Shakespeare and Co. Booksellers

[p. 103] Galaxies also shrink, on these very long timescales.  This is partly because they lose energy through gravitational radiation, which has a trivial effect on any human timescale but adds up over trillions of years.  They also shrink because of encounters between stars in which one star gains energy and is ejected into intergalactic space, while the other loses energy and falls into a tighter orbit around the galactic centre.  In the same way, clusters of galaxies will shrink, and eventually both individual galaxies and clusters of galaxies will fall into supermassive black holes built up by this process.

- John Gribbin

Galaxies: A Very Short Introduction

(Oxford; $11.95) In stock and in paperback.

Two Paperbacks and One Hardcover:

Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963 – 1975, by Patrick Rosenkranz ($34.99)

A comprehensive guide to the history of comics with photos, stills and of course, comic strips. A beautiful, vibrant book with glossy pages, always a plus.

Built By Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World, by Bill Steen, Athena Steen and Eiko Komatsu ($50.00)

This hardcover from Gibbs Smith, Publisher is well worth the hefty price if traditional architecture is an interest. With gorgeous photographs from all around the world, this collection undoubtedly breaks the visual mold of suburban tract housing.

He’s a Stud and She’s a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, by Jessica Valenti ($13.95)

“My favorite show when I was a kid was She-Ra. My sister and I used to fight over who got to be ‘princess of power.’ Like, physically. I think that little girls are always attracted to strong women and girl characters – probably because we’re not given all that many to choose from. For me it was Anne of Green Gables and Ramona Quimby. Though it was a close call between them and Gem; I so wanted to be a rockstar.”

From the jacket copy of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed (Walker; $25.99):

Soon we wiil be able to say about old Beijing that… “what emperors, warlords, Japanese invaders, and Communist planners couldn’t eradicate, the market economy has,”. Nobody has been more aware of this than Michael Meyer. A longtime resident, Meyer has, for the past two years, lived as no other westerner-in a shared courtyard home in Beijing’s oldest neighborhood, Dazhalan, on one of its famed hutong (lanes). There he volunteered to teach English at the local grade school and immersed himself in the community, recording with affection the life stories of the Widow, who shares his courtyard; co-teacher Miss Zhu and student Little Liu; and the migrants Recycler Wang and Soldier Liu; among the many others who, despite great differences in age and profession, make up the fabric of this unique neighborhood.

Their bond is rapidly being torn, however, by forced evictions as century-old houses and ways of life are increasingly destroyed to make way for shopping malls, the capital’s first Wal-Mart, high-rise buildings, and widened streets for cars replacing bicycles. Beijing has gone through this cycle many times, as Meyer reveals, but never with the kind of dislocation and overturning of its storied culture now occurring as the city prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

NOW IN STOCK.

Don’t we all know someone like this?

Morton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the office of his newspaper, had at times, during the day, to make up for it, a sense, or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with which he was not infrequently to be met in different parts of the town at moments when men of business are hidden from the public eye. More than once during the present winter’s end he had deviated toward three o’clock, or toward four, into Kensington Gardens, where he might for a while, on each occasion, have been observed to demean himself as person with nothing to do. He made his way indeed, for the most part, with a certain directness over to the north side; but once that ground was reached his behavior was noticeably wanting in point. He moved, seemingly at random, from alley to alley; he stopped for no reason and remained idly agaze; he sat down in a chair and then changed to a bench; after which he walked out again, only again to repeat both the vagueness and the vivacity. Distinctly he was a man either with nothing at all to do or with ever so much to think about; and it was not to be denied that the impression he might often thus easily make had the effect of causing the burden of proof in certain directions to rest on him. It was a little the fault of his aspect, his personal marks, which made it almost impossible to name his profession.

– Henry James
The Wings of the Dove (Penguin Classics; $11)

The Snoring Bird: My Family’s Journey Through A Century of Biology, by Bernd Heinrich.  Now in paperback, IN STOCK (Harper, $15.95)

“The rattraps and insect nets were more important than anything else we owned; of all the treasures Papa could have brought from Borowke, he had been lucky or full of foresight (or both) to bring them. For him they were basic living equipment–the way a toothbrush might be for others. He used them now in the Hahnheide to run trap lines for small mammals. The specimen skins could be stuffed and sold to the museum in New York, the bodies fried and eaten by us. I now own one of these traps–it must be almost a century old. I still use it occasionally, and it is one of my prized mementoes.”