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Compliments

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags , on 26 November, 2008 by Jenna

Two new paperbacks we have IN STOCK, would make a great pair to read back to back, or simultaneously.

youngstalinIn western Georgia, [Stalin] traveled with fishing-rods and tackle, and when arrested by the local police he convinced them he was just fishing.

-Young Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore (Vintage, $16.95)

Those who felt joy at Stalin’s death were mostly too cautious to show it in public.  Any sign of pleasure had to be concealed.  Zinaida Belikova, a factory worker in Krasnodar, recalls that many of the town’s intelligentsia, doctors, whisperers1teachers, even Party officials, found it hard to hide their excitement when Stalin died.  ‘The mourning ceremonies in Krasnodar were more like a holiday.  They put on a mournful face, but there was a sparkle in their eyes…

-The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, Orlando Figes (Picador, $20)

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Aw, Bonehead

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags on 20 November, 2008 by S&Co.

[p. 395]:

I asked him how he got the nickname Foot.

“The first day I went into the coal mine, a guy looked down and said,  ‘Damn, how big are your feet?’ I said, ‘Fifteen.’ He said, ‘You’re a big-footed son of a bitch.’ And that was it. One guy had a huge head, so of course we called him Pumpkin. One guy had a big red birthmark on his face, so of course we called him Spot. They don’t cut you any slack. They’ll get right on you. A coal miner will get right on you.”

I shined my light on his boots and he wagged them, like puppets.

It was tough getting used to identifying people, in the darkness, just as feet, shoulders, chin, teeth. As for Foot, he was a truck of a man, forty-nine years old, a wide load in both girth and spirit. He had a messy mop of gray hair and a rugged, intelligent face that often wore one expression: “You gotta be kidding me.” He was proud of a lot of what he’d done with his life — his three kids, his stint as a county commissioner, his coal-mining expertise — but his heart, he said, belonged to his fifty-two head of beef cattle: Pork Chop, Frick and Frack, and, aw, Bonehead, with the amazing white eyelashes.

– Jeanne Marie Laskas, “Underworld,” originally published in GQ
from The Best American Magazine Writing 2008

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This I Believe II

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags , on 20 November, 2008 by Jenna

From the popular little NPR program, This I Believe, comes a second edition of collected essays, now IN STOCK.

This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, (Henry Holt, $23)

The following is an excerpt from the essay “Doing Things My Own Way” by Bela Fleck–who, it should be noted, has been spotted shopping at Shakespeare & Co.  believe-3

When I perform with my own group, my map of the banjo is all I need.  But when I move into more conventional jazz or classical situations, I don’t always have the tools to fit in.  I can barely read music.  I don’t thoroughly understand the conventions of each tradition and I’m not sure how to voice jazz chords–which notes to leave out, how the scales work, all the rhythmic concepts.

I heard that when George Gershwin wanted to study harmony from Ravel, he was advised against it.  Ravel felt that Gershwin would obliterate the very thing that made him special by learning conventional approaches to rhythm and harmony.  I’d like to think that the same is true for me, but I’m not convinced.  I worry that my approach might not be built on a strong enough musical foundation.

It’s this fear that allows me no rest in my musical pursuits.  When I’m at work–whether it is writing, practicing, or editing and mixing CDs–I obsess.  To say that I am picky is an understatement.  Delegating is pretty much impossible; I can be downright controlling.  I have to get everything just right.  Then, one day, the intensity disappears.  This usually  means the project is done…

…I believe in living with and giving in to my obsessive side when it serves the music.

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The Best American Magazine Writing 2008

Posted in Books with tags on 19 November, 2008 by S&Co.

appThis annual nonfiction anthology is a must have. It comes in this year at an impressive, thick, whopping, Fat-New-Yorker-Pieces-of-Yore* 545 pages — and yet it’s still only $16.95! And a well-bound $16.95 at that. What’s not to like here? Not a thing. Have a look at the table of contents. Get one for yourself–and several more as gifts. One of the best deals in the shop.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, the bosses began designing the factory. The three-story building they had rented was perfectly empty: white walls, bare floors, a front door without a lock. You could come or go; everything in the Lishui Economic Development Zone shared that openness. Neighboring buildings were also empty shells, and they flanked a dirt road that pointed toward an unfinished highway. Black silver billboards reflected the sky, advertising nothing but late October sunlight.

– Peter Hessler, “China’s Instant Cities”

* What Jacob Weisberg, in his introduction to this volume, calls “deep-dive, long-form literary journalism.”

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Outliers - Signed Copies - On Sale 11/18

Posted in Books, News with tags , on 17 November, 2008 by S&Co.

9780316017923_388x586We have a dozen signed copies of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success — a nice gift idea for Gladwell fans. The book goes on sale Tuesday, 11/18.

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Conversation Was Impossible

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags on 11 November, 2008 by S&Co.

michaels190From “Making Changes,” by Leonard Michaels:

The hall was clogged with bodies; none of them hers, but who could be sure? The light was bad, there was too much noise, too much movement. Too many people had been invited. More kept arriving. I liked it, but it was hard to get from one room to another. Conversation was impossible. People had to lean close and shriek. It killed the effect of wit, looking into nostrils, shrieking, “What? What?” But it was a New York scene. I liked it. Except she was missing; virtually torn out of my hands. Cecily. I would have asked people if they had seen her, but I was ashamed to admit I had lost her. I was afraid she was someone’s date or inextricably into something. I was afraid she was copulating. She had been dressed, but it was a New York scene. Minutes had passed. I shoved through the hall — hot, dark, squealing with bodies — and looked for her. I shoved into the kitchen and saw just one couple, a lady in a brown tweed suit talking to a short dapper man in spats. She was stout, fiftyish, had fierce eyes. Flat, black as nailheads. Her voice flew around like pots and pans. The man glanced at me, then down as if embarrassed. The lady ignored me. I ignored her and busied around the wet, sloppy counter looking for an unused glass and a bottle of something, as if I wanted a drink. The lady was saying, slam, clang:

“Sexual enlightenment, the keystone of modernity, I dare say, can hardly be considered an atavistic intellectual debauch, Cosmo.”

– The Collected Stories (FSG; $15) IN STOCK

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P. 96

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags , , on 9 November, 2008 by S&Co.

And suddenly there it is, on page 96 of Laurie Colwin’s Another Marvelous Thing (1986), the only instance I can find — have ever found — in literature of the use of the word unflapped.

Billy went about her business outwardly unflapped.

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Suddenly motivated to remember people’s names

Posted in Books on 8 November, 2008 by Elisabeth

love-and-sex-with-robots[p.18] Takayuki Kanda and his team at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Kyoto recognize the importance of finding common ground between humans and robots in order to establish relationships and to build them over time, just as normal human-human relationships evolve with time, and they have identified various goals in robotics research that will need to be achieved in order to enable robots to exhibit sufficiently humanlike behavior patterns to engender human empathy. One of these goals is for robots to recognize individuals: “It is vital that two parties recognize each other for their relationship to develop…. Although person identification is an essential requirement for a partner robot, current visual and auditory sensing technologies cannot reliably support it. Therefore an unfortunate consequence is that a robot may behave the same with everyone…. Misidentification can ruin a relationship. For example, a person my be hurt or offended if the robot were to call the person by someone else’s name.”

Read more about the robotic evolution from humans’ mechanical slaves to our loving companions in David Levy’s Love + Sex with Robots, (Harper Perennial, $14.95). IN STOCK!

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Eat, Memory

Posted in Books, Excerpts with tags , on 6 November, 2008 by Jenna

memory“Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps.  It smells of home, the door locked against the night and a stillness made safe by the sound of a spoon going round in a pan.  It is anticipation, the last thing prepared before the meal comes to the table, the bowl in Mama’s hand closing the day out peacefully, no matter what came before.”

-from Dorothy Allison’s “Crossing to Safety,” in Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table, edited by Amanda Hesser, IN STOCK

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To fill the post-election void…

Posted in Books on 2 November, 2008 by Elisabeth

If you don’t end up needing to take to the streets after Tuesday’s election, might I suggest you keep your political brain entertained and oiled by reading The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation? Written by Jonathan Hennessey and illustrated by Aaron McConnell, this new publication works its way through the beginning of our history as a united people and the background and meaning of the documents that continue to unite us still after the 2008 elections. After Tuesday, we all might need a gentle reminder!

The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation. Jonathon Hennessey and Aaron McConnell, (Hill and Wang, $16.95), IN STOCK

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