Shakespeare and Co. Booksellers

First off, I would agree with at least three of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2008: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust; Unaccustomed Earth, by the masterful Jhumpa Lahiri; and The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (a very scary book), by Jane Mayer. All but two or three of the 10 we have carried and sold at one time or another.

I loved Lahiri’s new book, but my favorite fiction pick of the year is still Deb Olin Unferth’s Vacation (McSweeney’s; $22.00), partly because it brings with it the thrill of discovery, but mostly because Ms. Unferth is so blazingly talented as a writer. And it’s not that Unferth’s writing calls attention to her talent, because of course it does not. (I much prefer it when the writer proceeds unassumingly and I (the reader) call my own damn attention to the writing if I choose to.) What’s the book about? Watch the trailer!

Read Esquire’s review here. Vacation is IN STOCK.

Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff (Doubleday; $22.95) reached seemingly new, or at least rare and dazzling, levels of depravity in fiction. It’s great, grim, grimmace-inducing stuff, sometimes awful enough to make you erupt laughing — but you do need to take a break every thirty pages or so to let it drain off. (I had this experience lending out Don Robertson’s The Ideal, Genuine Man; with that one, most people simply could not handle it or didn’t want to; too much graphically rendered, terrible shit going on.) But Pollock writes vividly. This stuff is jaw-droppingly violent but somehow perversely enjoyable, kind of like watching someone not only bang his knee on a coffee table but also fall into the corner of a wall and hit his head and bleed like hell. Holy shit! You can’t believe what’s happening. Check out the opening story about a trip to the Drive In, where a father picks a fight in the Men’s room while his seven-year-old son looks on. That’s kind of how it goes in this book, only it gets worse. A lot worse. The hardcover of Knockemstiff is still available, but we’re going to say don’t miss this one in paperback (it’s due in March).

Here’s something new and wonderful: The New Annotated Dracula, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger (W.W. Norton; $39.95). Awesome! Oh, this one is a prize. It must be seen to be believed. More than simply a gift, it is like an entire world illuminated between covers. As Neil Gaiman writes in his introduction, “Dracula is a book that cries out for annotation.” He’s right, and the amount of research that must have gone into this volume is staggering. Along with Graham Rawle’s The Wizard of Oz this is one of the best gift books on the fiction side. If you’re going to blow some dough on a hardcover, why not get something unusual? This is it.

Coming up next: Patricia Pearson, William Davies King, and I go on again about Matt Taibbi.