The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book
by Wendy Welch

Published: Oct 15, 2013
by St. Martin’s Griffin
ISBN: 9781250031617
Format: Paperback / softback | Trade paperback (US)

[star]

So here’s a deep, dark secret: I would love to own a bookstore someday.

I have this bookstore planned out in my mind almost to the last detail, although I sometimes fluctuate between whether to go all-inclusive or specialise in mystery fiction and also between all new books or a combination new/used.

All of this to say that when Nothing Better than a Good Book mentioned this memoir of a couple starting a used bookstore in a small Virginia town, I had to go out and immediately order it. This was a great opportunity to read about someone else’s experience trying to do the same thing I daydream about doing myself someday .

I found a lot of good stuff in here. A lot of things I knew, being the child of a shop (flower) owner and the wife of a business owner, but a lot of stuff too that I never took into account, like the amount of emotional baggage that can often accompany a crateful of used books or just how much a bookshop can become a community center.

There’s also a fair amount of philosophising most of which was interesting and some of it a little bit defensive but all of it mostly spot-on. Most of her defensiveness comes up when talking about ebooks and really, any bookseller would get defensive on this topic because people insist on viewing ‘ebooks vs. paper’ as a competition instead of what it is: a choice, an option. I understand where she’s coming from, but she protested just a bit too much.

This is solidly a memoir about starting a bookshop and it’s on the meatier side of the spectrum; it wasn’t a slog at all but it wasn’t a quick read either. I had sort of expected her to veer off topic once in awhile but the focus remained tightly on starting the bookshop and the first five years of keeping it running. I found it highly informative and interesting. Now if I can just get my husband to read it….

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Something rotten

by Jasper Fforde

ISBN: 9781932416244

[star]

Thursday has left the Bookworld after 2 years and is transitioning back to the real world and not without a fair few hurdles. Goliath is aiming for classification as a religion, Kaine is one step away from ruling all of the UK as a dictator, Danish books are being rounded up and burned by order of the government and in her absence, Thursday was convicted of cheese smuggling. Her husband is still eradicated and she’s 20k pounds in the hole on her overdraft. Oh, and she has to keep an eye on Hamlet, who came out of Bookworld with her so he could find himself.

Oh, so many things to love about this book. In no particular order and without spoilers:

– Pickwick. Pickwick is always worth loving but Fforde makes her so expressive with so very few words. She made me laugh out loud at least once.

– This is not the book to be in if you’re Danish. Lots of satirical comedy surrounding the sudden discrimination against Danes (especially in the chapter headings). Because some of my best friends in the world are Danish, I think I find it a lot funnier than some might; Fforde just nails it.

– Neanderthals get a lot more page time.

– The fight in the hanger. No spoilers, but I’ll just say it was masterful literary chess.

– The fate of the world might truly rest on the outcome of a game.

This is the book that wraps up more than a couple of story arcs. Lots of answers and very few questions remaining. I’ll admit I missed the footnoterphone more than I would have thought, and I truly prefer the shenanigans of Bookworld over the shenanigans of Real Life. Not really a surprise. There was a bit that I think went too far and felt too convenient, but I can’t even hint at it without spoilers so I’ll leave it at that.

The ending of Something Rotten is what got that last 1/2 star out of me. It was… well, just read it for yourself. If you’re a Thursday Next fan, I expect it will get you in the same place.

Books

A Memoir
by Larry McMurtry

Published: Jul 08, 2008 by Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416583349

[star]

There were so many things I didn’t like about this book, yet I still couldn’t stop reading it.

I’ve not read any of McMurty’s other books, although his bibliography is certainly impressive, but I have to believe they were not written in the same style as Books: A Memoir. If they are, I’m missing something.

As I started this book I kept thinking who writes like this? How did this make it through editing? About 25% of the way through I realised this was written as though it’s a straight transcription of a dictation: imagine someone you know, probably an older someone, sitting in their chair, telling you stories about ‘the old days’; the kind of stories where the teller gets sidetracked because he’s reminded of another story. That’s the narrative style of this book. There’s no timeline to speak of, no narrative cohesion. The book is 259 pages long and there are 109 chapters; a few chapters are no more than a paragraph and mostly just fleeting thoughts written down as they pass through.

I bought the book because I wanted memoirs of a bookseller and collector, but while I got some of that, I got a lot more “I” than I wanted. There’s a lot of matter-of-fact boasting about his accomplishments, his successes and a metric ton of name dropping. If the names were rain, we’d need an ark. Now, I don’t actually mind a bit of name dropping sometimes, if I have the first clue who the people actually are. But 90% of the names were other booksellers, traders, or scouts and were meaningless to me and a burden to keep track of. He writes, in chapter 101:

I’ve chosen, for the most part, to keep this memoir personality-free. Attempting to interest twenty-first-century readers in the personalities of (mainly) twentieth-century bookmen risks making this narrative more circumscribed than I want it to be.

Really? All due respect to McMurtry, but isn’t that something a writer should do? Does he think so little of me as a twenty-first-century reader that he thinks I can’t be interested in twentieth century bookmen? Were they that boring? Or can he just not be bothered because that would take the attention off himself? I gotta be honest, it feels like door #3 is closest to the truth. He must drop at least 100 names in this book and if any of them had any personality at all, it would have made this a much more interesting book.

In spite of all this, I never actually considered DNF’ing the book; I harbour a dream of someday being a book seller myself and as such, I hunger for first hand information about others’ experience. Sprinkled all too lightly throughout the 109 chapters were glimpses of just what I was looking for and I was eagerly forging my way through all the somewhat narcissistic horn blowing in order to mine these small gems. I was left at the end with the vague sense of getting what I wanted, but man, he made me work for it.

Phantoms on the Bookshelves

By Jacques Bonnet

ISBN: 9781906694586
Format: Hardcover

[star]

40,000 books. Bonnet has 40,000 books in his personal library. At one point he had bookshelves in his bathroom, so he couldn’t use the shower and could only run the bath with the window open. He also had bookshelves in his kitchen, so no cooking with strong flavours could be done either. I’ve been looking at my 1300 or so books thinking to myself I’m staring into the face of a possible obsession, but 40,000?!? I suddenly feel quite well-adjusted.

I loved this book; it hit just the right note of chatty and philosophical, with so many quotable bits I just stopped trying to keep track – I’d have ended up reproducing the book itself. Unlike Books: A Memoir this is entirely about the books: collecting, reading, organising; what Bonnet says about himself might amount to 2 sentences in total if you threw in a few articles and punctuation.

My only, only niggle is the result of my own reading inadequacies: he drops a lot of titles into the text (of course), and most of them are ones I’ve never heard of and seem to be only available in French. This is entirely understandable, because Bonnet is French and this book was originally written and published in French. So I was left in a few places skimming over French titles that meant little to me; c’est la vie.

Speaking of this being a translation, I can’t speak with any authority, but I thought this was an excellent translation insomuch as I felt like the author’s personality came through perfectly; the narrative felt smooth and natural and Reynolds took pains at the beginning to explain how French titles would be translated to English based on whether or not an English translation of the book was ever published. A bibliography is also included at the back of books mentioned in the text.

This one is for the book collectors out there; those who love physical books and find tranquility in standing in a room surrounded by them. For you, this is a book worth reading (and owning, of course!).

Ex libris

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common ReaderEx Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
by Anne Fadiman
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780374527228
Publication Date: November 25, 2000
Pages: 162
Genre: Books and Reading
Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux

Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of "Fanny Hill," whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice. This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story.

Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. There is even a foray into pure literary gluttony--Charles Lamb liked buttered muffin crumbs between the leaves, and Fadiman knows of more than one reader who literally consumes page corners.

Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, "Ex Libris" establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists.


I loved this from first word to last. A collection of essays first published in Civilization, each about some facet of the love of books or the written word.

Her first essay, Marrying Libraries started the collection off on a high note with me; after 10 years together, I still can’t quite embrace the marriage of my books with MT’s: he has his shelves and I, mine. I’ve only recently (last weekend) catalogued his books in my database software; until that point neither of us knew what he had or didn’t.

Other highpoints of the collection for me included Never Do That To a Book, My Ancestral Castles and Secondhand Prose. Fadiman’s essay on plagiarism was…interesting. I’m fairly sure it’s heavily satirical, (it’s 10 pages long and has 38 footnotes, some rather absurd) but reading it, it is clear that she has strong feelings about the theft of other people’s work. I was left with the feeling that she felt conflicted about such a sticky subject. She has also written an outstanding essay on compulsive proofreading, whose title includes those handwritten edits that are impossible to reproduce on a screen with nothing but a keyboard. But it’s one of my top three favourites of the book.

Ex Libris wraps up with a small chapter of recommended reading; a list of books about books; a list I’ll be using in the next few days as I look for more titles to add to my TBR.

Happily Ever After

celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and prejudice
By Daniel Klein

ISBN: 9780711233744
Format: Hardcover

[star]
I bought this one awhile ago after quickly flipping through it and was looking forward to what its subtitle promised: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

What I got was very little of how Pride and Prejudice came to be written (which is specifically what the inside flap says I’ll get) and a whole lot of literary dissection. There is one entire chapter (9 pages) on nothing but the first sentence of the book, breaking it down almost word for word. What are the philosophical implications of “It is a truth”? (OMG!) What might Austen have meant, by “universally acknowledged”? (Seriously?)

I’m being a bit catty here and a lot of readers might be genuinely interested in this kind of literary examination, and I respect that; this is the book for them. But like magic acts, I prefer not to break it down and analyse it: doing so diminishes the magic for me. I got to this chapter and immediately thought “THIS is why teen-agers don’t want to read, because this is what English Lit consists of.”. Plus, I think if you have to explain the first sentence of P&P, it’s probably not the book to read.

There is some interesting historical material here, but it’s mostly drowned out in the speculation (often disguised as fact, which was irritating) over characters and style. A section towards the end on adaptations, pastiches, and mash-ups was moderately interesting but the author didn’t try to hide her bias and at one point declares that Jane is “rolling in her grave”. Frankly, given Austen’s love of the absurd, I’d bet she’s laughing.

I had high hopes, but this is not the book I was looking for.

Housekeeping vs. the dirt

by Nick Hornby

Published: Sep 13, 2006 by McSweeney’s
ISBN: 9781932416596
Format: Paperback / softback | Trade paperback (US)

[star]

I gave Hornby’s first collection of critical essays, The Polysyllabic Spree, 5 stars because I thought it was excellent. Well-written and hysterically funny, he writes about books like he’s a book lover, not a critic. I liked it so much I went immediately to McSweeney’s website and bought the next three collections. This is the second book and takes place pretty much where The Polysyllabic Spree leaves off.

Here’s the problem: I like this one even better. At the risk of blowing what little meaning ratings have, I sort of need another 1/2 star to add to the 5 I’ve already given it.

The 14 essays contained in Housekeeping vs. the Dirt are the same format as The Polysyllabic Spree – a list of books bought, books read, and a chatty narrative about his thoughts on those reads. But this time the essays are even smoother, like Hornby found his groove at this point. Also, and I’m sure it’s not coincidental to my added enjoyment, he had titles on his list that I’ve actually read (although he doesn’t discuss any of them in this book). He includes 4 excerpts from the books he read and loved, and one of them I’ve added to my own list (Assassination Vacation).

It’s going to be hard putting off diving directly into the next collection, but I’m trying to pace myself to string out the pleasure as long as I can. If you think you might enjoy critical essays that aren’t very critical and have a bit of fun at the expense of pretentiousness, I definitely recommend giving Hornby’s essays a try.

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Shakespeare Wrote for Money

by Nick Hornby

Published: Dec 01, 2008 by McSweeney’s
ISBN: 9781934781296

[star]

I’d been in the mood for a book about books and started reading The World Between Two Covers, but it’s turning out to be more a thesis of, than ode to, reading, so I switched to a sure thing and picked up Nick Hornby’s third collection of columns from the Believer magazine.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money covers two years, from 2006-2008, and purports to be the last one, as Hornby left the Believer after his September 2008 column. As it turns out the leave was temporary, as I already own his fourth collection, but this one does seem to lack the enthusiasm that over-flowed from the first two books. It was still highly entertaining and thought-provoking, but there was a hint, in comparison, of a going through the motions.

I still highly recommend it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to the fourth collection; perhaps after his self-imposed hiatus he’ll be back in top form.

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Book

By Daniel Klein

ISBN: 9780744544787
Format: Hardcover

[star]

My name is book and I’ll tell you the story of my life.

This little guy is probably getting judged unfairly; judged based on the shelf I found him on in the library, which was in the adult non-fiction section.

Based on that shelf, this book was juvenile and cloyingly written.

But if this had been shelved appropriately, for young readers, I’d say it’s a fun book with solid information about the history of books, starting from oral tradition. The eye-catching illustrations add visual interest and the interspersed quotes and poetry about books could send those kids in new reading directions.

So, if you know of a young bibliophile in the making and you see this book, it might be worth a look.

Bibliotopia

This book isn't in your Library! Please check the ISBN/ASIN number you provided.
or, Mr. Gilbar’s book of books & catch-all of literary facts & curiosities
by Steven Gilbar

Published: Jan 01, 2005 by David R. Godine
ISBN: 9781567922950

[star]

A quirky little reference/trivia books concerning many things book related. Mostly lists; many useful, many filler (authors listed by the University they went to, for example). It was fun to browse through will occasionally be useful, although by its nature it will quickly become outdated.

Still, a fun addition to my bookshelves.

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