Wellington Square Bookshop

We're Moving!

2010-03-23T10:19:00.002-04:00

Hi all,

We've moved to tumblr. Visit us there on our new blog, Foxed!

Three Celebrities and their Books

2010-03-22T23:29:00.005-04:00

A lavish photomontage experience following a showgirl princess who loses her shoes.

Robert Pattinson working at the Strand in "Remember Me," a new movie with an amazing SPOILER ALERT!
Bonus pic of Robert roughly grasping "Nine Stories"

No Comment.

A story from Sam, verbatim

2010-03-15T15:29:00.003-04:00

In ancient Greece, in order to preserve the confidentiality of a message, a slave was chosen to deliver same. In order to accomplish this task, the slave's head was shaven cleanly. The message would be tattooed on the crown of the slave's head after which enough time was allowed for the slave's hair to grow back to a reasonable length, whereupon the slave was dispatched to the proposed recipient of the message. When the slave reached the end of his journey, his head was once again shaven, and the message was received.

A tip o' the hat to Sam for his fine story.

We're featured in Chester County Life!

2010-03-08T16:02:00.003-05:00

Check out the great article printed about us in Chester County Life and stop by the shop for a copy of your own!

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

2010-03-04T12:24:00.001-05:00

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel about her father Bruce's life as an aesthete and closeted gay man (or possibly bisexual man) in rural Pennsylvania. The truth about his sexuality becomes clear to Bechdel shortly before his death at the age of 44, just after she's come out as a lesbian. Although the details of his death are unclear-- he stepped backwards into the path of a truck while crossing the road, jumping back as though he had seen a snake-- Bechdel is convinced that he committed suicide. This conviction is one of many artistic inferences that she gives for her father's life.

Bechdel's explanation of Bruce's regionalism (he stays within a few miles of his birthplace for most of his life), homosexual relationships with young men, and careers as an English teacher and a funeral home (or "fun home") director is informed by readings of literature. Ulysses, The Far Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Proust are all called up. "I employ these allusions," Bechdel writes, "...not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms." The triple function of these books-- as actual objects in Bechdel's families lives, as interpretive frameworks, and as devices to suggest removal-- makes for an unusual memoir that insists on the fictional qualities of real lives. after his death, bruce's life becomes even more of a book, which bechdel can attack and interpret but only at a distance.

I was a little frustrated at how bechdel was always making sure that these books matched her father's life, but this is also the most revealing thing about the memoir: it's a memoir about her, and the twisting and turning she has to do to make sense of her family.

2010-03-03T18:03:00.006-05:00

Ivar Ekeland spends a lot of time talking about Norwegian legendary kings and their peccadillos, but I guess that must be because he is Norwegian. Anyhoo, this book is about Chance, Fate, Anticipation, Chaos, Risk and Statistics. In fact, coincidentally, those are the chapters of the book too. Basically, the premise is that we either can't do anything about anything, or obversely we may be able to do so, but for the myriad of variables that greet us each day as we lazily stretch, arise and brush our teeth. Any of those actions, delayed or bumped up by a nano-second and we could find ourselves run over by the UPS truck or bitten on the nose by those damn possums. So best not to worry, or consider the butterfly flapping its wings somewhere and assume that things will turn out the way that they do because he is such a rascally little thing. Bottom line is ignore the formulas in the book. I did. Otherwise it is amusing, erudite and thought provoking. Exponential instability is the heart of the matter. That's what I always thought, I think.

Blasphemy

2010-03-01T09:23:00.005-05:00

This is a really really good bad book. Its premise is that a super super collider, propels protons and antiprotons in a circular path around a 45 mile diameter accelerator ring, bringing them to near light-speed, then collides them and watches the distributions of particles which emerge as they annihilate each other. The only problem is that someone has injected malware into the system, so that it appears that God is also disclosed when the collision occurs. Unfortunately this gives rise to a Fundamentalist outrage and subsequent storm on the collider by those who believe that the scientists are trying to create a graven-image of our Lord. The violence which ensues creates an anti-Christ, who ends up establishing his own "religion" based on science and a search for the truth, which is mankind's quest for an answer to the heat-death of the universe through entropy. There is a love interest, which is semi-hot, and the ending is cloyingly predictable, but Stephen King couldn't do much better. I guess. It was a waste of my evening and early morning, but enjoyable in an onanistic way. Well, c'est la vie. I've certainly done worse on a Friday night.

Mainstreaming, Misfits and Murder: An Interview with Josh Berk

2010-02-22T11:21:00.003-05:00

This Saturday, February 27th, from 12-2, Josh Berk will join us in the shop for a special family event. Josh is going to read from his debut young adult novel, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, answer questions, and sign books.

Hamburger Halpin tells the hilarious story of Will Halpin, an overweight deaf teen who spends his first year at a mainstream high school looking for love, failing Algebra, unraveling the school's social scene, trying to get invited to the greatest party ever … and, oh yeah, solving a murder. It's "part mystery, part coming of age, and just edgy enough to make the Hardy Boys very uncomfortable."

Emma: Hamburger Halpin takes place in coal country, Pennsylvania, and a lot of the action takes place in a former coal mine during a school field trip. What about this setting inspired you?

Josh: In writing the book I pulled from a lot of different sources -- dreams, my own life, something I saw once on MTV. The trip to the old coal mine is a piece that is directly from my own life. I think it was a summer camp trip and not a school trip, but I definitely remember visiting Lackawanna County Coal Mine as a kid. I was probably about ten years old and it always stuck with me as interesting and memorable. You got to ride in a coal cart, wear a miner's helmet, and chat with a fake old-timey coal miner. I loved it!

So when I decided I might want to write a mystery story involving a field trip I immediately remembered the coal mine. I felt that the part where you ride a few hundred feet underground and sit in total darkness might be a great scene in a mystery. The lights are on and there are 30 people in the room. They shut the lights, it's total darkness, and then when they turn the lights back on there are only 29...

Then the more I read about the region's history, lots of interesting things presented themselves -- cave-ins, strikes, ghost stories. I felt like an old coal mine was a great and spooky place and I've lived in Pennsylvania my whole life so I had a lot of experiences to draw from.

Emma: There are a lot of young adult novels that deal with "issues." Will Halpin faces his own set of unique difficulties (growing up Deaf, overweight, and at odds with his parents). However, very few of these books include a mystery caper like the one in The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin. What drew you to the mystery genre?

Josh: It doesn't always work this way when I'm writing, but in this case the story and the narrator came as a package deal. The character of Will Halpin and the mystery storyline came quickly to me and I immediately liked the idea of a deaf character involved in a mystery at his high school. It's hard for me to imagine a different story with this character!

Also, writing a mystery appealed to me because I knew it would force me to stay focused (more or less) on a tight and interesting plot. Some of my early attempts at writing fiction might have had interesting characters but boring plots. So it was a sort of a challenge to myself as a writer to see if I could carry out a plot like this. And I hope readers enjoy it! Issue books are important to be sure, but I think everyone enjoys a good caper.

Emma: One of the most interesting things about the book is the way the narrator Will Halpin's deafness gives him both advantages and disadvantages as an observer. On your website, you write that the idea of a kid lip-reading on a school bus came to you in a dream, and that led to you doing extensive research on the Deaf community. Talk a little bit about what that was like, and how it came to influence your novel.

Josh: The basic seed for the novel did come from a dream. It was just a short scene of a kid spying on his classmates on a school bus in total silence. I woke up feeling scared and immediately decided that (a) something terrible happened at school and (b) he was spying on them by reading their lips because he was deaf. Writing a deaf narrator was exciting and terrifying at the same time. It was exciting because it opened up a different way of writing about, thinking about, and experiencing the world. But it was terrifying because I didn't know anything about the Deaf world!

At first it just seemed like an interesting exercise in fiction, and I felt like deafness could be used as a symbol for all sorts of things I wanted to say about isolation, identity, and the universal human difficulties of communication. But of course deaf people aren't a symbol -- they're real people! So I did a lot of research, read a lot of books, befriended a lot of deaf people online, and started learning about their world. The first thing I learned was, and this should not be a surprise, deaf people aren't that different from anyone else. This reinforced my idea that I didn't want to write a "problem novel," but rather that I wanted Will to pretty much be a regular kid. I wanted him to crush on girls, try to be cool, bicker with his friends, do all the things any 15 year-old would do.

Then I tried to take some of the particular issues within the Deaf world and weave them into the story. It was my hope to illuminate readers who might not know about this world and to try to create a realistic deaf character deaf readers could relate to. And indeed in writing a mystery it was very fun to think about things that might traditionally be thought of as limitations and flip them to be assets in our hero's quest to crack the case!

Emma: In your biography, you mention that your "early literary ambitions included writing a book about a magical place named Flarnia." Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Josh: I was in a serious Flarnia stage at around fourth grade. I definitely had great literary ambitions as a nine year-old. My parents were both librarians and I was definitely raised in a house that greatly valued reading and writing. I can't really claim that I always wanted to be a writer though, because through high school and college I didn't think about it that much. I played sports, picked up guitar, played in bands, traveled a lot, and went through a phase where I didn't think about writing very much. But it was simmering in the back of my mind I suppose because whatever else my job was I always found a way to make writing part of it. And I often daydreamed about being a writer even though I was too daunted to even dream it was a thing I could really be.

Emma: What do you like about writing for a young adult audience?

Josh: My interest in YA really started when I was in library school. I took a Young Adult literature class and felt such a strong connection to the books we read! High school was very vivid in my mind and I felt like maybe I could write my own stories about that time in life. It's such an exciting time. It's often horrible, yes, but it's so intense. You could, for example, have a great success in your career when you're 30 but it doesn't feel as epic and exciting as when a girl you like give you her number when you're 15. It's great fun to write about adolescence. And yeah, I'm sort of immature by nature so it's not much of stretch! I get along really well with teenagers.

Emma: What advice would you give young people who are interested in writing?

Josh: I'd say to read as much as you can! It's really the best way in my opinion to learn the craft. And then I'd say to have fun with it. You should enjoy writing and just write for your own pleasure and fun and not be too worried about making a career out of it. That, and I'd say to find someone who can read your work and be critical. It's very hard to put yourself out there, to accept criticism, but it's the only way you'll get better. Read, write for fun, let someone tell you how to get better, then repeat!

Emma: What were some of your favorite books and authors when you were a kid?

Josh: I actually didn't like the Hardy Boys very much, despite the fact that I reference them 9 million times in Hamburger Halpin. I did like Encyclopedia Brown! I read a million of those mysteries. And then I went through that C.S. Lewis phase where all I wanted to read was fantasy books. Lloyd Alexander was also a big favorite. By the time I was in high school I read a lot of adult fiction -- Salinger, Vonnegut, Hemingway, Orwell. I still love those guys! I also still like Narnia.

Emma: Any chance that you'll write another book featuring the characters in Hamburger Halpin?

Josh: I'm so flattered when people ask this question! It makes me so pleased that readers would like to hang out with Will Halpin, Devon Smiley, and company again. So maybe I will! Maybe I'll write one from Devon's point of view. Maybe The Return of Smileyman? It has a ring to it, no?

Learn more about Josh and his book on his website!

Read A Poem at Open Mic!

2010-02-08T13:30:00.003-05:00

Here's some inspiration: Sylvia Plath reading her poem "Daddy:"

Wallace Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice-Cream:"

And something lighter: Edward Lear reads "The Owl and the Pussycat:"

What's your favorite poem to read aloud?

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

2010-02-08T12:50:00.004-05:00

Reading Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (who published A Gate at the Stairs in 2009) has got me thinking about puns. Her characters produce them obsessively, in their heads and at each other during fights, for comic effect, aggressively, but most often for no particular reason. The puns give the usually somber stories another dimension. The characters' idle punning makes them seem distant from each other, bored with their relationships. Their lack of focus and digression from the narrative direction given to them actually deepens the themes of the stories. In the puns, secret links are uncovered, and tragedies are handled in the light, blank zone of language.

You're only average, he said meanly.

I like a good sled dog, she said huskily.

This hot dog's awful, she said frankly.

I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.

Unfinished Novel by Joshua Ferris: The Expectant Virgin

2010-02-05T09:49:00.002-05:00

Our humble bookshop was lucky enough to receive a special unfinished manuscript from an unnamed book world spy. Take a first peek at this slice of action from Joshua Ferris's upcoming blockbuster,

THE EXPECTANT VIRGIN!

He reached into the jar of cream with three curled fingers and drawing out a dollop of the greasy stuff, he slathered it liberally over the congealed and coagulated flesh of his paramour.

"Myron," she cried playfully. "Watch out. You'll tenderize me!" Myron chuckled and puckered his lips, ravenously lapping at Mildred's extended index finger until his tongue reached the emerald that he had bought her after their last standoff. He told her, "Listen Gladys, I mean Mildred, if this is going to work out, you're going to have to muscle up to the bar. I don't have the time to deal with boy-like girls. I'm a man's girl and mean to stay that way!" Mildred and Gladys both sighed and began to rub each other's special parts with an unguent of green. Myron laughed once again and did a cartwheel, but slipping on the cream, ended up in the fireplace. To mask his embarrassment, he cried "Ta Da!". But the girls knew different. They giggled in derision and Myron, removing the poker, stood up and with moist eyes, told them that they were cruel and that he had been a homeless waif at one time. "And you both know that!"

When the shooting was all over, they all lay on the floor playing dead. Those possums! I wish you could have been there. I was the fly on the wall, until the professional swatter came along, but I lived to tell this tale and so much the better for it. I can't think of when I had so much fun and that's the truth. Would I lie?

Unfortunately, now I lie prone atop the glistening heap of Ponds that dislodged from its jar, flopped onto the nightstand where I idiotically landed. Now what? Keep your fingers crossed. Myron may save me yet. He's not such a bad egg and he has been given a bum steer. More about that later.

*********************************************************************************

Gritting his teeth at Dorinda, Myron submerged his hand in the jar of coagulated blood and flung it at Velma's exposed forehead from roughly three meters to her left. "Now hold still, you wildcat, and let me get off that grease," he spat.

"I think you got some coagulated blood between the pleats of your pants," mewled Dorinda. "Perhaps I can be of service," she sang out musically.

Shaking her long, musk-colored mane, Velma sprang from her chaise lounge and landed in a heap at no one's feet.

"Herb and Humberto are less than two blocks away," Myron growled. "Get your hose back on and give me a kiss quick! Not you, Velma," he sang out tunelessly.

With the dream of a whisper on her lips, Dorinda sailed out from the apartment, her hose trailing behind her like twin legs.

One fine night...

2010-01-26T11:44:00.002-05:00

Our first open mic night was a lot of fun. We set up the stage in the café area of our store and a nice group gathered, some strangers, and some old friends. The cafe was open and we offered our usual selection of coffees, soft drinks and pastries. There were a lots of families and groups in attendance and the space was great for mingling and making new friends.

We all enjoyed an varied mix of electric and acoustic acts, and some read poetry and prose. One person even wandered off for a few minutes and browsed our shelves, returning to read a poem from our collection. We wee also graced with a great narrative poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay and a few haiku.

We had a guitarist perform some great instrumentals on electric guitar, one gentleman who played the banjo, and a singer-songwriter who surprised us with her beautiful voice, performing two covers and an original song. Another featured duo sang a couple Beatles songs and some nineties hits.

It was a fun night all in all. We’re planning on making it a monthly event, on second Fridays, so come by February 12th at 7pm to join in!

Unfinished Desires

2010-01-26T11:01:00.002-05:00

I've never read anything by Gail Godwin before, but I picked up Unfinished Desires because I love books set at schools. The closed environment, cliques (and other adolescent behavior), and bad teachers all make for good drama.

The book had a less dramatic plot than I expected, and the events were all pretty low key. All throughout Unfinished Desires, characters kept referring vaguely to the freshman play by the class of 1951: the class, as headmistress Mother Ravenel puts it, was "toxic," and they did something almost unspeakable that year. Their actions and the result, she admits, were partially her fault, but the events and behaviors leading up to it are so complicated and subtle that we doubt that anyone's at fault. That's the problem at the heart of the book: everyone's forgiven, and no one is in the wrong, but none of the characters can stop confessing and obsessing.

Open Mic Night-- this Friday!

2010-01-11T10:50:00.001-05:00

Wellington Square Bookshop Open Mic Night
Friday, January 15th from 6-9pm
Grab your guitar and spend an evening enjoying the talent of the community over a cup of coffee! Performers are also welcome to dazzle us with non-musical acts, so feel free to recite a favorite poem or your original work.
All ages welcome!

This Friday, you’re invited to sing, play an instrument, or read aloud in the cozy café area of our bookshop. Share your talent and your passion with the community!

Like all open mic nights, we embrace musical acts at our event. Since we’re a bookshop, however, we’re also welcoming you to read to us from your favorite book. When else do you get to share the passages or poems that moved you most?

While you’re here, be sure to try one of our delicious coffee drinks and indulge in a pastry from our café.

Huh?

2010-01-02T12:43:00.001-05:00

January Storytimes!

2010-01-02T11:19:00.003-05:00

Every Tuesday at 10am, we invite children of all ages and their parents to our storytime and craft sessions. Come hear a story in our cozy and colorful children's area! Storytime usually lasts for about 45 minutes.

Storytime Schedule
January 2010

Tuesday, January 5th ∙ 10:00 am
I Want to be an Astronaut by Byron Barton
A young narrator dreams of becoming an astronaut. In simple, brightly-colored illustrations, Byron Barton gives us a glimpse of zero-gravity, ready-to-eat food, and space walks. After being "up there" for a while as a member of the crew, it's time to come back down to earth.

Tuesday, January 12 ∙ 10:00 am
Jamberry by Bruce Degen
The whimsical rhymes of Jamberry are lots of fun to read aloud. A boy joins a bear on a delicious romp through Berryland, where the landscape is overflowing with wildly-colored fruit. We'll find blueberries, raspberries, jazzberries, razzmatazzberries and more!

Tuesday, January 19 ∙ 10:00 am
Freight Train by Donald Crews
Presented in blocks of brilliant colors, the multihued train in this Caldecott Honor book undertakes a dazzling journey before disappearing from the final page.

Tuesday, January 26 ∙ 10:00 am
A Hat for Minerva Louise by Janet Morgan Stoeke
On a snowy morning, Minerva Louise, an inventive and curious chicken, searches the barnyard for a hat. After trying out a flower pot, a garden hose, and several other silly options, Minerva Louise settles on a pair of mittens: one of which she uses to warm her tail!

Byron Barton

2010-01-02T11:13:00.004-05:00

Who is Byron Barton? I found very little information about this author while searching on the internet for his biography (the closest Wikipedia entry is on former congresswoman Beverly Barton Butcher Byron). Most biographies of him mention only the books he's published and his background in television animation. One thing's for sure: Barton's deceptively simple style is radical in the children's book world. His technology and transportation-focused books never become complicated or allusive, but that's not to say that there's no emotion in his work. This Tuesday, we'll read Barton's I Want to be An Astronaut at our 10:00 am storytime. In this book, a young girl tells us about wanting to be "up there" in space, where you can float around, eat freeze-dried meals, and then come back down to earth. Her confident descriptions and goals make it an empowering read for kids as well as a great introduction to outer space.

Lit by Mary Karr

2009-12-21T08:29:00.002-05:00

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)

News-wise

2009-12-08T13:52:00.005-05:00

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.

Upcoming Events!

2009-12-02T10:29:00.003-05:00

A lot is happening this December. Here's a list of events to look forward to!

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!

New Shel Silverstein Biography

2009-11-19T09:30:00.004-05:00

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.

THE WRONG MOTHER!

2009-11-09T09:51:00.004-05:00

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.

Kurt Vonnegut special

2009-10-26T13:53:00.002-04:00

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.

Review of "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel

2009-10-23T15:11:00.003-04:00

We have all sat in lecture halls, discerning Shakespearean insight into history textbook drama. We have been seduced by the beautiful portrayals--the high collar lace and bodice of Hollywood--in The Other Boleyn Girl and Showtime’s The Tudors. Countless books have been written. And still our fascination with Henry VIII’s brutal, passionate reign over 16th century England lives on. We are enamored by the soap-like drama: desire, anguish, exultation, deals, spies, decapitations, and fabulous clothes (1). While we are captured and amused by Anne Boleyn’s seduction and Henry’s child-like temper, we forget the sociopolitical backdrop: England was in the midst of a religious upheaval. The man seated in the heavens, pulling the strings of his royal marionettes, was the infamous Thomas Cromwell.

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:

Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman’s sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.

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

2009-10-23T14:42:00.005-04:00

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!

2009-10-09T09:56:00.001-04:00

The Daily Local (dailylocal.com), Serving Chester County, PA

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.

The Daily Local News : Serving Chester County

2009-10-09T09:54:00.001-04:00

The Daily Local News : Serving Chester County

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The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

2009-10-03T14:54:00.002-04:00

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.

The Windy Day

2009-10-02T12:39:00.002-04:00

John and Faith Hubley recorded a rambling conversation between their daughters and animated the interaction in this video. The changing conversation is reflected in the fluid animation as their kids wander casually from one story to another. The Windy Day tries to capture the "real world of children rather than what children do that adults think is cute" (Charles Solomon). The Hubleys animated in watercolor and "threw dust on the cels... worked with grease so the paint would run" (Bill Littlejohn).

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.

Our First Author Event- Jen Bryant

2009-09-25T09:41:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow we're having Jen Bryant at the shop for a meet-the-author event. Jen's written seven children's books and won the Caldecott Medal for River of Words, her beautiful biography of William Carlos Williams. Her newest book, Kaleidoscope Eyes, is for young adults. Like all her young adult novels, it's written in verse:

We have hit a layer of shale

and some huge tree roots.

Before we dig any further, we bring

the metal detector with us

to the church, strap the battery pack

and headphones on Carolann,

and wait beside the hole. Tonight

the full moon glows like a piece of

pirate gold. We don't even need

our flashlights. And the sound coming

through the instrument is so loud,

we don't even need to ask her

what she hears.

Kaleidoscope Eyes is set in New Jersey in the 60s and besides touching on issues of that time-- like the Vietnam War-- it includes the discovery of an old map and the subsequent quest undertaken by three friends who find themselves involved with pirate legends.

Come by tomorrow to meet Jen-- she'll be in our shop from 11-2!

The Collector by John Fowles

2009-09-20T12:55:00.002-04:00

I am close to finishing The Collector by John Fowles; I can barely pause to write this blog, I'm so engrossed in the story. Fowles is one of my favorite writers; not only does he have a Nabokovian flair for the twisted-but-slightly endearing antagonist, he weaves a gripping plot through eccentric and realistic characters. In fact, the story really unfolds from his characters: he creates, in this case, a seemingly asexual working-class recluse who collects butterflies and turns him loose on the world and the rest falls into place...

The back cover of a Laurel paperback edition reads:

THE POWER OF PASSION

THE POWER OF EVIL,

THE POWER OF THE MOST SPELLBINDING STORYTELLER OF OUR TIME, come together in this sensational, million-copy-selling triumph by John Fowles, author of A Maggot and The Magus.

The setting is a lonely cottage in the English countryside. The characters are a brutal, tormented man and the beautiful, aristocratic young woman he has taken captive. The story is the struggle of two wills, two wasy of being, two paths of desire-- a story that mounts to the most shattering climax in modern fiction!

Well, that's a bit dramatic. But it's a very good read and I suggest you pick up a copy... and we have a whole John Fowles collection available at Wellington Square Bookshop. So come down and get one!

Timbuktu by Paul Auster

2009-09-17T10:18:00.002-04:00

I just had to post this image of the new cover when I saw it on the Book Design Review Blog (a great blog, by the way).

Timbuktu is a short novel following a homeless man, Willy G. Christmas, and his dog, Dr. Bones, who wonders about an afterlife his owner referred to as "Timbuktu." As usual, there are rogue written texts in Auster's book-- Christmas locks his manuscripts in a bus station locker where they remain after his death. We don't know what they say. But another author takes over-- Dr. Bones, the dog, whose story shouldn't even be available in written form. But here it is in Auster's unusual book. Christmas's writings might be more complex or more successful, and the story we get from Dr. Bones constantly refers back to the unavailable ideal manuscripts hidden in the Greyhound lockers. What remains is a humble and tragic novel.

Richard Matheson Readfest

2009-09-14T21:42:00.003-04:00

So I was reading about all these new movies coming out based on books and one that caught my eye was the story of "The Box" which stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. It's a box such that if you push a button, you become instantly wealthy, but you kill someone that you don't know. I thought it was a pretty interesting premise, and when I googled the author Richard Matheson, I found out he had written I Am Legend as well AND Stephen King called him his greatest influence. How could you go wrong? Hence, my Richard Matheson readfest began.

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!

2009-09-14T16:24:00.008-04:00

We have finally finished the rare book room! The chairs are plush, the shelves are dusted and settled in place, the mahogany tables are polished, AND the books are in order. I want to live in there; it's so cozy. I think the proprietor does as well, he fell asleep in there the other day. Once you close the french-style doors, it is relatively quiet.

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.

In Search of Memory by Eric R. kandel

2009-09-09T19:08:00.003-04:00

Just to show you I am not a complete idiot, I read this book for you. The idea is take a bunch of genetically engineered lab mice, splice them together with poignant memories of Nazi Vienna and then come up with the answer to where memory resides.

Nobel Laureate Kandel, intertwines the intellectual history of the powerful new science of the mind--a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroscience and molecular biology--with his own personal quest to understand memory.

From Vienna to Laboratory, Kandel searches for the biological basis of memory.

I wish I could remember what his conclusions are. Take my day, move it from my hippocampus to my pre-frontal cortex and what do you get? Some weird-ass dreams.

Memory in my opinion, and I think I speak for Roger Penrose, who is known for his periodic tiling of the plane (he did my bathrooms) and his friendships and falling-outs with Steven Hawking, resides in quantum effect. We can't find the basis for it because we are looking for it. And what are we looking for it with? Our memory in good measure. Look-break a vase and then try to fix it with the broken vase (poor analogy). Can't be done. We look inside of our consciousness to see what is there, but we are stymied by the fact that the tool we use is the tool we are looking for.

Anyway, he seems like a nice guy, and he DID win the Nobel Prize and his quest, as all noble quests, is remarkable and courageous. Maybe he's right after all. I just can't remember. (OK. Enough of that!)

You Don't Love me Yet by Johnathan Lethem

2009-09-09T18:53:00.003-04:00

Drugs, sex Rock'n Roll, and even a masturbation boutique (called No Shame). What's not to love? Lethem, author of Fortress of Solitude and The Wall of the Eye, The Wall of the Sky lampoons the alternative band scene in L.A.

With an emaciated lead singer who looks like the guy in The Dandy Warhols, an introspective geek of a lead guitarist who can only play sitting down, a bassist who falls in maniacal love with an overweight, shaggy haired diabolical genius (kinda like me) and a drummer who stiffens the band's resolve, this quintet of enigmatic folks, shoots to sudden almost-stardom and then falls precipitously into a pit that doesn't even exist. By the way, a good portion of the story is devoted to Matthew's (the singer) day job at the zoo, where he rescues a kangaroo from ennui and installs him in his bathtub where he (the kangaroo) defecates four times a day, each scatological batch the size and shape of a catcher's mitt.

Interested yet? I was. And I wasn't disappointed. Graphic sex is always fun, even without a Nona around and there are tons of cigarettes, loads of weed and an amazing amount of alcohol. So as I said earlier, what's not to like? Read it if you are not a Republican.

Minions of the Moon by William Gray Beyer

2009-09-09T18:09:00.003-04:00

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:

When Mark awoke after the experiment, he hardly expected his astounding discovery--he had been catapulted thousands of years into the future, where, incidentally he meets this incredible babe in hardly any clothes at all!!

This future world was like nothing one had ever predicted. Far from scientifically advanced, it was a semi-barbarous state in which the facts of science lay hidden in the cunning minds of a few. To meet the challenge of his new existence, Mark became a swashbuckling leader among the Neo-Vikings. And inspiring him in his valorous deeds was the beautiful, romantic Nona. (Did I mention that she was a semi-clothed Babe? And perhaps a nymphomaniac. She bedding Mark in just a few hours.)

Fortunately Mark had an important ally-- Omega, a Walter Brennan type, who used a lot of "you rascal" and "you young pup!" and whose home was the moon. Omega was a disembodied intellect, pure thought, he roamed the universe at will, as old and as wise as humanity itself. Kinda like me.

It was Omega who first revealed the presence of "the dangerous brains", the terrible force for evil which lurked in the world and threatened mankind with enslavement. And it was Mark who led the battle against them. They weren't that smart really but a lot smarter than George Bush.

This science fiction novel is a thrilling and swift adventure of the rebirth of civilization.

For enjoyable reading it is exceptional. And it has a semi-clothed babe named Nona who likes to have lots of sex with Mark. She is really spunky and feisty and probably a real pistol in bed. Probably real flexible as well. But I digress.

So if you are interested in 59 year old science fiction Neo-Viking books, this is for you, especially because of the extremely semi-unclothed Nona. Ah Nona.

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

2009-09-09T17:32:00.004-04:00

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.

So any way, Dr. Leo Liebenstein arrives home one day to find that his wife has disappeared, leaving behind a woman who looks, talks and behaves exactly like her. Certain that Rema is still alive he commences a quixotic quest for her leading him to Patagonia among other venues. His Sancho Panza is one of his psychiatric patients, Harvey.

In any event, we all fail to see clearly the world around us, or in this case, the woman we love, but the journey to discover, or re-discover true meaning, qualitative or quantitative is always the most important thing.

This comic and picaresque novel is well worth reading and has chapter titles such as: 1. A method for Calculating Temperature, Pressure and Vertical Velocities from Doppler Radar Observations.

Just so you know, Rivka Galchen received her MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues, She recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. The recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, Galchen lives in New York City.

All of this is depressing to me since she is 25 years younger than me!!

Apropos of nothing: As Yeats says in his Song of Wandering Aengus:

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

2009-09-09T13:31:00.002-04:00

The Puttermesser Papers is really strange. Not the strangest book I have ever read, don't get me wrong. It just comes at you all at once, and all at once means a tyrannical Golem, a tyrannical Russia emigre, a flaccid lover, an idyllic Paradisaical New York City, hoisted on its own petard or its catenary, which is a more painful thing to be hoisted upon, I would suspect. Then while catching, or trying to, my breath, the flighty, tragic, amazing and completely unhealthy life of Puttermesser comes to a ...., but dear reader, I have told too much, or too little. This book won the National Book Award (actually it was just a finalist). Read it if you like being stung by a small bee, while reading your own obituary.

Affinity by Sarah Waters

2009-09-05T14:17:00.003-04:00

I chose Affinity to read on the plane during my vacation because so far, when I read Sarah Waters, the whole world falls away and I can't stop reading! Before this, I read The Little Stranger and Fingersmith, and I thought both of them were totally fun and almost pitch-perfect Victorian novels that include things that actual Victorian novels don't touch.

In Affinity, a wealthy young woman, Margaret Prior, begins volunteering at a women's prison as a "lady visitor." She's there, ostensibly, to provide an example to the criminals and to give them the chance to speak to someone: they aren't allowed to talk to each other and spend most of their days in silence. Margaret's motives and past are unclear from the start. What she doesn't tell us about herself emerges when she develops a fascination with one prisoner, a medium convicted of false spiritualism.

I was a little disappointed by Affinity-- in a lot of ways, it seemed like a version of Fingersmith written before the actual finished object, as though Waters was testing out ideas. This, plus awkwardly-included Foucaultian theory and a very lagging middle part narrated by an increasingly wimpy protagonist (same thing happened in the Little Stranger!), would have ruined the book for me, but the last 75 pages or so had amazing momentum.

Staff Picks This Week: Jolie

2009-09-01T12:04:00.005-04:00

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

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.

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

2009-08-28T17:31:00.003-04:00

In 1930 Czechoslovakia, the new Mr and Mrs Landauer commission a man they meet on their honeymoon, Rainier van Abt, to build a modern house for them. His answer is the Landauer House, a house with a glass room that is the talk of the town, where they raise their two children and hold dinners and piano recitals, and where Mrs Liesel Landauer feels truly content. But when the Nazi regime begins to gain ground in Europe, the family has to find a way to escape, eventually leaving their beloved house, never to truly return. In their absence, the house becomes many things - a lover's paradise, a bartering centre, a place for research - always waiting for the return of its original inhabitants.

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

2009-08-28T10:16:00.004-04:00

I had previously read Fingersmith and immensely enjoyed it. Then Sarah Waters' newest book, The Little Stranger, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, so of course I had to read it. Waters is an amazing writer of historical novels, but this was a little bit different from her previous books. It's partly a ghost story, but mostly it's a novel about class in postwar Britain.

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.

New Books Update!

2009-08-26T16:17:00.005-04:00

We've got some cool new books in, some signed, some not, all in superb condition and ready to go! Plus, if you're looking for a gift, some relatively inexpensive signed copies of some great books priced from $20-$50 are here - including Zafon's The Angel's Game.

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!

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

2009-08-22T12:07:00.006-04:00

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, quite strangely (and, as our proprietor suggested, distastefully) titled, is truly a remarkably original and intelligent debut novel from Canadian author Alan Bradley. Guided by an eleven-year-old protagonist--with a precocious vocabulary and a keen interest in poisons--readers are led hop-skip across the English countryside in order to unravel the mystery surrounding her father and his curious stamp collection.

Early one morning, young Flavia de Luce and her father find a dead Jack Snipe on the doorstep with a stamp pierced by the end of its bill. Colonel de Luce, as Flavia notices, reacts in an odd way: with fear. The next morning, Flavia discovers a man lying in the cucumber patch, and as she draws near, he breathes his last word to her ear: Vale.

Confused? I bet you are. But intrigued? I know I was.

Once I began this book, I couldn't put it down. I'm never one for any old mystery novel--especially those that ignore character development and depth in exchange for an engaging plot--but I must say The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie does not sacrifice a thing. It is both well-written and comical, with an original voice and a cast of characters overflowing with oddity and nuance. AND, I really enjoyed reading it: it had me laughing and it had me guessing.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first in a series of Flavia de Luce books by Alan Bradley. For his first novel, Bradley received the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award.

New Pastries in the Shop: A Poem

2009-08-19T13:32:00.001-04:00

Amaretto biscotti, chocolate chip biscotti,

Coffee nut

Blueberry

Scones,

Bigger than ever before.

No-fat berry muffins, trenchant and luminous,

Cranberry nut

Pecan coffee praline.

Then, suddenly,

chocolate chip cookies,

oatmeal cookies,

mocha chip cookies.

Amaretto biscotti,

Chocolate chip biscotti.

Lemon

Lavender

Mini

25cents each.

They wait together

With upturned eyes

Wanting to be chosen

And dipped in coffee.

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-08-18T10:59:00.000-04:00

There's something embarrassing about reading Dave Eggers' Where the Wild Things Are experiment in the New Yorker. He's adapting the children's book for adults, or at least into novel format, providing something that responds specifically to nostalgia, but that changes the thing we're nostalgic about. The adult version of the original WTWTA-- a mysterious book-- is overexplained and blunt:

"So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and of all the world known and unknown?"

I'd rather be a kid. The original book was written for little people who couldn't have everything explained to them yet: not Max's mother's distasteful boyfriend, Gary; his mean sister, Claire, who chews tobacco; nor the list of frustrated "wants" Max writes in his journal: "I WANT Gary to fall into some kind of bottomless hole... I WANT Claire to get her foot caught in a bear trap..." Why couldn't Dave Eggers' kid Max talk or think like a child anymore? Could that have been a possibility for a project like this?

Kiss Painting by Sandra Jeppesen

2009-08-15T14:51:00.000-04:00

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

2009-08-15T14:39:00.000-04:00

I'm ordering some new stuff for the children's section. Some of my favorites are cool-looking ABC and counting books. Here's a few pictures:

Asterios Polyp

2009-08-14T11:19:00.000-04:00

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.

Books We've Read

2009-08-12T07:58:00.000-04:00

Emma and I both read the raved-about Asterios Polyp, a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli. It's a relatively quick read, and a good one - especially for first-time graphic novel readers like myself. The story line has some nice twists but the pictures are definitely the best part! All the characters have their own colours and font style, which makes it a lot easier to keep track of everything that's going on and adds a unique flair to the novel.

"Asterios Polyp, its arrogant, prickly protagonist, is an award-winning architect who's never built an actual building, and a pedant in the midst of a spiritual crisis. After the structure of his own life falls apart, he runs away to try to rebuild it into something new. " (Amazon)

Then there's The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I was pretty excited to read this one since it had great reviews on Amazon and Indiebound. It's a wonderful, well-written book, but it didn't live up to my expectations (which, granted, were probably too high). If you're looking for a fun read, this is a book to consider! It's an uplifting novel, told from three perspectives in 1962: Eugenie Skeeter Phelan, an (unhappily) tall white woman with a bossy mother and married-with-children friends, Aibilene, a maid who's raised seventeen chidlren, and Minny, who's smart mouth has lost her more jobs than she can count. An aspiring journalist, Skeeter decides to anonymously publish a book about the lives of "The Help" in the South. An amazing debut novel!

The cafe

2009-08-11T13:10:00.001-04:00

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.

More Photos

2009-08-07T18:35:00.001-04:00

Our New Shop - A Life in Pictures

2009-08-05T22:50:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos from our new shop - enjoy!

A seating area outside, featuring Cinzano umbrellas

A cafe area with good cappuccinos for good people made by good frothers
Featuring George Howell's coffee from Massachusetts

Our new Children's Corner, with new, used, and rare children's books
(plus young adult novels!)

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)

THE LOOK

Relaxing outside the bookshop
(Notice the lions in front of our doors!)

Enjoy a coffee in one of our comfy chairs

Come see us in Eagleview Town Centre!
We've got a fountain and lots of cool books!

Host Your Book Club... and Anticipate Pat Conroy

2009-08-04T09:41:00.000-04:00

Pat Conroy's first new book in a decade, South of Broad, is being released in a couple of weeks. It's a great read, and follows the lives of a group of schoolmates right as segregation was ending and integration beginning, throughout their lives through the AIDS crisis and other historical milestones. A recommended read.

Also, if you're interested in hosting your book club, we'll provide you with free coffees and pastries. Plus, there's a 20% discount if you buy your book club books from us! Stop in or call for more information and to schedule. We're open from Monday to Saturday from 9 - 7 and Sunday 10-3.

549 Wellington Square

Exton, PA 19341

610-458-1144

Jack Vance

2009-07-20T16:11:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has an article up about Jack Vance, a sci-fi writer-- aged 92-- whose literary talent is hidden by his genre (whereas Michael Chabon, after achieving literary success, is free to explore genre writing in books like Kavalier and Clay. Or is it Cavalier and Klay...???). For Vance, "The rocket ships are just ways to get characters from one cogently imagined society to another."

He has two new books coming out: a memoir, very well titled, called This is Me, Jack Vance! and a collection of stories written by other authors and set in a future of his imagining.

Ask us about our small but nice collection of rare editions by Jack Vance.

I think a Wellington Square Bookshop sci-fi book club might be a good idea... anyone agree?

Whichbooks.net-- a site for recommendations

2009-07-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

Jolie just found this site. It allows you to characterize the kind of book you want to read: just slide a dial between categories like happy and sad, easy and demanding, conventional and unusual, or safe and demanding to generate a list of books that meets your description. Books in the database are published after 1995 and appear with a short user description. Oh, and you can also describe the type of characters, plot or setting that you'd like to read about. The recommendations are created by a team of 150 specialists who read all the books! (So this is sort of like Pandora radio's Music Genome Project, perhaps?)

I asked for a gentle, disgusting and funny book and was offered White Powder, Green Light by James Hawes and Brass by Helen Walsh.

If you live in Great Britain you can follow a "borrow" link from any book to request it from a local library.

Changes in Comic Art

2009-07-20T09:47:00.000-04:00

The Onion AV Club has a list of 21 comic artists who changed the medium for better or for worse. I've never read superhero comics but I love Lynda Barry (who is having trouble with windmills) and David B. Archie, I was simply obsessed with: my uncle gave my sister and I a box of Archie comics from the 60s and 70s and we reread them for a year until my father finally secretly threw them away. I miss them.

We at the shop are also VERY EXCITED for Asterios Polyp to arrive! It's a graphic novel about an award-winning architect who has never built a building and reviewers love it.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

2009-07-20T09:19:00.000-04:00

^not our author.
The first half of Jeff in Venice takes place during the Biennale, a conference for the international art world that our protagonist, Jeff, attends as a reporter. He views exhibits, drinks a lot, and meets a woman, all while keeping up a constant monologue designed to undermine his observations and activities: a bar left dry after a night of parties is "still, ostensibly, a bar but it was a place, now, of abandoned meaning... It seemed quite possible that a curse had now fallen upon the place..." and Venice wakes up and puts on "a guise of being a real place even though everyone knew it existed only for tourists." His endless series of clever evaluations of Venice, the art world, and himself never add up and it seems to be his intention to keep them from becoming too significant in a habit of playful self-effacement.

Our second protagonist may be Jeff-- at least, he bears some similarities. Another set of similarities is the big idea of the novel: that Varanasi, in India, is somehow linked to Venice, another city filled with water. If Venice is exhausted of meaning, its poetic unity is transferred from traditionally poetic Venice to Varanasi, where our maybe-Jeff has a gradual religious experience. His revelations are still undermined and doubted, but they end in something like total transformation induced by a place that seems to him to be relentlessly significant. Varanasi lends meaning to a world that includes a tourist's Venice, and maybe the second half of the novel is meant to raise up the first half without its consent.

Geoff Dyer's strategy of a double novel is disorienting, which I guess was his intention, and it's clear that neither novella would be as affecting on its own. The balance created is unusual and interesting, although it sacrifices and undermines the moving qualities of a traditional narrative.

My Lobotomy

2009-07-03T12:22:00.000-04:00

As far as I know, we have two books at the bookshop about lobotomies. One is called My Lobotomy, and is written by Howard Dully, an actual lobotomized man, about his lobotomy, lobotomy. His frontal lobe was removed at his stepmother's behest and to his surprise. He was a bad kid with deplorable table manners, so a doctor who drove a car called "The Lobotomobile" scrambled up Howard's lobe at age twelve (sorry if this is disgusting) to make him better (for just $200). I didn't read far enough to find out how he turned out, but it seems that he still has a lot of anger, and chapter 12 is entitled "Homeless," which doesn't bode well.

Our second lobotomy book is called The Ice Pick Technique and was written by someone named Anna Mavrikis, who does not admit to having a lobotomy. It is a tale of greed, egomania, and lobotomies. The two practitioners end up accidentally murdering people with their ice pick. Go figure.

Charles Chesnutt

2009-07-03T11:44:00.000-04:00

The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line, published in 1899 by Charles Chesnutt, all concern the reappearance of a racially significant relative into the protagonist's life. These protagonists are on "the color-line:" many of them are of mixed race and, if they're not capable of passing as white, they at least hold some valuable distance from the stereotypes of black slaves working on a plantation. Their status is threatened when they are associated with a blacker relative or friend. The uncontrollable visitations cause a lot of worry to the protagonists, who rarely explicitly admit that their discomfort has to do with race.

Chesnutt's stories were intended for a white audience. He writes elsewhere that his literary goal was to outline and detail his points undetected. The narrator's voice is strangely uninflected, and makes no argument: William Dean Howells, in his review of "The Wife of his Youth," writes that "the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes..." A prejudiced reader would immediately shut down any outright argument in favor of blacks. Race is not a vocalized issue in the stories, but sneaks in to change the established emotions and alliances of what began as a simple, naturalist narrative. Likewise, the feelings of panic that the characters experience is only gradually revealed to be related to race. Even after this addition, the stories never lose their traditional narrative tension, and that's what makes them so enjoyable to read.

Look for Chesnutt's stories at our new bookshop.

Valuing Rare Books on the Internet

2009-07-02T16:51:00.000-04:00

Who are these guys with absurdly high prices? Generally they have had unhappy childhoods, uncles who drank, boorish parents or have been educated at unpleasant and expensive schools."

Bookride has an article up about the prices of rare books on sites like Alibris, Abe, and Biblio. The mistake that a lot of amateur collectors make, they say, is to value their book based on the highest or mid-range prices listed online. In fact, the more expensive copies never sell and have probably sat in the inventory for months. " But when books are priced that high, all the booksellers need is an occasional ill-informed sale to stay profitable (if a bookshop is ever profitable).

THE OUTDOOR TABLES HAVE ARRIVED!

Author Readings

2009-06-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

We're looking for authors to read to the community. Storytelling is for adults and children. Stay tuned for information on upcoming events.

Bananagrams

2009-06-15T12:14:00.000-04:00

We're thinking about supplying bananagrams to the community of Eagleview in our new store. Apparently it plays like Scrabble, but looks like a banana. Why not? Their display is also very appealing.

Nancy Drew, Girl Detective

2009-06-04T15:27:00.000-04:00

I (Emma) am back in Pennsylvania, the new bookcases are built and stained, and our journey two doors down to the new and spacious shop is imminent! Our grand opening will take place some time mid-July: details are coming.

Right now I'm busy buying new children's books for the expansion and have been thinking a lot about what I used to read as a kid. My sister and I loved dramatic "issue" books for young adults like Cut (about girls who cut themselves) and Devil in the Details (about girls with OCD), and I was into the mouse warriors of Redwall for an embarrassingly long time, but what i want to talk about here is Nancy Drew.

As an experiment, I am going to write my description of Nancy Drew and her memorable adventures without any Wikipedia research (or any kind of research) and then we'll see if she left any worthwhile impression on this former reader.

Nancy Drew was a polite young lady with no mother and an inspiringly brave father (what did he do? Was he a fireman? A gentleman lawyer?). She also had a maternal housekeeper whom she called by her first name. Nancy's first detective mission began when she found some clock in a crumbling old house in the woods that held a mystery. She solved it, and went on to solve many more, often helping the local police department.

Nancy's most boring adventure was probably the one called something like The Mystery at Larkspur Lane. It took place at a retirement home that trapped its residents and took their money somehow.

Most of Nancy's stories involve a dramatic rescue by Ned Nickerson. Ned saves her when she's tied up on the floor of an abandoned cabin near the ski lodge where they were vacationing; and again when she is tied up on the floor of an attic, left alone with an approaching venomous spider sent by a nearby silk-making plant that she's been investigating! Nancy also faints often, and usually near the end of chapters. She should get that checked out.

What I remember most clearly about Nancy are the pictures of her on the covers of the books passed down to me from my mother. She always looks poised, with her wrists held up very elegantly. Her hair looks great. She is often in some attitude of spying or seems to be thinking hard about how to solve her mystery, but my favorite cover is the one that shows her in Scotland, standing on a green hill and playing the bagpipes. I think there's some suspicious character lurking in the background, but what stands out in my memory is Nancy's expression of diligent concentration. I admire Nancy, but I don't think she would be much fun to hang out with, even though everyone in her books seems to adore her. If I had to have lunch with someone from Nancy's fictional town (Pleasantwood? Littleton? Riverdale? Cutieville? Eagleview?), I would go with George, her tomboy best friend.

As far as I can recall, I learned one word from the Nancy Drew books: eavesdropping. I also learned what carrier pigeons are (or were). Useful information!

We will be posting regularly now, so please come back or add our RSS feed.

A daunting Task

2009-04-11T09:07:00.001-04:00

Because of Emma's prolific entries, I must perforce respond with my own. Here, I compare and contrast White Teeth, The White Tiger, Storm and Steel and my trusty Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, along with the newly entered, The Odradek, by Kafka.

Ok here's the deal. White Teeth deals with the post-war lives of two very boring compatriots, Damad Iqbal and Archie Jones.

A long kept secret between the two unwitting "brothers" yields a denouement which turns one protagonist into a hero, who for all his life was at the bottom of the heap, the end of his rope and nothing more than a cipher in the immensity of the universe. Actually less than a cypher.

The White Tiger concerns a man who sacrifices his moral code for the embrace of another. Dealing with the dichotomy of the choices he makes, in modern India, is a difficult task for the reader and one which delves into the dilemma within which modern man finds himself.

That is, what is essence, and does it require an interior moral code to make that essence viable. Plato and the Playtpus... provides us some insight in another joke: "A man wins $100,000 in Las Vegas and, not wanting anyone to know about it, he takes it home and buries it in his backyard. The next morning he goes out back and finds only an empty hole. He sees footprints leading to the house next door, which belongs to a deaf-mute, so he asks the professor down the street, who knows sign language, to help him confront his neighbor. The man takes his pistol, and he and the professor knock on the neighbor's door. When the neighbor answers, the man waves the pistol at him and says to the professor, 'You tell this guy that if he doesn't give me back my $100,000, I'm going to kill him right now!'

The professor conveys the message to the neighbor, who responds that he hid the money in his own backyard under the cherry tree. The professor turns to the man and says, 'He refuses to tell you. He says he'd rather die first.'

In The Odradek Kafka creates an artificial world and populates it with an annoying creature. The moral dilemma faced is born of angst. Will the creature outlive the protagonist, and if so, what is the point? The Odradek seems to have no purpose in this life (no essence), while Kafka's protagonist faces all the cares of any moral man, the albatrosses of modern life; work, family and cares. It's just not fair.

Another joke: A seeker has heard that the wisest guru in all of India, lives atop India's highest mountain. So the seeker treks all over hill and Delhi until he reaches the fabled mountain. It's incredibly steep, and more than once he slips and falls. By the time he reaches the top, he is full of cuts and bruises, but there is the guru.

"Oh wise guru", the seeker says, "I have come to you to ask what the secret of life is."

"Ah, yes, the secret of life," the guru says. "The secret of life is a teacup."

"A teacup? I came all the way up here to find the meaning of life, and you tell me it is a teacup!"

The guru shrugs. "So maybe it isn't a teacup."

The last work, in this tortured bit of logic (blog entry) is Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel, arguably the best book ever written about war, at least WWI. Here, the soldier portrayed has simply set aside his moral code for one which suits his context. He is a good man, who enjoys tremendously the culture of war, but at the same time, admires his enemy and provides him solace when he is confronted with pain. This does not preclude him from killing that man, if the context changes.

So in conclusion, things are not as they seem, moral codes can change on the toss of a dime, Machiavellian ethics is conditional and war (of some kind) is the crucible within which all of these concepts are stirred together, boding either well or not with regard to civilization and our continued existence. Lastly, none of it really means a damn thing anyway.

To Read: The Cares of a Family Man

2009-04-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

I haven't read this story, by Franz Kafka, but my friend was just telling me about it and it sounds very unsettling. A man describes, in detail, a star-shaped spool creature named Odradek that lives in hallways and attics:

"At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle." (I got that from Wikipedia! have you heard of it?)

The story is simply an account of what Odradek looks like, its customs, and its habitat. At the end, the narrator tells us he's worried that Odradek will outlive him.

Check out the video on our Facebook page.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...

2009-04-09T16:39:00.000-04:00

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, is an hilarious introduction to philosophy utilizing jokes to explicate what would otherwise be difficult metaphysical concepts and deep thoughts. Example of a joke:

Alvin is working in his store when he hears a booming voice from above that says "Alvin, sell your business!" He ignores it. The voice goes on for days, saying "Alvin, sell your business for three million dollars!" After weeks of this, he relents and sells his store.

The voice says, "Alvin, go to Las Vegas!"

Alvin asks why.

"Alvin, just take the three million dollars and go to Las Vegas."

Alvin obeys, goes to Las Vegas and visits a casino.

The voice says, "Alvin, go to the blackjack table and put it all down on one hand!"

Alvin hesitates but gives in. He's dealt an eighteen. The dealer has a six showing.

"Alvin, take a card!"

"What? The dealer has..."

"Take a card!"

Alvin tells the dealer to hit him, and gets an ace. Nineteen. He breathes easy.

"Alvin, take another card."

"What?"

"TAKE ANOTHER CARD!"

Alvin asks for another card. It's another ace. He has twenty.

"Alvin, take another card!" the voice commands.

"I have twenty!" Alvin shouts.

"TAKE ANOTHER CARD!" booms the voice.

"Hit me!" Alvin says. He gets another ace. Twenty-one!

And the booming voice says, "Un-fucking-believable!"

Basil Wolverton's Bible

2009-04-08T21:13:00.000-04:00

Basil Wolverton, comic book artist for Mad, made a series of illustrations for the Bible that were just published in book form. The above picture is not from the Bible, but the following are (but they're not in chronological order):

That sword is God's!

Basil Wolverton wrote for a some of the horror comic books that were eventually banned due to concerned parents and politicians and adults. This Basil Wolverton biography says that his genre of horror comics is called the "Spaghetti and Meatballs school of design:" his drawings were horrible/iffic, but, because of an always-present element of the absurd/comic, they were, like spaghetti and meatballs, non-threatening.
The Horrors of it All is a good blog that uploads old horror comics.

How To Clean Anything With Gasoline!

2009-04-08T10:47:00.000-04:00

From the Huffington Post, a man decides to clean his house with gasoline and absent-mindedly tosses his cigarette onto a pile of gasoline-soaked cushions. Then, instead of calling 911, he yells "fire!" a couple of times and walks to the police department.

In related news, a Turkish reporter applies blackface in an address to Pres. Obama, apparently to symbolize how George W. Bush "'darkened' the faces" of the Turks: "the anchor hopes Obama will turn things around."

This is still a blog about books and booky things, but I think these stories belong in a story... maybe a picaresque novel??

Buzzfeed via Huffpo

Fork in the Road

2009-04-07T08:56:00.000-04:00

Nancy and Sam recently informed me that Neil Young is a Republican, but I like him, especially after seeing his new album cover. Fork in the Road was available as a full stream for a while on N.Y.'s Myspace page, but I think they took it down because today is the release date! Here are the lyrics to his 9/11 song from Are You Passionate, which should have been suspicious, but who didn't write a little something after 9/11?

Let's Roll
by Neil Young, singer/songwriter

I know I said I love you
I know you know it's true
I've got to put the phone down
And do what we've got to do

One's standing at the aisleway,
Two more at the door
We've got to get inside there
Before they kill some more.

Time is runnin' out
Let's roll.
Time is runnin' out
Let's roll

Let's roll for freedom
Let's roll for love.
We're going after Satan
On the wings of a dove.
Let's roll for justice
Let's roll for truth
Let's not let our children
Grow up fearful in their youth.

Time is runnin' out
Let's roll.
Time is runnin' out
Let's roll.

Time is runnin' out
Let's roll!

Twilight Is Taking Over The World

2009-04-06T19:52:00.000-04:00

Ok, so maybe Twilight is taking over the world one tween at a time. The series recently had its debut November of 2008 when the movie "Twilight" hit theatres. The first book was published in 2005 by Stephenie Meyer. If you're into mythical creatures and love stories this might just be the novel for you. I am the youngest person who works at Wellington Square Bookshop and I fell in love with the series. Meyer really has a talent for drawing you into the plot and making you feel like Bella, the main character. No matter what negative things people say about the series it is one you can read over and over again. I encourage everyone to read it, both young and old. I promise you will not put the book down. It has truly inspired young girls all over the world to never settle for anything but the best... GO TWILIGHT!

Memorizing Poetry

2009-04-06T19:51:00.000-04:00

Memorization used to be a huge part of literary education, but now it's a bad word. Jim Holt says it's pleasureful to memorize poetry and recommends it instead of an iPod: "in the end I’ll be the possessor of a nice big piece of poetical real estate, one that I will always be able to revisit and roam about in." But he also says it's not intellectually worthwhile and that people don't like you to recite your poems: "Nor, as I have found, will memorizing poetry make you more popular. Rather the reverse."

The Autobiography of J. Edgar Hoover

2009-04-04T22:51:00.000-04:00

Look, I have something to get off of my chest. I haven't been entirely honest with all of you. There are things about this that you don't want to know. Every time you decide to change things they just stay more the same. In the end all you get for your efforts is coal dust and sheet music. Well I am giving the world notice now that I am shuffling off. This rough beast is heading for the hills and beating a path to God's green acre. Anybody wants to come looking for me, good luck. I wish you and yours the best of the season and remember, if the good Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise, I'll come calling for you next year. And don't hold your breath because I won't be pushing up the ole daisies until I hear from the brethren. They hold a mirror up to my mouth and check to see that all the spit and polish is standing up to Father Time. In the morning you will have forgotten all of this because it's not even on your mind now. Convolutions or not, I want the capsule to be glistening and the tide rushing in. Save the monocle and go for Lasik. I sure am glad I did. Sayonara good buddy and keep the light on in the window. In fact why don't you tie a G.D. yellow ribbon round the old oak tree. And give her an extry twist for me, hegoblin!!!

Destination Moon!

2009-04-03T19:14:00.000-04:00

The Life archive on Google (search for any topic or photograph by typing source:life after your search term) has a huge collection of photographs from Destination Moon, the 1950 movie co-written by Robert Heinlein.

I've never read Heinlein, but anyone who writes dystopian novels for juveniles is all right by me.

Here are some more photos from the set:

The actors in the background are midgets to make the set seem bigger!

The Smell of Books and the Kindle

2009-04-03T09:39:00.000-04:00

Reading books is just an excuse for smelling books. Now you don't even have to read a book to smell it because of Smell of Books, which offers four varieties of book scents in aerosol: Classic Musty Smell, Crunchy Bacon Scent, Eau You Have Cats, Scent of Sensibility (for ladies), and New Book Smell.

This is another little joke in the time of the Kindle, which many people are saying will replace the book. I think it'll be a while yet: books have been so fetishized for so long that we can't get rid of them abruptly. Also, the varied pricing of books makes them an appealing product to shop for or collect: I can get a copy of Sense and Sensibility for $.25 at a yardsale or $75,000 from a rare book seller.

Nothing

2009-04-03T00:50:00.001-04:00

The Oxford University Press puts out a series of books, each called A Very Short Introduction....to....... There are about 200 volumes. Each is the size of a very large cell phone and can easily fit into the back pocket of a pair of jeans. Spacious jacket is also a bookmark. Some of the titles I have read include very short introductions to Buddhism, Galaxies, Quantum Physics, Autism, Modern China, Memory, Chaos(that was a good one), Cosmology, The Crusades and Game Theory, to name a few. I was going to hyper-link all of these but I am too lazy and it is 12:54AM. The books used to cost $9.95, but with the current economic dyspepsia, they are now $11.95.

Here's the weird thing. I just bought A Very Short Introduction to Nothing, and it immediately disappeared. No kidding! So the question is, was that what was supposed to happen, or should I keep looking, or should I just ask for my money back. But then I wouldn't get Nothing. But I might find Nothing too.

G20 Meeting

2009-04-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

Watching the coverage of the G20 meeting brought to mind the book Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin. The story revolves around Freddy and Frederika, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and their quest to reclaim America for Great Britain. Now Freddy is middle aged with big ears and Frederika is beautiful and a ditz. Not hard guessing who the characters are based on. Much of the book is laugh out loud funny, and a welcome relief from the real world. What is concerning is that comparing the events in the book to what is currently happening in London, the events in the book make more sense.

Pippi Longstocking

2009-04-02T10:08:00.000-04:00

Pippi Longstocking's full name is: Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraimsdaughter Longstocking.

On an almost unrelated note, I was surprised to learn how sheep farmers in Lancashire count. It goes like this in their vernacular: "Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp, teezar, leezar, cattera, horna, dik, yandik, tandik, tetherdik, bumpit, yan-a-bumpit, tan-a-bumpit, tethera-bumpit, methera-bumpit, jigot."

via TKWKIWDBI via The Guardian.

2009-04-01T16:37:00.000-04:00

Just finished Paradise by Koji Suzuki, the guy who wrote The Ring Trilogy, on which the movies were based. The story in Paradise spans ten thousand years, and as many miles, linking successive generations in an ethereal quest for love and finality which chases down time as if it were no more than a constraint. I've always thought that time is an illusion promulgated by mankind in order to make sure that everything doesn't happen all at once.

This is Suzuki's first novel, but it was only translated into English this year. While kind of pulpy, it does hold your interest sufficiently so that it can be read at one sitting, or lying (laying?) as in my case.

The book itself is presented as a type of trilogy, with the first portion being set in the distant past, the second in the 1800s and the third in 1990. Be on the lookout for the red deer whose forelegs are outstretched toward the sun. Basically the moral is that "love abides".

Also the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska is open for business which figures quite prominently, and if true would hold great promise for the election of Sarah Palin in 2012, in which case this blog will be written from Fiji.

Biggles Works it Out

2009-04-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

I just received an email from Abe Books promoting a series of books about a pilot named Biggles: from what I can tell, the promotion is for April Fool's Day, but the books look real and hilarious! I looked him up on Wikipedia suspecting that there must be some racism, and sure enough, although Biggles tries to be decent to all men, he does encounter some stereotypical savages. Some of my favorite titles:
The Camels are Coming
Biggles Defies the Swastika
Biggles Presses On

Unfortunately, Biggles never meets Mr. Tutt, another manly character from a series of books written for decent lawyers who enjoy a good novel.

Paths of Glory

2009-03-26T22:26:00.000-04:00

The last thing I would have ever expected is that I would be reading a book by Jeffrey Archer. However for some strange reason I just read (in one night) The Paths of Glory, the tale of George Mallory and the possible first ascent of Mt. Everest. The book was actually very good, and true to the heroic and tragic story. George loved his wife Ruth very deeply and their relationship was portrayed endearingly. His love for climbing was also related vividly and viscerally. Mallory was the man who supposedly, when asked "Why do you do it?", answered "Because it is there."

He died in 1924 on his third attempt to summit the tallest mountain in the world, also known as Qomolangma. His body was recovered in 1999 by Conrad Anker. Ruth had sewn a little bag for Mallory to keep in his pocket. There were small mementos in it. There was also a photograph of Ruth, his favorite picture of her. He had promised to place it on the summit when he reached the top. When he was found, just a couple of hundred feet from the top, the picture was missing.

2009-03-26T09:35:00.000-04:00

There's a novel out now that's written in the form of an auction catalog. It's called Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. I think it'd be interesting to look at, especially after going to an auction in Philadelphia to buy books for our bookshop, but I've heard that the book itself is a little too cute. It seems like lots of young people, or maybe just people, love collecting objects. For instance, I knew a group of people who bought the entire ball cage from a grocery store and put it in their living room. I also knew a guy who bought a collection of children's gas masks from eBay, put a different colored light in each one, and hung them on his wall. He also had a hair drying chair in his bedroom, and lots of taxidermy animals.

Mortal Coils

2009-03-24T16:16:00.000-04:00

Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley deals with a wealthy, bored and inconsiderate husband, "taking care" of his very sick, disfigured wife, with the help of a wrongly accused, pain in the ass, nurse. A story of unrequited love, turned poisonous, both literally and figuratively, the play deals with redemption, damnation and a methodology for converting one into the other. It also features an 18 year old nymphet, who, while ignorant and innocent, is angelic in this fable-like setting. A kindly old (58, one year older than me!) doctor is the catalyst that brings this story to its semi-pleasant conclusion. Moral: Don't mess around with Arsenic! Don't put in in your coffee and beware of older women (36!) who have orgasms when it rains.

Bill O'Reilly reads from his work

2009-03-18T22:34:00.000-04:00

In honor of the day after St. Patrick's Day, the Village Voice "crap archivist" has some clips of clear blue-eyed Christmas lover Bill O'Reilly reading from his violent sex thriller novel. It's about a murderer a little like himself. Choice quotes: "Off with those pants," "I wish I were a lesbian," and others not fit to print.

Rudy Rucker

2009-03-18T21:19:00.000-04:00

One of my very favorite writers. Check out Software, Wetware and Spactime Doughnuts as well as The Sex Sphere, The Secret of Life, White Light and The 57th Franz Kafka.

You won't be disappointed, unless you are a nitwit.

Literature Map

2009-03-18T08:01:00.000-04:00

This is very cool. Just go back to start and type in any author's name:

Literature Map

You may disagree with the results, but the creators will let you help them edit their choices.

Some may start with Joyce.

Others, unfortunately will begin with Faulkner!

2009-03-17T20:51:00.000-04:00

Basically the world is now controlled by Japanese schoolgirls. In the old days California set the pace for the latest in memes, mutations and trends. Now it is the ubiquitous presence of a cultural breeze from the East.

Good Morning

2009-03-17T07:43:00.000-04:00

Cell phone novels are really popular in Japan. Cell phone novelists can upload what they write right onto websites where readers can then download their work. No editors, no filters! Mostly, they're by and about young women. And the phrases are short enough to fit on a cell phone screen: "Daddy/Mommy/Yudai/I love you all so much/... --clatter, clatter--/the sound of a door opening./At that moment.../--Thud--/A really dull blunt sound/The pain shoots through my head..." OH NO! keep reading!

Mutton

2009-03-16T14:34:00.000-04:00

Anne Bronte, in Agnes Grey, lifted the following, unfortunately, from her own personal experiences:

There was a roast leg of mutton before him: he helped Mrs Bloomfield, the children, and me, desiring me to cut up the children's meat; then, after twisting about the mutton in various directions, and eyeing it from different viewpoints, he pronounced it not fit to be eaten, and called for the cold beef.

'What is the matter with the mutton, my dear?' asked his mate.

'It is quite overdone. Don't you taste Mrs Bloomfield, that all the goodness is roasted out of it? And can't you see that all that nice, red gravy is completely dried away?'

Well I think the beef will suit you.'

The beef was set before him, and he began to carve, but with the most rueful expressions of discontent.

'What is the matter with the beef, Mr Bloomfield? I'm sure I thought it was very nice.'

'And so it was, very nice. A nicer joint could not be; but it is quite spoiled,' he replied dolefully...

Notwithstanding the ruinous state of the beef, the gentleman managed to cut himself some delicate slices, part of which he ate in silence. When he next spoke, it was, in a less querulous tone, to ask what there was for dinner.

'Turkey and grouse,' was the concise reply.

'And what besides?'

'Fish.'

'What kind of fish?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?' cried he, looking solemnly up from his plate, and suspending his knife and fork in astonishment.

'No. I told the cook to get some fish--I did not particularise what.'

'Well that beats everything! A lady professes to keep house, and doesn't even know what fish is for dinner! professes to order fish, and doesn't specify what!'

'Perhaps, Mr Bloomfield, you will order dinner yourself in future'

Fake advertisments in the Bronte's "Young Men's Magazine"

2009-03-15T19:29:00.000-04:00

Branwell Bronte created the Young Man's Magazine when he was a kid and passed on "editorship" to Charlotte Bronte, then 13, when he got bored of it. She filled it with heroic poems, fairy stories, and fake ads. It also exhibited her and Branwell's temporary obsession with vivisection. Here are some of the ads:

To Be Sold a painting of a bull fight 3 feet long & 2 feet wide by Private he shall limn [describe]

TO BE SOLD 20 POUNDS of the essence of white FLOUR A NEWLY invented THING which is an infalliable remedy for ALL COMPLAINTS by SIR ALEXANDER hume BADEY--------

Orion & Arturus a POEM by LORD WELLESley Recomendation -- this is the most beautiful poem that ever flowed from the pen of man, the sentiments are wholly original nothing is borrowed. - Glass Town Review

ADVERTISMENTS SAles TO BE SOLD a rat-trap by MONSIEUR it can catch nothing FOR its BROKEN

THE ART OF BLOWing ones Nose is taught by Monsieur, Pretty-foot at his house, No 105. blue rose street Glass TOWN

Rebuttal

2009-03-13T11:26:00.001-04:00

Prince

Books to Eat To

2009-03-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has an article up in which they ask authors what books they like to read while they eat. Israeli writer Etgar Keret says he read Slaughterhouse-Five recently at a Chinese Restaurant in Tel Aviv: "I started laughing and crying, which goes with sweet and sour."

Sorry for the picture.

How to Read: Music

2009-03-13T09:57:00.000-04:00

Some say that the French composer Erik Satie was the inventor of what's now known as "muzak." He wrote pieces that he called "furniture music" allegedly after hearing Henri Matisse "express a desire for some kind of art form without any nagging subject matter." "Forged Iron Tapestry" was to be played as guests arrived in the foyer; "Phonic Floor Tiles" was intended for lunchtime or marriage proposals. Satie's furniture music was created to fill up awkward silences in conversation, neutralize the sound of silverware and traffic, and generally create the sensation of an easy chair. Satie's pieces are composed of fragmented, repeated phrases, that imitate the pattern of wallpaper and that are not intended to attract attention in any way. At the debut of his concept, held at a music hall, Satie became infuriated when the audience refused to stop listening: he "leaped into the crowd and implored everyone to talk, make noise, or concentrate on the picture exhibition in the theater hall."

Satie's music, even his non-furniture music, is good to read to. His rebellion against Wagnerian "excess" led him to plainsong and chant, and his music shows a similar interest in abandoning "dramatic accents" in order to create music that "sounded remote enough to make people more cognizant... of their surroundings." A lot of Satie's music is always moving forwards-- like all music, except music played backward-- but it doesn't ever reach anything that startles us out of our reading.

"Furnishing music completes one's property." -Erik Satie

A great source: Elevator Music by Joseph Lanza (on Google Books!)

Thanks and a tip 'o the hat

2009-03-13T01:44:00.000-04:00

To Emma for her charming initial post. For some reason it has prompted me to tell you to read Guided tours of Hell by Francine Prose. And of course, as noted, The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (Plate 14).

Wait, let me close the door. My stomach has been listening to all of this. (2nd bookstore joke. Sorry. Geez).

The Pleasures of the Door by Francis Ponge

2009-03-12T22:08:00.000-04:00

This is my first Wellington Square Bookshop blog post!
Here is a poem about the satisfaction we get from doors (our new shop will feature doors). Translated very quickly by my friend Mackensie from Le French.

The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.

They don't have this happiness: to push in front of the self softly or roughly one of these great, large familiar panels, turning it towards himself, to put it back in place,-- to take hold of a door in his arms.

...The happiness of grabbing one of these high obstacles to a room by the stomach on the knot of porcelain with one's fist; from a rapid body to a body in which the step is detained for an instant, the eye opens and the entire body accommodates itself to its new apartment.

With a friendly hand he still holds it, before decidedly pushing and closing it, -- this which the click of the powerful but well-oiled spring agreeably assures him.

Great News

2009-03-12T12:07:00.000-04:00

Emma Alpern, Henry James scholar in residence at Bard, will soon be contributing to the WSB blog. We can't wait. She is witty, has a sardonic sense of humor and beautiful red hair. Keep watching, but beware!

My Detachmant

2009-03-12T07:43:00.000-04:00

I read My Detatchment last night, by Tracy Kidder. It was about his year in Viet Nam. The most unusual aspect of this book was that he was honest enough to portray himself a dweeb and a coward during the war, when he was in the oxymoronic intelligence division of the U.S. Army. He was a second, then first lieutenant, overseeing a motley crew of disrespectful and journeymen grunts who had neither respect nor military obedience toward him. He, throughout the book, lies, grovels and rationalizes. It was a courageous act to write this book, and he didn't have to now that he is 60 years old, and semi-famous! I guess it is now 40 years later. It wasn't exactly uplifting but it reminded me of the difficulties inherent in being a 23 year old nerd. Being an officer in Viet Nam at that age is unimaginable to me.

Saturday by Ian McEwan (It wasn't all that)

2009-03-11T17:32:00.000-04:00

Saturday is a novel set within a single day -- 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children, who are young adults. What troubles him is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his usual squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousand of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug called Baxter. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man. Baxter, in his turn, believes the surgeon has humiliated him, and visits the opulent Perowne home that evening, during a family reunion - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep this doomed figure alive.Saturday is a novel set within a single day -- 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children, who are young adults. What troubles him is the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, and a general darkening and gathering pessimism since the New York and Washington attacks two years before. On this particular Saturday morning, Perowne makes his way to his usual squash game with his anaesthetist, trying to avoid the hundreds of thousand of marchers filling the streets of London, protesting against the war. A minor accident in his car brings him into a confrontation with a small-time thug called Baxter. To Perowne's professional eye, something appears to be profoundly wrong with this young man. Baxter, in his turn, believes the surgeon has humiliated him, and visits the opulent Perowne home that evening, during a family reunion - with savage consequences that will lead Henry Perowne to deploy all his skills to keep this doomed figure alive.

21 Delightful Ways to Commit Suicide

2009-03-11T11:45:00.000-04:00

Great book for this Depression since it was written during the last. I especially like #2 which is titled Suicide by Means of Prolonged Total Immersion. This blog entry does not indicate in any way, shape or manner what your actions might be should your 401(k) drop by more than 80%.