Summer time right? Summer reading – sweaty outside reading, cold beverages, sticky kids putting their hands on your book. They spray the water hose on you. The dogs are panting in the shade. They shed everywhere. Then you get the kids cleaned up and in bed and maybe you get to read for a little while. Bugs on the porch buzzing around the light. Maybe you have a ceiling fan. Try not to kill the bugs with your book. Good times right? Maybe another beverage, or a third. Here’s what I’m reading:

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I’ve written about this before. It was the big book at BEA in New York. And Maggie wrote a full blog on it a few days ago. This is a great big summer book. The kind where there is no hesitation about the size. You want it to be big so it never ends. Maybe it lasts all summer. I mean this in a really complimentary way – it’s like when you were in high school and you read a big Stephen King novel or a maybe a couple in a row. I remember one summer I read Misery at the beach. Couldn’t put it down. Anyway, this is like that – a great big book that you read and read. And yes it does have vampires. It’s out today.

The Reversal by Michael Connelly

This is kind of cheating but you know booksellers get to read books before they come out. I’m obsessed with Michael Connelly’s fiction. Two summers ago we scheduled him for a books signing for The Brass Verdict. Between June and November of 2008 I read every one of Michael’s books. Some writers have a niche – and some get lucky – maybe Connelly has both, but if he wasn’t a really good writer – a hard working writer, then I don’t think I could have read every book back to back. It’s like one huge novel to me. This book is like The Brass Verdict as it features two of Connelly’s regular characters. Harry Bosch and his half-brother Mickey Haller. I finished it in just a few days – now Wendy is reading it and I’ve promised it to Mark as soon as she’s done. It’s nice to have a few fellow addicts.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Raise your hand if you’ve read Tom Franklin. If your hand isn’t up then you don’t really like Southern Lit. Maybe you say you do – lip service. This is what’s going on in Modern Southern Lit. Poachers is a classic. I liked Hell at the Breach. I loved Smonk so much that I was reading passages out loud to Wendy in the hospital the day that Harper was born. (If you’ve read it then you know what kind of sick dude I am.) Anyway, this may be his best book yet. I’m dead in the middle and I can’t wait to get home and read. It’s like a suspense novel. This is a Mississippi book – duh Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Please come see Tom in September – if you have a soul that is.

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie

This book will be getting a lot of attention here and elsewhere this fall. I got my hands on it today and will be starting it tonight. It’s the new book about Dickie Scruggs. Last fall we had Kings of Tort by Alan Lange and Tom Dawson. These books are going to be like companion pieces. Two different books with different perspectives and goals, but on the same subject. You have to read to find out what that means.

I am almost trembling thinking about writing about this beautiful, powerful novel. I loved it, loved it, loved it!  I don’t know where to start, but Lisa helped me when she said, “Tell me why I would want to read this novel, Nan? Convince me.”

Of course, as most readers will attest, a book this mammoth (almost 600 pages) must appeal on a larger level since it is about the years before and during WWII, but also it must appeal on a humanitarian level with attention to personal relationships– for after all, isn’t that how we relate and reach our moments of clarity and experience beauty in this world?

Picture a young male Jewish architectural student who has recently immigrated from Hungary after winning a prized scholarship rarely awarded to someone who has no previous portfolio. By a mere chance occurrence, he literally bumps into a woman who asks him to deliver a letter to an unknown recipient as he is leaving to go to architectural school in Paris. If the letter had not been in his possession, then the rest of the novel would not have happened.

Now picture a thirty-two year old strikingly beautiful ballet instructor who has been teaching little Parisian girls how to dance since she immigrated, also from Hungary, for a totally different reason, a decade or more earlier. Then, the young architect and the young ballet instructor meet.  I could stop right here with what at this point seems a fairy tale set in Paris pre-WWII when life was good, love was young, and romance abounded! However, reality encroaches, both in the form of a remembered violent past of the ballet teacher, and in the form of menacing approaching Nazi power.

While the language and gorgeous settings that author Julie Orringer chooses for the Paris love affair seem nearly perfect and remarkably flowing, the language she selects for the next part of the book, which incidentally is divided into five historical sections, is equally descriptive and fitting for a war ravaged people and their surroundings in Europe. So, back to what Lisa asked me, “Why do I want to read this?” Though I am certainly not a WWII or Holocaust reader, I have ended up in the last few months now, reading Beatrice and Virgil, The Glass Room, and The Invisible Bridge (And I would recommend these three books in this order.) If you had told me that I would read this many war novels ever, much less in one six month period, I would have probably laughed at you!

So, if you can see where I am going with this line of thought or not, please bear with me. In spite of the horrific and deplorable physical situations experienced by the protagonist architect and his Jewish brothers, who were also enlisted in the Hungarian army as work laborers, and despite of the lack of food, shelter, and basis life essentials denied the family left behind, what kept me reading were the relationships between the men who fought and the women and children who remained behind. Essentially what kept me reading was watching from afar their love and their undying devotion to each other in spite of the indescribable and deplorable hardships being experienced by both groups. In other words, this book placed war on a human, understandable level for me. The fear that these Jewish families experienced on a daily basis was written about with compassion and angst. And yes, I came to detest Hitler in a way I never have! Though it was not easy for me to read about the tyrant and his despicable generals, nor was it easy for me to read about the personal loss that so many families suffered, encompassing so many gut wrenching proportions, it was worth it. I ended up with a renewed sense of knowing that in spite of evil in this world, both past, present, and future, and no matter what form it takes, whether national, international, or political, human devotion and love get people through it all.  Julie Orringer sent this message to me, loud and clear.

Before this begins to sound like a never ending diatribe, I want to thank our friends at Random House, Valerie Walley, whom many will remember worked at Lemuria in the 80s and who is now working in New York for Random House, as well as a Random House rep, Liz Sullivan who comes to Lemuria periodically telling us which books to read and dropping off ARCs (advanced reader copies). If it had not been for Liz telling me how much she and Valerie both loved this novel, I might not have tackled such a long read. So, thanks to both of them!

Lisa showed me a video done by Green Apple Bookstore in San Francisco which features a young woman who cannot seem to put The Invisible Bridge down. I can really identify with this reader! Obviously, this well written, absolutely beautiful novel grabbed me, and in a way, still has me in its clutches, even two weeks after I read the closing epilogue, which was a remarkable way for the author to tie the pieces together for future generations of characters. READ THIS NOVEL!  -Nan

As I have been accommodating myself to the art books and getting familiar with the particular collections we have, the photography section has been a learning experience. My knowledge being somewhat limited in the area, I have gone through most of them trying to gain a personal grasp on the subject.  I have found it to be such a great medium for a book, as paper is a photograph’s original medium…usually.  Because of this you can observe the pieces at a closer proximity in a book than with a collections of photographs of sculptures or paintings. The only modifications being in scale and presentation. This is a great draw for me in the bookstore, while the other books get me excited and make me want to go to the Louvre and see all of the wonderful works in person (which is pretty cool), the photograph collections allow me to be more content in observing the pieces on the couch. My investigations have produced several favorites. In no particular order:

Put out by a father son collaboration from two giants in photography. This is a magnificent collection of probably the sexiest pictures of a desert that you could ever witness. It is incredible how they read the landscape for those natural curves. Capturing the essence of a sensual line in a pile of sand is no small feat. It takes an understanding of form and structure of the human body as well as landscapes and how we as humans perceive these forms. Through their eyes we see an arid desert as living flesh. Incredible.

This next one is by Bruce Davidson in the vein of photojournalism; he gives a view into the heart of the circus in the middle of the last century. The first half follows a dwarf in his work at the carnival in 1958. They are powerful photos that make you feel as though you are looking into the man’s soul as he goes about his days in this foreign world. The second half is a return to the circus in 1965 and his following of the Ringling Brothers and the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and the James Duffy and Sons circus of 1967. It is a strong eye through which we can see these acrobats and human cannonballs.

This last one I remember putting on the shelf after we received it. Immediately I was struck by the cover and the incredible formal construction of the photograph. I proceeded to flip through every page with my jaw on the floor. Nick Brandt went to Africa with his camera and commenced with a photo shoot of wild beasts as his models; and they perform in front of the camera as if they were highly trained supermodels, veterans of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Every photograph seems to be a career-maker. They are Beautiful.

-John P.

It has really been unintentional…this ignoring of my husband but it really couldn’t be helped.  I was completely engrossed in Justin Cronin’s, The Passage, which is coming out on June 8.  Joe mentioned in his blog about BEA that he was reading this and had actually met Justin Cronin and that sparked my memory that I had this book in my stack.  I picked the book up and thought to myself…”do I really want to invest my time in this 704 page novel by an author I have never read that is about the end of civilization as I know it and a little girl who is the key to saving it?”  Well after investing my time the past two weeks I’m now saying to myself….”I’m so glad I did and cannot wait for my customers to read this!”

I will start by saying that I have not really jumped on the “vampire bandwagon” so I was very wary that I would not like this book but as I continued to turn the page I realized that this novel is so much more than that.  The “virals” as they are called are not your hipster, gelled hair, angst driven vampires of today nor are they the Count Dracula type.  These creatures are the result of a government experiment to create  “super soldiers” that have escaped from the underground lab where they were created.  At the center of the story is Amy–a six year old girl who is totally connected to “The Twelve” and maybe the key to bringing civilization back to the way that we know it, or close anyway.

Dan Chaon (one of my favorites)  author of  Among the Missing and Await Your Reply wrote a great review of The Passage and what he said is exactly how I felt about this book:

“There is a particular kind of reading experience–the feeling you get when you can’t wait to find out what happens next, you can’t turn the pages fast enough, and yet at the same time you are so engaged in the world of the story and the characters, you don’t want it to end. It’s a rare and complex feeling–that plot urgency pulling you forward, that yearning for more holding you back. We say that we are swept up, that we are taken away. Perhaps this effect is one of the true magic tricks that literature can offer to us, and yet it doesn’t happen very often. Mostly, I think, we remember this experience from a few of the beloved books of our childhood.

About three-quarters of the way through The Passage, I found myself in the grip of that peculiar and intense readerly emotion. One part of my brain couldn’t wait to get to the next big revelation, and I found myself wanting to leapfrog from paragraph to paragraph, hurtling toward each looming climax. Meanwhile, another part of my brain was watching the dwindling final pages with dread, knowing that things would be over soon, and wishing to linger with each sentence and character a little while longer.”

Believe the hype…is really all I can say about this one!!!  It’s just that good especially if you are wanting a page turner that you just can’t stop reading!!  The best thing is that The Passage is just the beginning!  This is the first of a trilogy and I can tell you that I’m already on the list to get the ARC of the second book!!

My poor husband . . .

I recently read The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman, and when I was finished, because I read books from cover to cover (reading the acknowledgments, the “note about the font,” and even glancing at the Library of Congress info) (I know, I’m a nerd), I saw at the end that it’s the latest book in The Myths series.

“Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives,” the last page of the book reads, “they explore our desires, our fears, our longings and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human. The Myths series brings together some of the world’s finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way.”

Books in the series include Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Alexander McCall Smith’s Dream Angus, and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight.  There are 14 books in all, and I’d like to collect all of them, so I started the other day by picking up Atwood’s and Winterson’s books at Lemuria.

Atwood’s novel, The Penelopiad, is essentially The Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view. In the book you witness first-hand the raucous events that went on at Odysseus’s house while he was away, and if you think the end of the Odyssey, with Odysseus saving the day disguised as a beggar and doling out a gruesome end for those smarmy suitors, is exciting, you may be interested in getting into Penelope’s head as she’s waiting, weaving, and plotting, and finding out what she really thinks of Odysseus’s triumphant return.

I am almost done with Winterson’s book, Weight, about Atlas and Heracles. Atlas has to hold up the world as punishment, Heracles has to do the god’s bidding as punishment, and when they decide to swap punishments, they find out some interesting things about themselves.

As I was reading The Good Man Jesus, I thought about what Pullman was trying to say about Jesus’s message. He is an atheist, and in the introduction he says that above all, his novel is a story about how stories become stories. The Jesus in his novel says a lot of the same things that are recorded in the Bible, but some of his words are twisted by his brother, Christ, to be prophetic of a kingdom of God on earth. In the chapter where Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane, he asks God where he is, admitting that he’s never heard his voice or seen his hand in anything he’s done, though evidence of God’s existence is all around him in the beauty of the world. He wonders aloud whether his brother, Christ, was right, that it would be good to start a church to usher in the kingdom, then ruminates on all the things that can go wrong when a body of men who believe they are doing the will of God have the power of God behind them. He finishes his prayer by asking God one thing above all: “That any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.”

One of the great things about The Myths series is that, at the outset, each author is asked simply to rewrite a myth. They are able to choose the myth and the approach, whether to modernize the themes, and whether to inject their own philosophies into the story. Check them out. When I get ahold of some of the others, I’ll let you know.