Monday, December 21, 2009
Lit by Mary Karr
I haven't read The Liars Club or any of Karr's other books, but I had heard some good things about this one. Plus, I'm not that big of a nonfiction reader (the only biography I've ever read is Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton). Either way, I gave Karr's book a try.
As Amazon puts it, "Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness--and to her astonishing resurrection."
And it has to be said that Karr is a good writer - but you have to kind of be in the mood for her style. She doesn't use any quotation makrs - her story is written more like a stream of conciousness - and reads like a novel. It's not a quick read, though, and personally I didn't like it because I couldn't connect with it - on any level. And I didn't feel that Karr provided any great insight into the lives of alcoholics that we haven't already seen from other movies or books. That being said, it's worth a read if you're in the mood for it, but be warned - it can drag on in a couple of places. (I'd suggest a place somewhere in the middle of your to-read list)
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
News-wise
Festivity-wise, we're inviting everyone to our Holiday Party on Sunday, December 13th from 11-3. Food-wise, we'll have massive cheese trays (MCTs) and other special treats. Also keep your eye out for special holiday sales on gift items. We're prepared to suggest a book for any type of person who exists in your family (or "the whole catastrophe"). Here's a few examples of our favorite holiday books and the people who'd love to read them.
Creative types? Try WHAT IT IS by Lynda Barry, an inspiring collection of painting, collage and text.
THE SCRIBBLE BOOK by Herve Tullet is excellent for younger imaginations. Tullet's freewheeling sketches are meant to provoke children to elaborate and decorate what's on the page.
Historical fiction fans? If they're true history lovers, pick up WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel, who describes the often written about Henry VIII in a truly original way. She won the Booker Prize for this novel.
Foodies? We've got a takeout menu organizer, a selection of cooking memoirs, and this season's most-anticipated cookbook, MOMOFUKU. Also check out our newly-expanded used cookbook section. For a limited time, these cookbooks are on sale: hardcovers cost $5.95, and paperbacks just $3.49! YUM!
Wellington Square Bookshop also specializes in rare and collectible books, and we have an astonishing collection of signed first edition treasures. Ask to peruse the rare book room or take a look at our contemporary collectibles in the back area of the store.
And remember-- we can order any book for you-- new or used! New books arrive in the shop every couple of days.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Upcoming Events!
Philly Liars Club Event
Saturday, December 5th from 12-2pm
Start off your holiday season with this free Saturday afternoon party at Wellington Square Bookshop in Exton, PA! There will be free munchies, Truth or Lie Trivia games, and prizes including signed books and bookbags. Browse at this uber-cool bookshop and hang out with the following Philly Liar's Club members:
Bram Stoker Award-Winner Jonathan Maberry (PATIENT ZERO, St. Martin's)
Fantasy author Gregory Frost (SHADOWBRIDGE and LORD TOPHET, Del Rey/Random House)
Young adult author Marie Lamba (WHAT I MEANT..., Random House)
Debut crime novelist Dennis Tafoya (DOPE THIEF, St. Martin's)
novelist Kelly Simmons (Standing Still, Washington Square Press/Simon and Schuster)
Historical author Keith Strunk (Prallsville Mills and Stockton, Arcadia Publishing Images of America Series)
Mystery author Merry Jones (The Borrowed and Blue Murders, Minotaur Books)
Mystery author Jon McGoran who writes as D.H. Dublin (Freezer Burn, Berkley Books)
Social media marketing consultant, writer and lecturer Don Lafferty
Never been to Wellington Square Bookshop before? Then you are truly missing something, including a beautiful setting (fountain, tin ceilings, antique bookshelves), a wonderful coffee bar, a fun and smart staff, and an exceptional selection of new and rare books. Come to the bash on December 5th to check things out, meet a ton of zany authors, and to show that you support independent bookstores everywhere!
It's gonna be a blast...honest!
Holiday Party
Sunday, December 13th from 11am-3pm
Been meaning to check out our shop?
Want to meet other book lovers in the area?
Searching for some special holiday offers on new, best-selling, or eclectic titles?
Or do you just want to browse our shelves with a drink in your hand?
Come to our open house, held in partnership with the neighboring Wellington condominium, and discover Chester County's newest independent bookstore!
Wellington Square Book Club
Wednesday, December 16th at 2pm or
Thursday, December 17th at 7pm
Join us whenever your schedule permits. This month, both meetings are discussing two books about single motherhood: read either "Sweeping Up Glass" by Carolyn Wall or "Look Again" by Lisa Scottoline. We'll be selling both titles at 20% off!
Meet the Author: Cynthia Goch
Saturday, December 19th 11am-2pm
Cynthia Goch's cookbook, "Mama Mia Cucina," combines delicious recipes with touching and heartfelt family stories. She'll be here to talk sign books, and serve up sample dishes!
Acoustic Open Mic
Friday, January 15th 6-9pm
Grab your guitar and perform at our acoustic open mic event! Performers are also welcome to dazzle us with non-musical acts, so feel free to recite a favorite poem or your original work.
E-mail us at info[at]wellingtonsquarebooks.com or call at (610) 458-1144 for more info about any of these events.
You can also contact us if you'd like us to order a book you're interested in or to schedule a time for your bookclub to meet in our beautiful shop. We'll provide complimentary coffee and cookies!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
New Shel Silverstein Biography
Here's an enticing review of a Shel Silverstein biography entitled "Silverstein and Me" by Marv Gold. Besides writing those big, amazing volumes of poetry for kids, he lived at the Playboy Mansion and penned "A Boy Named Sue" (Tomi Ungerer, another children's author, also drew cartoon erotica). According to Gold, Shel had no ambition but lots of lofty dreams, spent one stint in the army, three at colleges, and two years in jail for smuggling hash from Marrakesh.
Why do freaks make such good children's authors? Shel Silverstein's demented poems (extra-demented when he reads them aloud: take it from someone who owns "A Light in the Attic on cassette tape) really appeal to kids. But Silverstein did know the power of a book like "The Giving Tree" or a poem like this:
Listen to the MUSTN'TS
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me--
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
Monday, November 9, 2009
THE WRONG MOTHER!
I picked up the Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah hoping for something really satisfying, a violent demonstration of motherly problems often written about more quietly in novels. "Say something nasty about a child-- even if it's true, and even if it's your own child-- and there's hell to pay" (NY Times). There's plenty of punishment in the Wrong Mother, in which three women-- one dead, one missing, one narrating (sometimes)-- find themselves in maternal entrapment that goes unseen and unexperienced by their husbands. Enslaved by unreasonable and helplessly selfish children, these mothers are forbidden to strike back when wronged. Their private systems of martyrdom and punishment start to become real with the murder (or suicide?) of model mother Geraldine Bretherick and her daughter, Lucy. As the grisly mysteries are parsed, so is the grisly career of motherhood. Sophie Hannah's book is carried along by its light and nasty humor. Even though The Wrong Mother is extremely funny, it successfully disturbed me.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Kurt Vonnegut special
For Kurt Vonnegut, “the fantastic offers perception into the quotidian, rather than escape from it.” His tragi-comic novels have earned him a dedicated following and critical acclaim. Their highly imaginative plots—informed by, but not limited to, science fiction—describe a world forced to reenact an entire decade after a temporal disturbance (Timequake), a man who accidentally befriends Adolf Hitler (Deadeye Dick), and a substance that will instantaneously turn all the world’s water into ice (Cat’s Cradle). Although events occur on a worldwide scale, we never lose our intimate perspective into the daily life and personal reactions of Vonnegut’s characters. Their unpredictable presence makes it so that his apocalyptic stories, although grim, never stop being funny. As he said, “[l]aughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
Books by Kurt Vonnegut are 10% off this week. Come by and see him: he's nestled in the corner of our new books section.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Review of "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel
Historically, Cromwell has been painted as a manipulative, power-hungry fiend, concerned only with the guise of pleasing His Majesty in order to climb the social latter into Court. For eight crucial years in the 1530s as the most powerful political figure in Henry VIII’s England, Cromwell orchestrated the King’s momentous break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries and the seizure of their wealth, and the execution for treason of Sir Thomas More, Bishop John Fisher, the Carthusian monks, and many, many others. And, as both The New Yorker and The New York Review have remarked: You cannot achieve total reformation without “breaking some eggs” (1,2).
Therefore, to undertake such a strongly disliked character and make him the subject of a five-hundred-and-thirty-two-page novel would be quite a feat. What’s more, is making him the protagonist, a wise minister and decent man. In Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall (Henry Holt, $27), she concedes to do just that.
Mantel does not negate to tell of the horrific happenings under Cromwell’s leaden hand, nor does she make excuses for his actions. What she so brilliantly does, is shift the historical paradigm and shed light from a different angle. The Cromwell of Wolf Hall has some of the qualities that his enemies feared and detested--toughness, wiliness, worldliness--but as Mantel depicts them, they are qualities in the service of survival, success, and even a measure of decency in a cruel and indecent world (2). Moreover, Mantel succeeds in lighting Cromwell so well by setting him against the perverse, dark religious fanatic, Thomas More. More, as Mantel depicts him, is so clouded by his Catholic duty that he is dangerous to Britain-- he is the only separation between Britain the medieval fiefdom and Britain the modern nation-state (3). Comparatively, in Mantel’s modern secular mindset, Cromwell makes the stronger leader.
In the most fully realized historical fiction, the historical figures are not merely shadows moving the background but engaging, colorful presences with thoughts and feelings and fears. Wolf Hall is written in a third person omniscient narrative, with Thomas Cromwell as its point of view. Readers are brought microscopically close to Cromwell; we are able feel with intensity the growing tension in Court or the pressure mounting in a sixteenth century mind. Mantel writes in a kind of credo:
The historical novel is always, therefore, an act of conjuring: the illusion of reality, the ability to summon up ghosts (2).
Wolf Hall is moving like a freight train caught in Newtonian inertia-- barreling toward nationwide praise and readership and unable to stop. The New Yorker surmises that Mantel should be “congratulated for creating suspense about matter whose outcome we’ve known since high school”. I agree. However, what is more important is that we have an official voice to question our staid belief in the textbook, or more candidly persuade us that history--and reality for that matter-- is subjective.
(1) Taken from The New Yorker
(2) Taken from The New York Review of Books
(3) Taken from The Washington Post
The Monster Den! or: children in literature
All this Where Are the Wild Things stuff made me think of another book about wild things that, for better and for worse, doesn't have any of Sendak, Jonze, and Eggers' uplift. The Monster Den: or Look What Happened At My House-- and To It is a sick and nastily unchildlike collection of rhymes. At first, they're lessons in etiquette, Victorian-style, but that gives way to an account of three childrens' subsequent rebellion and escape from the household to a wild outdoor life. When they return a few years later, their parents flee and "never were heard of again."
Edward Gorey, Ciardi's former student at Harvard, illustrates the book. He does a good job of drawing monster heads, hair tangled into an elaborate pretzel, and other terrible things.
In response to parents appalled by the violence in his books for kids, Ciardi cited "intensities and losses" that made his childhood a time of "madness" and "disproportion." His own sons and daughter were the inspiration for the three characters in "The Monster Den," and Ciardi decided that the depiction would be good for them: "Children are savages. I think they need fairly strong stuff. As I recall and observe it, childhood is a time of enormous violence. It's emotional violence: everything is out of proportion. My feeling is that if we can take this sort of violence and convert it into play within formality-- make a little dance and rhythm of it-- I don't know what else that could be except theraputic." Although he betrays a pessimism about childhood in these lines, Ciardi also seems artistically taken by the "high-pitched" "imagination" and extravagence of children: their "language and natural metaphors are violent," but they are still just that: language and natural metaphors, a system of expression that behaves with extraordinary passion and a certain unwitting articulation.
As Ciardi says, "the children are a jury that can't be rigged." (But do they have good taste??) Even the author of such an unsentimental collection believes in children's preternatural ability to see clearly. However, it's this same innocent faculty that causes their anguish and incites them to violence. Children are magic. L-O-V-E!
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Daily Local (dailylocal.com), Serving Chester County, PA
Business
A book lover's delight
For expanded Wellington Square Bookshop in Uwchlan, rarer is better
Friday, October 9, 2009
By GRETCHEN METZ, Staff Writer
UWCHLAN — Wellington Square Bookshop may be located in northern Chester County, but its market is much bigger.
"We sell to the world," said shop owner Samuel Hankin. "We've sold to all 50 states many times over and to 50 countries. We know people from all over the world."
The original Wellington Square Bookshop, at 800 square feet, opened in early 2006 and featured an inventory of rare books, some valued at $20,000 or more.
In August, Hankin moved the enterprise two doors down to 543 Wellington Square, a location with 3,700 square feet of space.
"We thought we had years to expand (here) but it is already full and we're building new shelves," Hankin said.
The new store specializes in arcane, eclectic and obscure works, featuring rare, collectible and used books, many from Hankin's personal collection. On
the shelves are such classic writers as H.G. Wells, J.D. Salinger and Ernest Hemingway alongside collections of Italo Calvino and Primo Levi.
It also has a section for contemporary books that Hankin gets through a distributor.
Selling rare books and first editions to such far-flung places Russia, China, Iceland, South America and beyond is the key to competing with the national bookstore chains and online book discounters, Hankin said.
Books at tens of thousands of dollars are not bought locally.
"Lots and lots and lots of people are interested in this kind of book, people where money is no object," Hankin said, sitting in the shop's cozy, private rare book room.
It seems to be working. The 57-year-old Hankin said sales double each month.
Located in Eagleview, the bookshop gets its name from the community's Town Center, Wellington Square.
Sounding so British can throw some folks off, especially customers in England who mistakenly think they are dealing with a local company, said Hankin, who then has to explain he is not calling from Oxford, England.
Hankin is a member of the family that founded and continues to run The Hankin Group, developers of the mixed-use community Eagleview along with a number of other developments in the region. His father, Bernard Hankin, founded the company a half century ago.
Hankin believes the bookstore adds value to the Eagleview community, which has corporate and residential components surrounding a retail center. At Eagleview, the Town Center is home to a doctor, a dentist, a pharmacy, two restaurants and is fast becoming a destination location, he said.
In addition to being a bookstore owner and a partner in The Hankin Group, Hankin is a lawyer with a practice in Florida and Pennsylvania.
The new shop sports a cafe with sweets from Delightful Desserts of West Chester, a children's corner with story times for the little readers, author book signings, open mike night for readings and its own book club for adults, though other book clubs are welcome to meet there as well, Hankin said.
Hankin worked on the store expansion himself, furnishing it with antiques from his personal collection, building his own book shelves and installing the hardwood floor and tin ceiling, common in American stores of the 1890s. The sweat equity meant a considerable savings, bringing the store to completion shy of $50,000.
While the shop has a classic look and feel, its technology is 21st century. Wellington Square has its own Web site and links to its own pages on such social networking sites as FaceBook and Twitter. It also has its own blog to keep the shop's readers informed.
"Our customers really like books," Hankin said.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
I recommend the Anthologist. It's Baker's newest novel-- a typically low-key and rambling story about a man trying to write the introduction to a poetry anthology. There are so many flaws with the book: it constantly refuses significance, mentioning things like Project Runway and Subway; the resolution comes after no noticeable buildup; and, even though it's about poetry, nothing truly poetic happens. But Baker induces sublime acceptance in the reader, directing them to a world of smaller, more everyday pleasures and revelations.
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Windy Day
The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren, collected by another couple-- Iona Opie and Peter Opie-- in the 1940s treats children like anthropological subjects, “the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out.” (haha) They observed the non-parent-mandated activities of kids on the playground, and recorded their rhymes, games and songs, meticulously describing their meanings, purposes and rules of usage.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Our First Author Event- Jen Bryant
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Collector by John Fowles
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Timbuktu by Paul Auster
Monday, September 14, 2009
Richard Matheson Readfest
Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson
There are a lot of stories in here. But let me tell you, some of them are dissapointing. "Button, Button" didn't live up to the hype - I guess because it was a short story, and I expected the ending to be better (it's got a pleasant twist but I was looking for something more). The story probably would've been better if it was a very short/somewhat short novella, which means I'm looking forward to seeing the movie still.
I expected more of a philosophical approach to the short story than it was (and I think that's partly because of the ending which was ba-dum-da-dum blah). There was room for elaboration and, in my humble opinion, some deeper and more profound dialogue. Norma, the wife, really annoyed me by the end - but I thought that she and her husband, Arthur, could've had some pretty good banter before it was all over!
There are some stories that are pretty good - I especially enjoyed "No Such Thing as a Vampire". But others, like "Pattern For Survival" and "Dying Room Only" were just weird... partly because they didn't have the kind of weirdness I expected from Matheson. I thought that "Button, Button" was actually one of the stronger short stories in this collection, even though a lot of the reviewers on Amazon strongly disagreed with this opinion. All in all, the stories in this collection are just average - the title story is good, and readers will enjoy this if they're looking for a quick read, but it didn't have that sparkle you expect from Matheson.
I Am Legend
I must confess, I watched the movie a long time ago (it was scary!) and didn't read the book beforehand. However, I still enjoyed this story immensely and it was much better than the movie. I Am Legend the movie changed the ending a lot and the story line a little. Adding in the dog and Will Smith was a good call but the movie's new ending - not so much.
Anyway, I Am Legend has that special twist I really expected from Matheson. It's about a man named Robert Neville who, because he was bitten by a vampire bat (?), is immune to a germ that infects people and gives them vampire-like qualities. Furthermore, in shocking and disturbing news, the germ can also inhabit dead people to make them zombies. But it also infects living people, too - and Robert Neville's flaw is that he fails to see that the vampires are still inherently people on the inside.
Every day, Neville goes around building back up his house, then waiting out the storm of vampires who try and lure him out of his cave at night. And fairly, he's tired of living the way he is, and so he sets about finding a cure for vampirism. While walking in the daylight, he meets a woman who seems to be immune, just as he is, so he captures her for observation. And the story only gets better from there.
In conclusion, if you have a couple of hours to kill, skip the collection and go for I Am Legend.
Then, read "Button, Button" in November before the movie comes out. It'll take you 15 minutes.
The Rare Book Room Is Finished!
We feature rare and collectible works-- some novels, some biographies, some children's books. A few notable pieces are:
A first printing, first edition of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
An illustrated, 1930s edition of 21 Delightful Ways of Committing Suicide by Jean Bruller
A signed, first edition/first printing of After Many A Summer by Aldous Huxley
A first edition, first British printing of Thackeray's Vanity Fair
A first edition, first British printing of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This is interesting because, due to the controversial content, it did not get published in the United States until three years after it was published in the UK and France.
Anyway, come visit us and our rare book room or drop in to www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com and check out our inventory listed online.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
In Search of Memory by Eric R. kandel
You Don't Love me Yet by Johnathan Lethem
Minions of the Moon by William Gray Beyer
Published in 1950, the same year that Robert Heinlein wrote Sixth Column, which sold for $2.50, this early science fiction/fantasy tale, although 190 pages, can be read in about 20 minutes. Here's what it's about:
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Ok. This one is really really strange. First Rivka is writing this novel about her father Tzvi Gal-Chen, at least in part. He flits in and out of the book like a firefly and it is clear that Rivka loves and admires him, although he is fictionalized quite convincingly.
I WENT out to the hazel wood, | |
Because a fire was in my head, | |
And cut and peeled a hazel wand, | |
And hooked a berry to a thread; | |
And when white moths were on the wing, | 5 |
And moth-like stars were flickering out, | |
I dropped the berry in a stream | |
And caught a little silver trout. | |
When I had laid it on the floor | |
I went to blow the fire a-flame, | 10 |
But something rustled on the floor, | |
And someone called me by my name: | |
It had become a glimmering girl | |
With apple blossom in her hair | |
Who called me by my name and ran | 15 |
And faded through the brightening air. | |
Though I am old with wandering | |
Through hollow lands and hilly lands, | |
I will find out where she has gone, | |
And kiss her lips and take her hands; | 20 |
And walk among long dappled grass, | |
And pluck till time and times are done, | |
The silver apples of the moon, | |
The golden apples of the sun. |
The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Affinity by Sarah Waters
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Staff Picks This Week: Jolie
Narrated by two closet intellectuals - Renee, the 50-year old widowed concierge who tries to keep up the appearance of a concierge while secretly enjoying Tolstoy and fine cuisine - and Paloma, the precocious 12-year-old who's decided life's not worth living for insightful and hilarious reasons. They are finally brought together by M. Ozu, who recognises their talent and potential as no others do. Both narrators despise and mourn the class-concious inhabitants of the building and offer their takes on life. Despite the two narrators though, the book's spotlight is inevitably by Renee, who - after reading the book - really makes you turn around and look at people twice.
Barbery is a great writer, and as a professor of philosophy, she incorporates some really interesting stories and thoughts into her books. The staff all really loved this book, as did I - and I'm really looking forward to reading Barbery's newest, Gourmet Rhapsody.
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Enzo the dog is the narrator of this story. He's picked out as a puppy by his loving owner, race car driver Denny Swift. This completely loveable dog likes watching the TV and Denny's old racing videos, and travels with Denny throughout his life through marriage, children, love and loss. Anyone with a dog can appreciate the loyalty Enzo shows, as well as his occasional hilarious outbursts of anger at not having opposable thumbs - lashing out in one chapter, for example, at monkeys, who are too stupid to have been given the joy of having thumbs. By the end of the book, I felt I had really gotten to know Enzo, and I never wanted the book to end. This is a great read.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The Glass House is a beautifully written story, and while Mawer writes a great deal about what goes on the house itself, his main focus is on the Landauer family and Liesel's closest friend, Hana, through their extramarital affairs, trials and tribulations. This is a beautifully written novel, and is an extremely enjoyable novel. It's not a book for the beach, and it's a sad novel, but beautiful nonetheless.
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Dr Faraday is a quiet country doctor and the son of a maid; Mrs Ayres is the owner of Hundreds Hall, a once-grand manor now in shambles; her two children are Caroline and Roderick, whose leg was damaged in the war. Strange things start happening in the house, with no explanation, and Dr Faraday, the gallant narrator, relays the story to us through his eyes. He begins treating Roderick using induction coils, but quickly integrates himself into the Ayres household, and consequently shares in their various misfortunes.
Unfortunately, I was dissapointed with this novel. While it's gotten great reviews and it's certainly worth a read, I didn't think that it was up to the standards of or Waters' other novels. It may be that it's a little bit creepy, but I also felt that some of the suspense-building in the middle section was a little bit too much, and then when it did speed up near the end, the action seemed to be going too quickly and even wildly. The Little Stranger is by no means a long and tedious novel, but I felt it might have been better if the middle was made shorter and the last part made longer.
As said before, however, this novel is worth a read, especially if you liked Sarah Waters' writing style as seen in her Victorian trilogy. But I don't see it as Man Booker material, if only because I enjoyed Fingersmith so much more.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
New Books Update!
Also remember about signing up for our book clubs; you can find more information on our website - just click on the "Book Club" link:
http://www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com/announcements.php
And while you're at it, if you've got young kids, e-mail us for updates on the September Storytimes.
Finally, we're hard at work on the Man Booker Prize reading.
Less than two weeks to go!
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
New Pastries in the Shop: A Poem
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Kiss Painting by Sandra Jeppesen
A few summers ago, I found myself aimlessly wandering the streets of Montreal. I spent the day watching couples in Parc Lafontaine drink wine and smoke unfiltered cigarettes, French Canadian mothers unpack a lunch of Pepsi and moon pies for their children, and waiters specifically ignore the American patrons. As the day waned and the couples became drunker, I happened upon an obscure bookshop on Sherbrooke. And in this "eclectic" shop, I stumbled upon an unusually rare find: a great book.
Don't let the cover fool you; this is no politic-ridden manifest of punk-anarchist angst. Sandra Jeppesen's Kiss Painting (Toronto: Gutter Press), defies the constraints that anarchist literature usually bears. I know I know, I'm sick of their studded leather chaps and chains too... but, this book is about so much more. As reviewer, Sue McCluskey, put it: [Kiss Painting] is a tale of three friends; street kids, punk rock anarchist squatters, who meet, live together, move away and travel to the ends of the earth to find each other. It is a tale of loyalty and love, in which a ragtag tribe of society outcasts--or, rather, people who have rejected society--create a generous, compassionate community out of the squalor and chaos within and around them."
While Jeppesen's politics do show its neon-green head, it is with compassion for our lost humanity and a genuine want for community among people. Jeppesen utilizes stylistic choices akin to Mooly Bloom's Soliloquoy in Ulysses, creating with flowing prose-poetry, a cachophony of colors and sensations and thoughts. The language is so decandent it's almost edible; it reminds the reader just how beautiful the world can be.
It really is a shame that some brilliant authors, who push the conventions of the written word, can receive so little attention. Sandra Jeppesent is yet another one of those voices that drown in the deafening yells of the Dan Browns and Stephanie Meyers of our time. Kiss Painting has the opportunity to shift the paradigms of readers and I hope you give it the chance it deserves. I loved this book!
ABCs and 123s
Friday, August 14, 2009
Asterios Polyp
I liked Asterios Polyp too, but maybe all the hype had gotten to me-- I was expecting something bigger. The different fonts and colors assigned to different characters was a neat idea, but it seemed like such a basic conceptual use of the medium. All the reviewers are saying that Asterios Polyp is such a big deal because Mazzuchelli is taking advantage of what the graphic novel can do that a written novel can't, and it definitely had the feel of a book written for a set of ideas. In the end, I wanted more than that, and the story itself didn't really compel me.
But I loved the ending.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Books We've Read
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The cafe
The Wellington Square Bookshop cafe is now open!!!!! Come by for a cappuccino, espresso, latte, Americano, French press or plain ol' coffee. We have pastries, too.
All our coffee is supplied by Terroir, a division of the famously delicious George Howell Coffee Company. Terrior produces sustainable single-origin coffees grown in partnership with coffee farmers.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Our New Shop - A Life in Pictures
Featuring George Howell's coffee from Massachusetts
You can even enjoy a romantic dinner with our ambient music
We're open 'till 7 on weekdays
And we wear our prom dresses to work every day (on occasion)