Sunday’s New York Times featured an article about the diminished literary scene in Manhattan, highlighted by the loss of bookstores – all of some three dozen bookshops on what was once Book Row (Fourth Avenue between Eighth and 14th Street) are now gone. But what I found interesting was the connection between a community’s literati and its bookstores. Writers, it seems, rely on a network of common hangouts (bars, hotels, restaurants and bookstores) to interact with other writers, or at least those who are interested in writing. Here in Pittsboro, I’ve been surprised – amazed really – by how many of the visitors to Circle City Books over its first two months have been writers. Many self-published, some still agent and publisher shopping, some who’ve already fought their way into the business and now just need to write, but all illustrative of the symbiotic relationship writers have with places like mine. Today a writer from Brooklyn came by and we talked at length about his project – a history of a strike at a nearby wood mill. I don’t know how he found my store, but I guess there is an unmistakable scent that attracts practicing wordsmiths.
Nicholas Sparks burst onto the literary scene in 1996 with his novel The Notebook. He is a classic case of the ten year in the making overnight success. The Notebook was actually his fourth book – though the first two novels were never published and the third was a little noticed, co-written, self-help book. His … Read more
I was surprised when I realized I hadn’t yet written a synopsis for this classic well-known title. Well-known if like me, you love Hitchcock and/or read mysteries. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” should be in the collective unconscious by now! If you’ve never read those lines, or heard Joan Fontaine speak them at the beginning of the film of the same name, you are among the few, and are in for a fantastic treat. Rebecca is titled for a dead woman, one that controls most of the action within the book–from the grave. A Gothic of the best form, it’s plot served as the outline for countless imitations to come. I think as a pre teen I may have read them all. The general plot line for those that try to capture the haunting lure of the original revolves around a woman meeting a mysterious handsome man and after a whirlwind romance of usually a week or so, hastily marries and is swiftly transported to a) the family manse, b) a castle on a cliff also the family manse, c) a terrifying hunk of a mansion, also the family manse, or d) a monstrosity of a house in a wilderness of the moors, sea cliff, or island, also the family manse. There his hostile family await, perhaps an ex-lover or two, a brooding brother, who may or may not be more handsome, and a housekeeper of seething emotions. And, most important, some former lover, or wife of the new husband has died mysteriously–perhaps at his hands!
Practically every best list has this title on it. There’s a reason why. It’s that good, obviously, but also because it makes the case for the innocence of King Richard III who down through history has been accused of smothering his two royal nephews to death in the Tower of London. Shakespeare wrote a play with him as villain, hunchbacked to boot. But many historians feel poor Richard as been maligned, as did Ms. Tey. Her protagonist, Alan Grant, a Scotland Yard detective is bored to tears after breaking his leg and laid up in hospital. A friend brings a portrait of King Richard and Alan, on the basis of nothing more than the physiology of the portrait’s subject, decides Richard must be innocent of the crimes he has been accused.
[Editor’s Note: As you know – the More Bookshops the Better has been a pretty steady sentiment on this blog – so in hopes of seeing a new one pop up in Nuneaton, UK we’ll help Michael get the word out and keep his enthusiasm pumping.]
In March 2011, after visiting a local town, I came to the realisation that where I live, Nuneaton, UK, lacked a significant element of Culture. Nuneaton is actually the home town of George Eliot so you’d think that there would be masses of bookshops but alas, there is the large chain-store Waterstones and approximately 19 charity shops. Every month a large chain store was closing and the building being replaced by charity shops. I posted a blog on my own website www.barricadesrise.co.uk stating my frustration and how someone should start a bookshop or gallery or something. The idea festered in me until I decided one day that, yes, that person is me. After finding out my wife and I were expecting though, I scrapped the idea, until Easter this year. I researched it, researched it then researched some more. I had savings, mounds of books and desire but my stopping point was my job. After a change in job roles I decided (and was ordered by my wife!) to quit it and focus 100% on the bookshop, so I did!
As I sit staring at my screen, it occurred to me how for granted I take the advent of the computer in my life. Up until the late 90s, I didn’t own a computer. I couldn’t type, still can’t, but I fake it. I don’t understand how a computer works, could never write whatever it … Read more
Every book feels like an unopened door. Every page turned is another step that could lead to high adventure or bittersweet romance or tutelage in a Platonic cave of our own making. This is why it is so important to keep reading and also why there are books that we may, for whatever reason, decide to revisit.
All kinds of circumstances can precipitate picking up a book that may no longer serve the function it once did, but still serves as a memorial touchstone. Where were you when you read Old Yeller? What music was playing when you were in the book shop when you first picked up a copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Colour of Magic? Sometimes you can remember and sometimes it’s a trick of the mind.
You might have picked up the book because you wanted to be seen picking up the book, only too conscious of the music and whoever else happened to be wandering around and might see you with evidence of your intellectual acumen conveniently in hand. Other times, the music fell away, the odd sweet stink of the incense from the
Last week I reflected on the expertise I’ve been extracting from my customers. Lately, though, it’s been my counsel that’s in demand. Christmas is the time when people realize how little they know about their loved ones, at least in so far as in pegging them for a gift. So, naturally, they come to me for sage gift advice. I was asked today to provide for a Californian a recommended book that most embodies the essence of North Carolina. I first assured him that no such book existed, but then got down to making the best of a fool’s errand.
“Living or dead?” I asked.
“What’s the difference?”
“The living ones publish more frequently.”
“I mean, would it matter in choosing the book?”
It makes a great difference. The essential North Carolina book today is nothing like the essential North Carolina book of the 1950s, and farther still from the essential North Carolina book of the 1920s,
Me Talk Pretty One Day by Sedaris
which, for instance, would be “Look Homeward, Angel,” by Thomas Wolfe, or “In Abraham’s Bosom,” by Paul Green. A hundred years ago Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman,” might be the book you would choose to reflect the soul of the state. North Carolina literature today is just as likely to be set in a suburb, as in the dusty, sweltering tobacco fields of the rural old south. North Carolina characters today have gay friends and travel abroad; they buy vegan falafels and drink beer that wasn’t made in a bath tub. I ended up recommending a Lee Smith novel, “Cakewalk,” but I could have chosen David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and I wouldn’t have been wrong.
Later, I was asked by a woman to help find a book for her 15 year-old grandson. I asked the standard question: “What does he like?” (as prescribed in the “Idiot’s Guide to Bookselling,”), but she admitted, forlornly, that she really didn’t know. “He lives so far away, I hardly see him,” she confessed. I knew right away that I had the ideal book. First, before I reveal my choice, I need to assure you that I know perfectly well that it is impossible to guess what book someone you don’t really know will like. It’s hard enough to pick a book for someone you know well. And even if you were able to guess what book might be enjoyed, that’s just half the battle. The most perfectly chosen book won’t do anyone any good if the recipient can’t be induced to start reading it. Do you have any idea how many swell book spines have gone uncracked by apparently enthusiastic birthday boys and girls? A lot. The book not only has to be good; it has to look good and sound good, too. And even then, if the reader isn’t in the right mood, he may give it up after five pages, before the story really starts to hum. It’s not easy to get someone to read what you want them to read! Then again if this sort of help didn’t interest me I would have set up a shop to rent textbooks.
