Another uplifting New York Times Book Review Sunday. On the cover, where every week I hope to find Paul Theroux’s new travel book about Mexico, was an essay, “The Cult of the Literary Sad Woman.” Inside were reviews of three memoirs, one about “a troubled youth,” one about “a dying husband’s troubled legacy” (I see a theme), and one in which “a rape survivor seeks answers to her trauma.” These were followed by a review of a collection of essays by a woman who “sees gradual loss in all around us.” And I wonder: Is the Book Review accurately reflecting the range of books being published - if so, it's an excessively narrow range - or its editors' dyspeptic view of the world?
The email from Barnes & Noble read: “Signed Editions Are Here! … From Favorite Authors including Demi Moore, Ali Wong, & Jonathan Van Ness.” And I thought: Favorite? I didn’t even know they were authors.
One of the most entertaining books I’ve read this year – OK, the most entertaining book I’ve read this year (what happened to humor in America?) – is Ben Aitken’s A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland. As the title suggests, Aitken is English and a lover of the unobvious. You could say he’s following in the footsteps of all those British writers who lived abroad – Freya Stark, Gerald Brenan, Lawrence Durrell – and immersed themselves in foreign cultures. But he isn’t, really. He’s much more amusing than they were, while still being insightful, and showering unromanticized affection on the people he’s describing. His is an original, honest, irreverent voice, and his book is a fine addition to the short stack of books that try to explain Poland and the Poles to the English-speaking world. It, and the audiobook, were released yesterday here in the U.S., and I kinda wish, to help it along, our president had involved Poland instead of Ukraine in his villainy.
Drove to Books & Books Saturday for the launch of Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida (editor Lynne Barrett). Then drove back yesterday to hear Lyn Millner present her excellent history of the Koreshans, The Allure of Immortality.
Returning home I read in the anthology, and was surprised to find no stories about driving to Books & Books.
There is a moment in Frank Kermode’s memoir Not Entitled in which he runs into the novelist William Golding, who asks if he’s been keeping up his Greek. When he confesses he hasn’t, Golding asks, “But what will you do when you retire if you can’t read Homer?”
Hania needed to buy a card and since Jezebel and Grand Central Stationery are closed on Sunday we went to Barnes & Noble. As she searched, I wandered over to the Travel section and found two paperback copies of The Joys of Travel, which the store had not carried for months. They were easy to find because they had been shelved with the cover facing outwards. Also, since the store carries so few travel essays and narratives, books by authors whose names begin with S are at gut rather than ankle level.
Back home I read an article in the New York Times Business section about the new chief executive of Barnes & Noble, James Daunt. He is a Brit whose first bookstore was a travel bookstore, or at least a store where books were organized according to country. (Not sure where that would have left The Joys of Travel.) As head of Waterstone’s, Britain’s largest chain bookstore, he had given store managers tremendous autonomy, allowing them to order and display the books that they thought their customers would want, a selection that included, one would think, books by local authors. I wasn’t sure if Daunt's philosophy was already in effect at B&N, or if the employees of the Ft. Lauderdale store were proactively responding to it. Or if the appearance of my book was just a fluke. This last scenario is the most appealing for it would seem to suggest a nationwide fluke.