Books & Mags

Graceful Exits

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Sumerian Enoch

In the midst of begats and died one name stands out – Enoch. In the Christian Bible book of  Genesis the story is told that “Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him” .
I know that I am not the only one who has wondered about this story. Later in the Bible the story is told of Elijah who was taken up to heaven in a chariot – no mention is made as to what happened to him or Enoch afterwards. Did they die ? Did Enoch live forever ? I don’t think we will ever find the answer to those questions. And don’t even get me started about the Sumerians and the Annunaki ! I am fascinated with something that happens to everyone – everyone dies. Most people don’t like to talk about such a supposedly morbid subject , but I find the topic to be of great interest. One of my favorite stories about the death of anyone is the story of the death of Socrates. I believe that every learned person should take the time to read this story. The story of the death of Socrates that has come down to us is a quick read. Written by Plato the story describes the trial of Socrates and his subsequent death which was brought about by drinking hemlock. Socrates meets his death in a stoic fashion. I can’t remember when I first read the story , but it is one of my favorite stories. Death is fascinating – it is life’s greatest and final mystery – which brings me to the point of this post – two books on the subject that describe the death stories of beings who seem to be much more prepared for death than most. When Socrates took the hemlock he did so with no apprehension of what was to come . He had expressed the notion that in his belief system death was NOT the end. It would have been very nice if Socrates could have come back in another life and elucidated for us the details of his journey from this world to the next and back again. Alas , no one has done so ? Or have they ? My answer to that question will have to wait for a future post as it is not the subject of this particular post . The subjects of this particular post are two books that describe the death events of mystics and masters.

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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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Black Alibi–Best 100 Mysteries of All Time

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Black Alibi— Cornell Woolrich–1942–used

The Leopard Man played on Turner Classic Movies yesterday. It’s a must see, again, film. Atmospheric, and in some parts, downright suspenseful and terrifying, it cannot hold a reader’s breath, the way the original source does, Black Alibi. I’ve proclaimed it before, Cornell Woolrich in all his various nom de plumes is my favorite writer, period. Not just favorite crime writer, but writer, of fiction. Yes, that means I like his work more than Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, Collins, Steinbeck etc.,  ad nauseum. Is he a finer writer? By most standards, probably not. To mine, yes. Because he delivers life at its most frightening, vulnerable, frantic. Hysteria is never far from breaking out in little pustules–here and there–in one of his novels. Fear is attempted to be kept at bay, yet finds its insidious way back into a character’s life, sometimes as an expected guest, others as a stranger wreaking disaster. Black Alibi is a series of  horrific events in separate stories, all part of the larger novel. It begins with U.S. citizens, Jerry Manning, and Kiki Walker finding small success in the South American city of Ciudad Real. Kiki is a headliner entertainer at a local club, and Jerry, her manager. He thinks up a wild idea for publicity, accent on wild. He convinces Kiki to lead a black jaguar into the club for shock and awe, which in turn shocks the jaguar to escape into the night in the city. Each subsequent chapter follows a young woman as she is stalked as prey by what appears to be the missing jaguar. And it’s within these stories Woolrich’s best work is revealed.

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Collecting Modern Library Books

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In the period during which I was working to create a store and open it for business I was asked many times if I would specialize in anything. This is not a question that I spent much time deliberating over. Most of my favorite bookshops have been general interest stores; they tried to find good books of all types, and offer books that fit their customers’ needs.

Still, I now realize that, without consciously intending to, I am in the process of becoming a specialist. It seems obvious now, but as I worked to fill the store I wasn’t aware how powerfully my tastes and interests – my personality – would contour the store’s collection. This is obvious, for example, in how many good history, biography and philosophy books I quickly acquired, and how few good science books I’ve found. As I’ve mentioned before, I have many hundreds of good baseball books; and relatively few on golf or auto racing. But the real specialty that I’ve found, and that I am now embracing, is Modern Library books.

collecting modern library books
Collecting Modern Library

Over the past 20 years, I have bought quite a few Modern Library books. These appeal to me for two chief reasons: they are inexpensive and they are (most of them, at least) the perfect size for a book. There are other good reasons to collect Modern Library books, beginning with the quality of the paper, the overall durability of the bindings, and the design, including the Rockwell Kent endpapers. And the catalogue contains all worthwhile titles, many of which have been forgotten by modern readers and dropped from the current canon of classic literature. But if you are willing to go on a blind date with a book, if it was published by Modern Library, you’ll probably be glad you took a chance.

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When Shipping Costs, Cost a Sale

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I hate paying for shipping. For anything. Psychologically, the seller would be better off charging the shipping within the price, and give ‘free’ shipping, rather than add it on–for me, anyway. I’ve desired a certain Oxalis plant for years. The only online store that sells the bulbs charges so much shipping, I won’t buy them. For three teeny rhizomes, I’m to shell out 10 bucks? Really? So, I deprive myself of that gorgeous plant.

Recently, I finally had to give into my desire for a certain book–well, the illustrations within the book. I’ve never heard of it before–a friend on flickr had scanned plates from it, and it’s weird and quirky enough for me to lust after the book. Problem–I can’t afford the prices being asked for this title. Even though under 100 bucks, that’s still to rich for me at the moment. I knew there was a copy for around 45 dollars out there, and was still listed every time I checked. I finally broke down and decided I had to have it, even though in rather poor condition, and not a first. Another crappy thing–the book is in the UK–not unusual as it was published there. And, I’m guessing, never published in the US. I expect to pay more shipping, logically that would have to be the case. When I checked the shipping price, it seemed very reasonable–I think it was 6 or 7 dollars, as opposed to US regular shipping costs–around 4 or 5. So, I’m  excited. I took the plunge, ordered the book, now to wait for it’s arrival and to drool over the contents–all 16 crazy plates, plus black and whites I’ve never seen. And because the illustrations are so intriguing–I’m going to do the unthinkable–read the book too.

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The Short and Shorter Of It Part 3

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You may be under the illusion that 3 of these articles are  revealing every word, pause, comma, dash to the reader. Not so. Remember, there are 100 Malicious Little Mysteries within, and I’m highlighting only a handful.  It’s unusual for me to enjoy that many short stories within one large volume and because of that–I am forced to share. Don’t blame me, it’s the demand of the universe.

Maxine O’Callaghan provided the biggest surprise in An Insignificant Crime. The story is thin, on the surface. A store owner in the late 1900s is ready to call the authorities finally, and have the well known customer arrested for her habitual shoplifting. His employee  son-in-law keeps at him to drop the idea. Narrated by the employee, he points out that the customer isn’t stealing for money, or in malice, it’s something she apparently has no control of. The son-in-law lays on the line that the customer’s father has a lot of influence in the community, and that the father would not tolerate the humiliation his daughter’s arrest would bring. His argument concludes asking the storekeeper why he doesn’t simply charge the customer’s father’s account, like all the other times?. But his father-in-law is obstinate. The clerk thinks:

“The old fool can’t see beyond the end of his thin quivering nose. He would sacrifice the business and our future, his daughter’s and mine, and feel smugly sanctimonious. And for what? An insignificant little crime that would hurt nobody.”

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Sticks and Bones: Some of the Best Anthropology Books for Non-Anthropologists

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by Jas Faulkner 

I was voted most likely to be eaten by my subjects at WKU anth school.

Many brick and mortar stores ceased to have anthropology sections some time in the mid to late 90s’ .   One of the best anth sections in Nashville outside of the book store at Vanderbilt was at Davis-Kidd.  D-K was an indie that stubbornly provided good books for graduates of  programs at Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State, Vanderbilt and UTK years after the anth sections at the remaining big box stores were relegated to “social science’ shelves or co-opted by the rather academically anemic travel sections.

This is a pity, because most  people either took a single course as an undergraduate elective or had some form of anthropology class on their wish lists and never managed to find the time or an open section.  Those of us who majored in the subject often hear similar responses of regret about missed opportunities during university, especially when it came to working archaeological digs.  I’ll cut to the chase about most teaching digs:  Lying on the ground with a dental pick or a tooth brush while every bit of your body heat leeches into the soil or your backside bakes is not as glamorous as it sounds.  Is it exciting to find you’ve been sitting on top of a habitation site or the rock you’ve been patiently digging around is actually a diagnostic projectile point? Oh, yes it is! I’m

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In Defense of Real Books

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The fables of John Gay

I love books and always have.  I would have a hard time imagining a world without books.  I know that there are societies that still exist that don’t have books and they seem to get along just fine.  I am not an anthropologist and don’t know all of the social ramifications that come about once a society develops the capacity to write things down into book form and to pass that knowledge along to future generations.  Certainly oral story telling and passing down knowledge via oral means has served humanity well and still serves many cultures well , but books seem to be a powerful means of insuring that knowledge is preserved .   I sit looking at a volume of Gay’s Fables published in 1793.  The book is full of stories predate the publication of the book by hundreds of years. We owe a great debt to John Gay for his collecting these stories and preserving them in a format that over 200 years later I can still access.  I have sitting in another room floppy disks that I used with computers just a few short years ago.  I am certain you can still obtain external floppy disk drives, but the information on the disks might no longer be compatible with my Windows 7 operating system.  I don’t have to worry about Gay’s book of fables as long as my eyes can see and even then someone could read the book to me.  This is wonderful !  Another volume that jumps out at me is ” Enchanted Tales of the Atlantic”.  This book was published in 1898 and contains stories about such places as Atlantis and Antilla and Hy – Brasil.  In it you can read tales about Merlin and Sir Lancelot as well as the story of the voyage of St. Brandan.  I can sit for hours and occupy my time reading these stories.  The only operating system I need is the one that I have always had – an inquisitive mind.   I have a great admiration for those people who made books possible – from the ancients who started recording events by drawing on cave walls to the people who hand wrote manuscripts to the people who developed type and to those who developed moveable type.  We all have a debt to those people who handed down stories via oral traditions and to those who eventually wrote down those stories.

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