Department of Book Reports: Going Bovine

If you know Libba Bray from her Gemma Doyle trilogy, you may be in for a surprise here. Going Bovine (Delacourte, $17.99)

16 year old Cameron just wants to get out of high school, with as little effort as possible. When he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, even that is out. Once regarded as a loser, now his classmates are eager to show their love and support at a Student Rally. As he lies in the hospital visitors drop by and give him advice, pray for his soul and play video games.

Dulcie has stopped by with a challenge, follow the feather clues to find Dr. X who may have a cure, and close the wormhole in the space-time continuim to save the world, and bring back the greatest Inuit rock band of all time, The Copenhagen Interpretation. Dulcie is a cute, pixie faced punk with the softest of wings. Or is she another hallucination?

Cameron talks fellow schoolmate Gonzo, a hypochondriac dwarf, into accompanying him on the trip and they are off to Disney World! Along the way they'll pick up a Garden Gnome who is actually the embodiment of the Norse god Balder and really resents being hauled around the world posing for vacation pictures. There's a detour to Party House!, YA TV's annual spring break televised humiliation fest to rescue Balder, who has been kidnapped by frat boys who want to pose with him in front of, what else, tourist attractions.

This wild ride has everything! Mad Cow disease, String Theory, Hallucinations, Road Trips, the Haldron Collider, the Higgs Field, Snow Globes, Jazz and Don Quixote. It asks the eternal question: "Why does micro-wave popcorn taste so good?" It's not going to end well for Cameron, but Libba is honest with her readers and finishes the book on a hopeful, lovely theme. I do recommend this for a mature teen reader, simply for the honesty with which the real life topics are addressed, but as a parent I can tell you there is nothing here a 15 yo doesn't already know about.

If you can't trust an author in a cow suit, who can you trust?

Bonus video: Libba discusses her virtual skype book tour.

Another cool thing I found while researching this book is the blog LargeHeartedBoy, which asks authors for the playlist they listen to while writing.

As a bookseller, I would be remiss not to point you at the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award. On a shortlist of 10, singer Nick Cave was picked for his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, about a sex-obsessed door-to-door salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," said Anna Frame at his publisher Canongate.

Read these if you dare:
Paul Theroux for A Dead Hand

Nick Cave for The Death of Bunny Munro

Philip Roth for The Humbling

Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones

Amos Oz for Rhyming Life and Death

John Banville for The Infinities

Anthony Quinn for The Rescue Man

Simon Van Booy for Love Begins in Winter

Sanjida O'Connell for The Naked Name of Love

Richard Milward for Ten Storey Love Song

Department of Book Reports: The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu (Princeton Press $16.95) This delightful volume uses the historical figures of Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet and V.I. Lenin to look at the split between radical art and ideological revolution in 1916. Zurich had become a haven for artists and other refugees. Hugo Ball rented the Meirei restauraunt to host a Kuntstlerkneipe (cabaret) named Voltaire. Decorated with paintings by Arthur Segal, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kadinsky, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Arturo Giametti, and Otto van Rees. The entertainment included Tristan Tzara reciting and shouting poetry, the chanteuse Emmy Hemmings, and a Russian balalaika band. As the evening wore on, the skits and improvisations became more raucus egged on by the drunken audience, to culminate in Tzara reciting nonsense French and un-rolling a roll of toilet paper with the word "merde" printed on it.

The Swiss cafe culture was a vibrant microcosm of the Bohemian life during these years with Einstein, Joyce, Hans Arp, Carl Jung and Freud.

Codrescu's use of posthuman shows they we have become so integrated with our technologies, we no longer are able to survive the natural world without them. This slim volume is your guide to this new world.

"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisible, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to live a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada."

I love listening to Mr. Codrescu on NPR, and here's an interview this past spring discussing The Posthuman Dada Guide. You can order the book from us and begin your Dada life.

Department of Book Reports: 1959: The Year Everything Changed

Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed (John Wiley and Sons $27.95) chronicles an extraordinary year. On January 1st, Fidel Castro's revolutionaries took power in Cuba. On January 4th Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited the United States. Fidel would do the same on April 15th, followed by Khrushchev on September 15th. On April 9th, Lenny Bruce appeared on television. On March 17th, excerpts from William Burrough's Naked Lunch were published in the literary magazine Big Table which were promptly seized by the office of the Postmaster General on the 18th. A busy year for the Postmaster, who was sued by Barney Rosset of the Grove Press for confiscating copies of the newly published and unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover on April 28th. On March 13th, the now largely forgotten Herman Kahn began his lecture tour on how he stopped worrying about the Bomb and learned to love it. On March 2nd, Miles Davis began recording Kind of Blue; John Coltrane would step into the studio on May 4th to record Giant Steps; and on June 25th, the day the Kind of Blue sessions ended, Dave Brubeck began work on Time Out. On July 13th, the documentary from Mike Wallace, The Hate That Hate Produced, on Malcolm X was aired. On July 23rd G.D. Searle sought FDA approval for its birth control pill. On November 11th, John Cassevetes' film, Shadows, opened, followed Truffaut's 400 Blows on November 16th. And on November 19th, Ford ceased production on the Edsel. All these things happened, and more. Kaplan gives the details in a fine narration.

I suppose my only quibble would be that Kaplan completely ignores the Triumph of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Chicago White Sox in the Fall Classic. There was a young boy at game three, played on Sunday October 4th, just five days shy of his ninth birthday, a game he'll never forget. It was the swan song for the Boys of Summer, and Carl Furillo delivered the game winning hit in the 7th inning. That young boy's future dearly beloved was a rollicking three month old baby. How did that get by Kaplan? In any event, it is a fun book.

On another note, I'd like to point out that today is National Bookstore Day. If you can, please go visit yourfavorite independent bookseller and show them some love.

Jackson Street Books is proud to present Jess Walter at Lacamas Hall.
The Financial Lives of the Poets

“In Jess Walter's best yet, feckless financial reporter Matt Prior has lost his job, is six days away from losing his house, and suspects his wife is courting an affair. Walter's own obvious empathy for the human condition will have you pulling for Prior and his screwy, shady, last-chance scheme for solvency. A laugh-out-loud serio-comic masterpiece!”

—Ranae Burdette, Eagle Harbor Book Company via indiebound.org

Jess Walter is the author of five novels, including The Zero, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and Citizen Vince, winner of the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel. He has been a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN USA Literary Prize in both fiction and nonfiction.
Another 7/11

Our Little Town

I have lived all my life in big cities. I grew up in LA; I went to grad school and then began my career in Portland, Or.; and up until last year, lived for 33 years in Seattle. So the adjustment to living in a small town has proven interesting, to say the least. Not that I don't love it. The Harbor is a sweet place to live. The pace is low-key. The natives are friendly. In fact, Hoquiam boasts to being the friendliest town in Washington State.But the thing that has really struck me in this election season is that I actually get to vote for County Coroner. I've never lived in a place where the position of coroner is an elected office. And not only is it an elected office, it is a partisan office. Who knew?As it turns out, both candidates here are Democrats. That is good, because I don't want a Republican performing my autopsy. One of the candidates is a nurse. The other is the current coroner who was appointed to the office after the previous coroner moved onto another position. We ended up voting for the current office holder. But you can see both candidates campaign signs all over town and in Aberdeen.
There were a couple of other important ballot issues. One is designed to overturn the Washington State Legislature's "Everything but Marriage" law that granted our gay citizens equality in all things, except for marriage. We voted, of course, to retain the new law, even if means destroying our marriage, which I'm sure is part of teh gay agenda.


The other is an initiative to cap government revenue sources and was promoted by our state wingnut, Tim Eyman. Surely something we need; cripple government during a recession.

Anyway, that's the scoop from our little town for now.

Department of Book Reports: Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel

Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett discuss their graphic Steampunk robot history: Boilerplate, History's Mechanical Marvel and their career in Graphic Novels. Join us for a Steampunk night with this talented team of artists at Jackson Street Books' Lacamas Hall.
Boilerplate was created in 1893 by Professor Archibald Campion, a robot soldier designed to "prevent the death of men in the conflicts of nations". Throughout his career he met historical figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, Lawrence of Arabia, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. This coffee table book chronicles his story with photos, maps, paintings, posters, cartoons and stereoscope plates.

Boilerplate is available at Jackson Street Books and your local independent booksellers

Dear Family and Friends, WE MADE IT!!!

Our delegation has successfully entered the Gaza strip and are now staying at the Marna House in Gaza City. Our schedule is extremely busy, beginning before 9:00 AM and continuing well into the evening for each of the six days we will be in Gaza.

I was not free to talk about the delegation's destination before departing the USA as we had major concerns about whether or not we would be allowed to enter Gaza. Now that we are "IN" please feel free to pass the word along. In fact, because there was (and still is) a chance that my computers and the computers of the other delegation members may be confiscated by the Israeli authorities upon exiting Gaza I brought an olde, beat up PC laptop (case is cracked, key board works but is far from new and in general appears to be an antique) just in case. That is the good new concerning my planning for the this trip. The bad news is that I neglected to import my email address book which is stored on the MacBook. I have a few email addresses stored on this older laptop but certainly not nearly all of them.

So, if you have received this email I would sincerely appreciate your forwarding it on to anyone who you feel may be a friend or family member of mine. Please don't assume that everyone I know who you know will receive this email. I am missing many, many email addresses or have many outdated email addresses So, if you should receive more than one copy of this email blame it on me and simply hit the delete key for any additional copies you might have received.

I have much to tell you but it's almost 1:30 AM and my schedule begins bright and early again in the morning. But if a picture really is worth 10,000 words then I've added another 20,000 words to this email by attaching two pictures.

The first picture is an example of what a Bell Captain at a hotel looks like in a country under seige. Gaza.

The other picture is of a child of the occupation . . .
In Solidarity Peace is Inevitable,
Will

5 for Peace

via Dave Wiley
San Diego Veterans For Peace
Hugh Thompson Memorial Chapter 91

Department of Book Reports: The Big Burn

The Big Burn Teddy Roosevelt and The Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin, $27) For those of you who enjoyed Ken Burn's National Parks, I suggest this excellent history of how our National Forests came into being. We saw terrible fires in California this past summer, 100,000 acres burned and many houses were lost. This is small in comparison to the fire that swept through the Northwest in 1910, burning 3 million acres in just two days. The town of Wallace, Idaho was completely destroyed. 85 (or perhaps 87) lives were lost. This fire raced across the landscape, pushed by Chinook winds and updrafts the flames created, blasting up to 85 mph. That speed cannot be out run. Trains were unable to carry people to safety as bridges and tracks were destroyed.

Theodore Roosevelt had set aside the National Parks during his presidency, and put Gifford Pinchot in charge of managing these forests. Pinchot, newly graduated from Yale with new theories of Forestry, had amassed his staff of Forest Rangers, or "little G.P.s" as they were known. John Muir had traveled west and sent back reports of Yellowstone and the glorious Sierras. Their conservation ideals were often ridiculed by the hard scrabble homesteaders and Railroad and Lumber Barons of the region. By 1910, Roosevelt was out of office, replaced by his own pick of Taft, whose ineffectiveness was blatant in this disaster.

photo: historylink.org

Egan gives a good narrative of how this time period produced the break from Republicans as the Progressive party of Lincoln and Roosevelt to what we know today. The scope of the burn also allowed him to push his Conservation goals and add to the Parks with the National Forest lands. Much of the eastern parks owe their existence to this tragedy.

Timothy Egan has written some of the best Western histories including The Good Rain, about this part of western Washington we call home and The Worst Hard Time, about the dust bowl years and the western migration it produced. His research brings out the personal narrative in these histories. In The Big Burn we learn of how after Gifford Pinchot's young wife died after just 2 years of marriage he spent the next 20 years haunted by her presence. His diary notes "days of light" when he believed he had been in her presence, or "dark days" when she did not appear. He sought out seers and seances to call her forth. He was often seen carrying on conversations with her as he dined alone in Washington DC's finest restaurants.
Taft and Roosevelt's lives and presidencies are detailed with personal details and the political aspects of the day. The firefighters are given good tribute here. Drawn from the logging and mining operations and joined by the Buffalo Soldiers, these are the lives that were lost that weekend. The 1,200 firefighters hired by the Forest Service often weren't paid for their time, or medical bills. Ed Pulaski, who herded his men into a cave and pulled his handgun to keep them from running into the inferno, was left destitute after the fire. Denied a patent number, he is remembered today for the axe/blade tool that bears his name and is invaluable to firefighters everywhere.

The Big Burn is available at Jackson Street Books and do check with your local independent booksellers to see if Timothy Egan will be reading. Listen to the audio from a recent radio interview on KUOW's The Conversation (begins at 40 minutes in).
Cross-posted at Jesus' General