Books & Mags

Q & A with Jasper Fforde

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From our friends at Viking Books, Mr. Fforde on his latest book Shades of Grey which will be coming out on December 29, 2009 Q.  What is National Color? A. National Color is the Chromatic elite who supply the synthetic hues available—at a price—to the citizens.  Although one might be Red and never able to … Read more

Books in plain brown wrappers

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Once upon a time, if you wanted a “certain kind of book” you had to go to a certain kind of shop or order from a catalog and wait for a package in a plain brown wrapper to arrive.  With the internet, the doors have been thrown wide open and people can find any kind of book they want and have it delivered to them… for a price.  And the price for vintage erotica is often VERY high for a tiny little paperback in awful condition.

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A Bookshop on St. Catherine Street

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Every weekday morning, as I walk my two children to kindergarten, we pass a bookshop. The bookshop is a small independent establishment that sells new, mainly paperback books. The neighbourhood is scruffy verging on run-down, but the bookshop’s location must be the envy of many a potential bookseller…

The Perfect Pair

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…Yet, sitting down with War and Peace or Madam Bovary can feel intimidating. Not everyone has the option of a book club or a literature class. One answer–pair classics with modern literature and create a literary dialogue between the two books.

$10.00 for a Bag of Books

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This was just sent in by longtime reader Paul Young. If you happen to be in the Plainville, Mass area you can get yourself a bagful of books for $10.00. http://massachusetts.inetgiant.com/plainvillema/AdDetails/HUGE-GOING-OUT-OF-BUSINESS-SALE-10-A-BAG-OVER-25-000-BOOKS-TO-CHOOSE-FROM/2373490 SECOND LOOK BOOKS 168 SOUTH STREET PLAINVILLE, MA 02762

Great Books and Banned Books (yes it still happens!)

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Walking through Latitude 33, a bookstore in Laguna Beach, CA, I noticed all of my favorite display tables–NYT bestsellers, Indie Next choices, staff picks–and then one that caused me to stop: “Books Bought for their Cover.”  I picked up and looked at each book wondering, what is attractive about this cover?  I bought Modern American … Read more

Archipelago Books and reading Great Translated Books

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shakespeare&coLast fall, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary to the Swedish Academy that picks the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, created quite a stir when he called the US “too insular” because we don’t translate enough works “and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”  He described our ignorance as “restraining.”  Statistically, he’s correct, only about 3% of the books published in the United States are translated works.  While I didn’t think much of Mr. Engdahl’s comment, I thought of it again when I was stunned by beauty of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery and wondered what I was missing.  I discovered that I’m missing a lot.

On the other blog I write for, Bookstore People, we’re hosting a summer series called Translated Tuesdays.  Every Tuesday we review a translated book and we’ve discovered a new world of reading.  One of my favorite publishers is Archipelago Books, a non-profit press dedicated to publishing translated books.  Three Percent chose Archipelago Books’ Tranquility, written by Attila Bartis and translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein, as the winner of its 2009 Best Translated Book Winner.  I reviewed The Waitress is New, by Dominque Fabre and translated from the French by Jordan Stump, and felt like I carried the main character Pierre in my head for days after reading it.  The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker and translated by David Colmer, received great reviews and is rising to the top of the TBR pile. I’ve enjoyed Archipelago Books so much that I subscribed to the fall series.

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