A Very Busy Bookstore

We visited McNally Robinson bookstore, a Winnipeg phenomenon, today.  It is a small independent bookstore chain, family-owned.  It was started in 1981 and now has about four stores in Canada and one in New York.  This is the first one we have visited.
The store was filled to the walls with books, toys, gifts, journals and cards and writing paper, magazines and newspapers.  The children's area looks like a treehouse looming above the grownups' sections. They were calling names for seats in the Prairie Ink restaurant (at 2 p.m. on a weekday).  Near one entrance, their Espresso Book Machine was printing out a book for a customer.
They have an arrangement where a customer who finds a title on Google Books can come in and order a copy, which will then be printed, cut and bound -- minimum order is one.  They will also produce a book from a file produced by the customer.  According to their flyer, some recent titles are: Walking, by Thoreau; The Hand of Ethelberta, by Thomas Hardy; The Long Labrador Trail, by Dillon Wallace, Sniping in France, with notes on the scientific training of scouts, observers and snipers, by Hesketh Vernon Prichard.
As expected, they have a large and rich selection of Canadian books, both books written by Canadians and books concentrating on Canadian themes. The major Canadian authors are well represented, but their American cousins are not neglected. We saw the same American titles we would see in a Barnes and Noble store (except B and N does not stock much Canadian material).
We did not witness their book signing or author appearances, but judging by the signs everywhere, they must have several such events each week.
It seems that McNally Robinson has found a formula for success in the highly competitive world of independent bookstores.

Capital, a novel by John Lanchester

A novel rich in characters

Pepys Street, a fictional street in all-too-real-London, is not the wealthiest, nor the most attractive, nor the busiest street in the city.  In fact, it might well be overlooked by most Londoners.  But the people connected to it by residence or occupation or just happenstance find themselves tightly connected to Pepys Street and, in some surprising ways, to others. The story takes place between the halcyon days of 2007 and the disastrous post-Crash days of 2008.
Roger Yount and his wife Arabella are the most deliciously satirized characters.  Roger is a clueless member of the financial community, tall, handsome, bearing an easy ability to deal with clients. He is untroubled by the fact that he has no idea how his employer's financial systems operate. When first we meet him, Roger is wondering how large his bonus will be, and what he and wife Arabella will do with it.   Rogert is in for several surprises.  Arabella cares deeply, passionately about shopping and decorating and all of the domestic responsibilities she must handle -- with, of course, lot of help.
The cast of characters also includes an elderly woman whose Pepys House has been in her family all of her long life; an African refugee working illegally as a meter maid; a Moslem family who run a small shop; a Polish carpenter/painter/builder; a nanny, and others.  Its a tightly woven tapestry of many personalities.
There's a mild mystery here, too.  Someone has been taking photos of houses on Pepys Road and sending sinister messages to the occupants.  The search for the culprit will affect the futures of several of the people who live and work on the street.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Capital and recommend it highly.  I'm looking forward to reading more by this author.

Our Kindle goes traveling

Forget the argument that the Kindle will allow you to carry hundreds of books on this little tablet. That's true, of course, but irrelevant -- who would be reading all those books, when there are so many other things to do while traveling? No, the best, the unique pleasure of the Kindle is the immediacy of its response.  If I want a particular book (and I'm willing to pay for it), it's ready for me to read in minutes.
To fully appreciate this, try making an extended visit to Saskatchewan, Canada, a place of great beauty and no book stores.
We had packed a starter set of books in the truck, but you always remember something you'd neglected to include, or you read about a newly published book, or somebody like your sister recommends a book.  It's like magic, the acquisition of exactly the item you want to spend time with RIGHT NOW.
I have purchased books in Germany and in Canada, thanks to our Kindle's ability to use wireless to Amazon's website. Both worked just fine -- although Amazon's new tax situation has caused us as official Texans to pay sales tax for the first time in our relationship with the company.
We continue to prowl through every bookstore we do find, but we have had little success.  One chain bookstore in a Saskatchewan shopping mall was clearly stocked for teenagers, heavy on Twilight and Hunger and Vampires but nothing for adults beyond the Top Ten Sellers.  A promising-looking used bookstore in Manitoba was hosting a class which took up most of the bookshelves; we didn't feel we should intrude.  My goal currently is to visit enough Canadian book stores to learn what is current in Canadian literature.
Another pleasure provided by the Kindle: focus.  I am forming new reading patterns.  When I read a book or a magazine, I find myself turning pages, riffling from front to middle to front again, to the cartoons or the book reviews at the back.  With the Kindle I start at the beginning and read my way (occasionally checking percentage read, it's true) to the end.  I have realized that I'm more aware of the prose, paying more attention to the details of what I'm reading.  Will this last?  I hope so.
So after a half dozen or so books, I'm now a firm admirer of the Kindle.

18 July Pulphead

Pulphead, essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan

What a pleasure to read these essays! Sullivan enjoys both his research and the essay writing itself, it's clear.  His touch is so confident that the hours of work he spends on each are undetectable. You feel that you are sitting with a good friend and you both have plenty of time to talk and catch up with things.
The things Sullivan would tell his friend range from his experience at a Christian rock concert to his the time he spent living with the last of the Southern Agrarian writers, or maybe the explorations of Tennessee caves which contain cave art older than anyone would have expected.  He writes about Axl Rose and Michael Jackson, but also about little-known Blues musicians.
Each time I started an essay I wondered whether it would be a subject I would find interesting; I"m the last person to want to know about Rock music, but I was greatly moved by his biographical study of Michael Jackson. There are essays I have skimmed, because the subjects are just too far removed from my world, but they are only a very few.  These essays have been collected from his work for several fine magazines, among them Paris Review, GQ, Harper's. For awhile he was editor of the Oxford American, a splendid magazine which almost nobody apparently ever read.
Part of his charm as a writer is that he does not feel the need to glorify himself or his work.  Instead, he paints himself as a listener, a learner, someone who is "sceptically curious" as he has in one delightful piece. Pulphead fully deserves all the attention it is receiving, and I hope will be followed before long by another collection -- or anything else he should choose to write.

Canada, the novel, not the country

Ford, Richard.  Canada

Do children ever understand the actions and motivations of their parents? Or do they see them as they see other adults -- mysterious, illogical tall providers of the necessities of life? And do parents consider the welfare of their children when weighing the implications of a major undertaking? For fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons and his twin sister Berner, their apparently mismatched parents provide loving if not totally comfortable support in the unglamorous city of Great Falls, Montana, until their father undertakes a disastrous adventure.
One of the results is that the two are, essentially, abandoned.  The novel follows Dell as he is swept up and delivered to new surroundings in Saskatchewan, Canada, where he is put to work by the eccentric owner of the town's one hotel.  Over the summer and into the fall of this critical year, he learns to become more observant and independent. However, he becomes an unwilling participant in situations, from goose hunting to the unraveling of several adult lives, which will mark him through the rest of his life.
The novel's title is well selected:  Canada is indeed the main subject of the story.  Ford describes the dusty, dilapidated towns, the aimless-appearing routines of rural Western Canada in precise detail, and his mix of characters is well thought out.  Unfortunately, the narrator is so passive and innocent that he is not v ery interesting, nor is he convincing as a 15-year-old, even in the 1960s.
There are other odd aspects of the book that make me wonder why it has been so highly praised and  lavishly publicized.  The plot elements seem to be strung together without much concern for consistency.  Why does the author use contractions like "would've" and "could've"? The tight focus of the story keeps us concentrated on a half-dozen characters, but not one of them is attractive (well, possibly Florence, the hotel-owner's lady friend, is an exception).
Is the message that human relationships invariably lead to pain and loss? Or that most lives are fairly pedestrian?
And why, since my reaction, having finished the book this afternoon, am I so critical of it, when I was glued to my Kindle throughout, unwilling to stop reading even for an hour or so?

07 July Peder Victorious, a novel

Peder Victorious, by O. E. Rolvaag
The classic novel of the Norwegian immigrant experience in America is Giants in the Earth, written in the 1920s by Rolvaag, a Norwegian author and teacher who spent many years at St. Olaf's College in Minnesota. This book was an enormous popular success in both  Norway and the U.S., so soon after publication he began planning the second volume in his planned trilogy.  He died before he had a chance to finish the third book.
Peder Victorious is the story of the youngest child of the Hansa family.  His middle name is the result of his appearance at birth. His father died when Peder was quite young, buried in a snowdrift during a ferocious blizzard as he went for help for a neighbor.  This heroic death inspires Peder to reach for great things himself, especially during his childhood.  Peder's mother struggles to maintain the family farm, with the help of Peder, his two older brothers and his sister, and in the process becomes one of the most successful farmers of the community.  But her success does not bring her any happiness; she regrets the loss of her husband and is fearful of the changes taking place in her family and in the community of Spring Creek as the Norwegians slowly more integrated into American society.
This is a gripping novel to read while traveling, especially when we work our way through the immense farms of the prairie.  Even today, almost a century after the book was written,  we pass isolated farmsteads, many derelict or in great need of repair in the same region as we see neat and trim brightly painted farmhouses with flourishing kitchen gardens.  Have the farmers given up and moved to town? Are they leasing their land to agribusiness companies? We hear accented speech, perhaps Norwegian or Ukrainian.  There's a lot of unknown history here, but Peder Victorious can give us the view of one family through this novel.

Oakley Hall, a well-known, unknown author

A Well-known, unknown author
The book I had found in the motel was titled Ambrose Bierce and the Death of Kings. It is a solid member of the subgenre of mysteries involving a detective who is well known, although not for detecting. Here, he is in the story mostly to provide color, or an enticement to the reader or potential book buyer.
This was not much of a mystery, although it was an entertaining story offering an enticing introduction to the history of Hawaii just prior to its annexation by the United States. I doubt that I will read any more in this series.
However, the author, Oakley Hall, is another matter.  It turns out he is a well-known (though not to me) Western author who is roughly my generation. He was born in San Diego, graduated from Berkeley, taught literature at Irvine.  His children have all become writers and actors, playwrights and poets.  His son, also named Oakley Hall, was a brilliant and driven playwright and director who suffered major and permanent brain damage as a result of a fall from a bridge in Upstate New York.
Now there's a compressed biography for you.  The senior Oakley Hall apparently began his writing career in the pulps, writing Westerns and mysteries sometimes under pseudonyms before he published the Western Novel Warlock which brought him prizes and a reputation.  As a teacher he  inspired several of the best-known young California writers (Michael Chabon, Amy Tan among others). He died in 2008.
I have added his name to my list, to check the shelves when we visit book stores.
Speaking of visiting book stores:  yesterday we visited the local shopping mall and found a Coles Book Store.  It is part of the Indigo Books chain. Indigo itself is similar in appearance to Barnes and Noble and can be found throughout Canada.  Picky Elsa didn't find anything, but Bob purchased two books, which means our book box in the truck will stay untouched for awhile.

06 July I Always Need Something To Read

For five years while we lived in Alameda, California, we had the benefit of using the Alameda Free Library. It was a perfect situation for us: the branch library was a five minute stroll from our front door and the library staff were helpful and friendly; we could request whatever we wanted to read and be notified by email or phone when to come pick it up; the library had an excellent selection of new and older materials.

 Now that we are traveling again, we find ourselves suddenly aware of the necessity to maintain our reading supplies. It's easier this time than when we started traveling the first time, in 2000, because we have resources that were not so easily available back then -- Amazon and the Internet primarily. We can read ebooks on our laptops, and on our Kindle (we even downloaded a couple of Kindle books while we were in Germany. The experience was fast and easy and there was no extra charge.) But no sooner had we started off, and even though our truck contained a dozen or more books I planned to read, I wanted -- needed! -- more. I seem to need a good half-dozen books to make sure I have something to read.

 A couple of trips to Barnes and Noble produced nothing. But we have begun visiting independent books stores with much better luck. Early on, in Minnesota, we found a bookstore, arriving just at opening time. The clerk was just pulling up to the store as we arrived, and the store cat complained that it was past feeding time. We found several interesting titles and tucked them in our book box. In another city we happened to notice a sign on a store, which led to a shop selling new and used books. Just before entering Canada, the yellow pages in our motel room led me to a small bookstore which sold mostly toys, but which contained Pulphead, which has been on my list for months, and Peder Victorious, an old novel about Norwegians in the Dakota Territory (I prefer to read about places where I'm traveling). Finally, in the lobby of a North Dakota motel, I found a bookshelf with a collection of children's and adult books, to be borrowed and later returned that motel or another in the chain. I found a novel by Oakley Hall, and immediately started reading it. I think we'll be just fine.