time. But here’s my question–what exactly did Paula Broadwell write? Because she didn’t do the book alone–another name is on the dust jacket–Vernon Loeb. Who is Vernon Loeb?  I checked what other books he may have written, and seems as though he co-authored another bio–King’s Counsel with Jack O’Connell, O’Connell’s name in larger letters– about war and diplomacy in the Middle East.  So–Vernon is the ghostwriter? A ghostwriter for the ghostwriter?–no, Petraeus isn’t pretending to have written his autobiography, Ms. Broadwell is pretending to have written his bio? Why was she chosen to write the book to begin with–especially if she needed someone else to dot the i’s and cross the t’s for her? After writing the above, I found a news story that contends Mr. Loeb had no clue anything was going on between subject and pseudo biographer. at the time.

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The Rube At The Carnival of Politics

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It’s not enough that 24 hour news stations have little armies of a single point of view, there are talking heads that ‘write’ full of sound and fury, signifying nothing and are paid to do so. These so called political pundits make it their life’s work to polarize as many US citizens as possible. Are they really zealots for a cause? Does Ann Coulter, Russ Limbaugh, Keith Obermann, Bill O’Reilly believe their scorching opinions disguised as facts? Or have they hit upon a way to aggrandize themselves, inflate their already bursting egos, and revel in what they believe is power? It seems as though every month a new title on either political side is released blasting one individual or party for the demise of  the democracy we as Americans believe  have ‘inalienable rights’ to. And, people pay money to buy them. In droves. I understand that the amount of books sold of one egomaniac only represents a small portion of the entire population–but apparently those portions control the rest of us–or so these pundits like us to believe. And I do believe. I do believe that there is a segment of every country on earth, whose common sense and ability to stand on their own principals and ideals and not be swayed by the loudest most outrageous of talkers, exists.

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All Tied Up In A Bow

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by Jas Faulkner

writer’s note: Abject apologies to Diane.  This is late and I am sorry. 

The email -the second this month asking me about  hockey books- came from Sam and Tab.  Someone brought in copies of “Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask” and “Shooting Stars: Photographs of the Portnoy Collection at the Hockey Hall of Fame” and wanted to know if I thought they had a chance of selling them.  In “God, Flag, and Football” country that Mississippi can be, I told them to get them for their own enjoyment while they’re at work and hope someone from Southaven, current home of the River Kings, might take an interest and buy them.  Neither of the girls are particularly interested in hockey, but both love sports photography and these books have some shots that would be assessed as gorgeous by anyone who loves looking at beautifully composed pictures.

Even though the two books Sam asked about are thoroughly researched and well written, it brings to mind the fact that , as we get closer to the biggest gift buying and giving time of the year in North America, a whole section of books that are meant to be seen and not heard- er- read will make an appearance on sales tables at brick and mortar stores all over the continent.

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