The Book Frog

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli

2012-01-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

Mr. Hatch is a quiet little man who works in a factory. Every day he eats the same lonely lunch. Every evening he makes two stops on his way home from work, buying a newspaper and a turkey wing for his dinner. He doesn't ever visit with anybody, or even talk to them beyond the basics necessary for conducting his daily business. "Mr. Hatch keeps to himself," is what everybody says.

Then one day something happens. On Valentine's Day, in fact, the postman delivers a giant heart-shaped box of candy to Mr. Hatch. Enclosed is a note that says, "Somebody loves you." Mr. Hatch is energized. He changes his routine, he talks to people, he even makes brownies for the whole neighborhood.

But then--oh, why does there have to be a but?--Mr. Hatch learns the candy wasn't meant for him.

Eileen Spinelli's simply-told story gently demonstrates the power of love to transform not only an individual but those around him as well. The colored pencil illustrations by Paul Yalowitz subtly reflect the mood of the story, going from browns and grays to pinks, yellows, and purples, back to the original browns and grays...but don't worry, both text and illustrations end with beautiful, brilliant color!

Higglety Pigglety Pop! or, There Must Be More to Life by Maurice Sendak

2011-12-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

Jennie is a Sealyham terrier who has everything.

...a round pillow upstairs and a square pillow downstairs...her own comb and brush, two different bottles of pills, eyedrops, eardrops, a thermometer, and for cold weather a red wool sweater. There were two windows for her to look out of and two bowls to eat from. She even had a master who loved her.

But as is so often the case--in real life almost as often as in fairy tales--everything just isn't enough for Jennie. And so, clutching her black leather bag with gold buckles, she sets off one morning in search of that elusive something more.

Along the way Jennie meets a pig offering free sandwiches and the chance to become the leading lady for the World Mother Goose Theater..if she gains some experience before the full moon. Leading lady being a title that appeals to a little dog as bossy and spoiled as Jennie, she now has a goal. Kind of a quest, actually.

Along the way Jennie meets all sorts of interesting people who help propel her onward, and in the end she proves herself to be a very brave little dog and gets the job.

Like all the best fairy tales Higglety Pigglety Pop! has a certain surreal quality to it. In addition to the talking animals (and plants!), there's Baby, who won't eat, whose name nobody remembers. Jennie's story also has in common with classic fairy tales a layer of foreboding that sits just beneath the surface; Baby's parents left for the Castle Yonder and never returned and there's a Lion in the cellar who eats the Nurses who can't get Baby to eat. But the ending is joyous and the foreboding is forestalled. Maurice Sendak's humor and the sly lessons he sneaks in are in abundance, and his obvious adoration of his subject shines through in every one of his exquisite illustrations. As with all of the best children's literature this one will be savored as much by adults as by the children in their lives.

Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

2011-12-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

You probably don't know this if you're not a knitter (or a bookseller), but the craft of knitting has a long tradition of literature. Not only how-to books, although there are certainly plenty of those. But even the most basic learn-to-knit book contains rumination on the craft, the art, the tradition. Most knitting books don't merely tell you how to knit: they also examine why we knit and what it means. No silly, not what the knitted product means; there are only so many ways to dissect a muffler or a sweater or a pair of mittens. Rather, knitters love to chew over what it means that we knit, the near-universality of the craft (Do you know how many cultures make garments by weaving threads together with the use of two sticks? Do you know how long humanity has been clothing itself in this manner? How's this for an answer: a way, way lot of them and since the days of yore. So there.)

And not only is knitting a near-universal among cultures, there is also something so, well, so zen about the whole thing. It's a meditative, be-here-now kind of activity, one which soothes and calms (when it's not inciting and infuriating, that is).

No wonder knitters write so much about knitting!

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the creator--she would probably say the perpetrator--of the Yarn Harlot blog, is one of the brightest, most original voices currently writing about knitting. All of her books contain stories, anecdotes and light philosophical musings; her latest, Free-Range Knitter is no exception. The essays in this collection are grouped loosely by subject matter, gathered together into chapters with headings such as "Yarn Over: Stories of Challenging People, Projects, and Knitters," and "Cast Off: Stories of Ends, Giving Up, and Living to Knit Another Day."

Pearl-McPhee is at her best and funniest when telling stories of her own failures. Sweaters with arms long enough to make a straitjacket, mufflers that are 6 inches wide at one end and 12 at the other, hats that start life as a ski cap and end as a three foot long stocking cap because she didn't know when to finish. She's also wonderful when giving knitting instruction--the one thing missing from this collection; her patterns are simple, easy-to-follow, and--of course--hilarious.

Definitely recommended for knitters...and who knows, if you're not a knitter this collection might make you want to pick up needles and start.

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins

2011-12-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

As Gregor & the Prophecy of Bane opens our hero, Gregor, has returned to life as usual. That life should be better than it was before his last adventure began--his dad is, after all, back with the family, and both Gregor and baby Boots are safe and sound after their journey through the Underland. However, Gregor's dad is still ill and terribly weak from his imprisonment, and Gregor's mom is still working multiple jobs to keep the family fed and clothed and housed.

But Gregor is a trouper, and he's doing his best to help keep his family together. He maintains an upbeat demeanor in front of his little sisters and quietly sacrifices his share at meals when there's not enough for everybody. He's even found a part time job helping out a neighbor lady (who, each time Gregor comes over to help her out, has always conveniently made far too much lasagna or spaghetti, which she then sends home for Gregor's family).

On the day the story begins Gregor, in an attempt to maintain a facade of cheerful normality for his sisters, has taken Boots sledding in Central Park. He loses sight of her for just a second and she goes missing. It's not long before Gregor discovers a passage to the Underland and finds himself once again on a quest based on his appearance in an ancient prophecy. The "Bane" of the prophecy is a rare, pure white rat, whose very existence is a threat to the continued well-being of the Underland (not to mention Gregor and Boots).

Suzanne Collins has once again crafted a winner. Gregor's quest is satisfyingly scary, and the obstacles he must overcome to reach its end daunting. But Gregor is blessed with a sticktoitiveness and dogged devotion to doing the right thing whatever the cost that help him bring the quest to a conclusion which is both right and just. Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane will please both kids and moms.

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

2011-12-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

Artist Clara Morrow, is a resident of Three Pines, Quebec. Clara's had more than her share of career heartbreak, but has finally made it. She's got a show at the Musee d'Art Contemporain in Montreal, and husband Peter has organized a party--catered, of course, by B & B owners Gabri and Olivier--back in Three Pines to celebrate. Everyone is invited, from fellow denizens of the village to high-flying figures in the Montreal art scene. The one person who was not invited is the dead one who turns up in Clara's garden the next morning.

It's bad enough that the body turns out to belong to art critic Lillian Dyson, known and feared for her cutting reviews which are filled with brutal turns of phrase such as "He's a natural, producing art like a bodily function." And it's even worse that Clara and Lillian had once been best friends, for many years, in fact, until a terrible falling-out in college. But worst of all, the falling-out was the result of a scathing, backstabbing review of Clara's own work by Lillian.

Add gentle, sweet Clara Morrow to the list of potential suspects.

It's in the nature of murder mysteries set in small, out-of-the-way villages that they suffer from a murder rate that is disproportionate to their size. Louise Penny is self-aware enough to have one of her characters gently tweak this convention in her latest Chief Inspector Gamache novel, A Trick of the Light.

Not for the first time Three Pines struck Myrna as the equivalent of the Humane Society. Taking in the wounded, the unwanted. The mad, the sore.

This was a shelter. Though, clearly, not a no-kill shelter.

Chief Inspector Gamache and his team, several of whom are conveniently in town for Clara's party, are once again drawn into an investigation in Three Pines. And, once again, Gamache will have to call upon his not insignificant powers of empathy, keen insight, and objectivity. Both Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir, his second in command, are suffering--in stoic silence--the effects of the raid gone terribly wrong a number of months earlier, in which both were injured and lost several comrades as well. This investigation will take the homicide detectives into the surprisingly sordid underbelly of the art world, as well as the world of recovering addicts.

Louise Penny has created a series which gets better with each successive novel. She adds depth to the characters and continues to mine the richness of the setting without yet coming up dry. And please, if you haven't read Louise Penny's work, don't let that small village filled with loveable, prickly, often oh-so-quirky characters fool you into thinking that the Three Pines mysteries are cute and cozy, for that they most assuredly are not.

Scrooged Again!

2011-12-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

The man approached the counter holding a copy of Thomas Keller's gorgeous fifty dollar French Laundry Cookbook.

"How much is this?"

"Fifty dollars," Amy replied, after looking at the price on the back of the book.

"I saw it at Barnes & Noble for twenty-eight fifty. Do you price match?"

"No, we don't."

"Well how do you expect to stay in business if you don't price match? We wanted to support you, but we're going to have to go down there now."

Really? I kind of think that if you wanted to support your independent bookstore you'd do so by understanding that a small business can't afford to sell merchandise at less than cost. If you wanted to support your independent bookstore you'd bite the bullet and pay full price for that wonderful gift book (and know that we're making a sacrifice by discounting hardcover bestsellers thirty percent for you).

Merry Christmas, man.

Black & Blue? Not Us!

2011-11-25T06:35:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago Pete and I upgraded our Sam's Club membership from standard to business, a change which allows us to shop early and to use our resale number to purchase certain items--that would be books--and not pay sales tax on them. We've taken advantage of this upgrade several times since we opened the store, to stock up on bestsellers that we're running low on. The last time we were in the store they told us they'd be opening at 5 a.m. on Black Friday and gave us a flyer with the day's specials. TVs, phones, computers, printers...and ten book titles at fifty percent off.

Wow! Fifty percent off is way better than the discount our wholesaler gives us. We decided to get up super early and head over to Sam's Club to pick up a few key titles to help get us through the weekend.

Now, I've never been to a Black Friday sale. Not only am I not much of a shopper, but as a retailer I've always had to work it. Nevertheless, we got up at 4:30 this morning and girded our loins over a cup of coffee. As we sat in the kitchen trying to wake up, we had our first bad sign: news reports about a pepper spray incident among holiday shoppers at one Wal-Mart here in California and a shooting at another. Still, we got in the car at quarter to five and headed out. We had our second bad sign as we pulled into the parking lot and saw a line of shoppers extending around the block from the front door of...Home Depot? What could they possibly be lined up for at Home Depot?

Then we saw the parking lot at Sam's Club. And then we saw the line.

We kept on cruising past and went right on home.

We're going to spend Black Friday as we always do, on the other side of the counter selling books. Much better.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

2011-11-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Magician King in Lev Grossman's novel of the same name, his follow up to 2009's The Magicians, is Quentin Coldwater. Quentin, along with Eliot and Janet, fellow alumni of Brakesbill College for Magical Pedagogy, as well as hedge-witch and old crush Julia, are now kings and queens of Fillory.

They're living the life. A castle, a magical world full of talking beasts, good food and drink (lots of drink), big bedrooms with soft beds and tapestries. They're content with their lives as benevolent rulers, happy to go on doing the same thing day in and day out, nothing ever really happening. And then something happens.

During a hunt for the Seeing Hare, one of Fillory's dozen Unique Beasts, the marvelously named Jollyby, beloved master of the hunt, is killed, just after the Seeing Hare delivers a dire prophecy. In the midst of the swirling action Quentin realizes he's energized for the first time in the three years he's been king. He's tired of peace and contentment; he actually wants something to happen. He wants action. He craves a quest, and he gets one.

The quest takes King Quentin and Queen Julia across the Fillorian sea and to the end of the world. It also takes them to Earth, where they range from the suburbs of Boston to Brakesbills and then to Venice via an underground series of magical portals. In Venice they find their old schoolchum Josh, and Quentin learns--after a plunge into the icy river at midnight to consult with an ancient dragon--his quest is bigger than he thought.

The narrative of The Magician King alternates between Quentin and Julia's travels and Julia's backstory. The latter is dark, disturbing, and details an education far more vital and interesting than that provided at the rather effete Brakesbill's. The fate of the world, we learn, hangs in the balance, and the fault, it seems, is largely Julia's.

The Magician King ends with the action tied up neatly and most satisfyingly. At the same time it ends with Quentin moving on to what will, one hopes, be an adventure worthy of a third book.

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

2011-11-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

So, the Rapture. It's been predicted a bunch of times throughout Christian history, most recently--and very spectacularly, with radio spots and billboards in Spanish and English all over the country--by California radio evangelist Harold Camping, who predicted that most of us would be left behind on May 21, 2011 and then, when that date came and went, on October 21 of the same year. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. But it's a fascinating concept that has captivated religious and irreligious alike for hundreds of years. There's even a long-running series of supernatural thrillers by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins which is set among those not taken up. The Left Behind books scare the bejesus, if you'll pardon the expression, out of people, and are wildly popular.

Tom Perrotta's latest book The Leftovers tackles the Rapture--or, to be more accurate, the sociological and psychological effects of a "Rapture-like phenomenon"--with both mordant wit and generosity of spirit. As the book opens the world is still reeling from what is being called the "Sudden Departure," which saw millions of people around the world disappear from dinner tables and airplanes, classrooms and bedrooms and offices, all at the same moment. The world is still reeling, and people are still scratching their heads at the meaning of the event, which doesn't appear to have come from a religious place of reward and punishment, as those taken came from all faiths, and even included unbelievers.

Society as a whole has coped as well as can be expected. Leaders secular and religious have sought a cause or a reason for the event. Many have lost their faith. Cults have arisen, and two, the Guilty Remnant and the Healing Hug Movement, will play an important role in the lives of the Garveys, the family at the center of The Leftovers. The Guilty Remnant, or GR, is a group the mission of which is to remind those who remain that the end really is nigh, and that the way to reserve a place on the next elevator up is to take a vow of silence and mortify the flesh to assure one's readiness and purity. The GR dress in white and are never seen in public without a cigarette (a visible reminder that the physical self is the least important aspect of the person). The Healing Huggers follow a charismatic who calls himself Holy Wayne and who can take on an individual's spiritual pain, if only temporarily, through his hugs.

Each member of the Garvey family has dealt with the Sudden Departure differently. Father Kevin, who was elected mayor of the small town of Mapleton not long after the event, strives for normality. Kevin is relentlessly cheerful. He makes omelets for daughter Jill and her friend Aimee, arranges for an anniversary parade remembering those who were taken, waits for wife Laurie to come to her senses and return to him. Laurie has joined the Guilty Remnant, and can be seen around town dressed in white, smoking, and staring relentlessly at those targeted by her group for...censure? recruitment? judgement? It's never entirely clear. Elder child Tom left college to join Holy Wayne's entourage, and is now on the run from the scandal that has brought the cult down. And Jill, the younger child, just runs wild. She's shaved her head, smokes dope in the morning, cuts classes.

As in his previous novels (most recently Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher), Tom Perrotta manages both to skewer contemporary suburban sensibilities and to treat them with an achingly beautiful sensitivity. His characters, while as bristly, self-centered, and annoying as they come, are at the same time real and rich, and so well-rounded I identified with each in turn. I frequently found myself wondering as I read what form my dealing would take, were I to be in the position of the left behind. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd join a cult. But a fun one.

Now Exhale

2011-11-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

At approximately 11:30 this morning, with absolutely no real transition from opening to open, the Book Frog officially became a bookstore. We still had a front of store full of carts of junk and empty soda bottles, but we took our first customer and from that point it was real.

After several hours of schlepping boxes and shelves and carts--schlepping, I must add, done mostly by Jackie--the front of store looked like this.

Shaina brought us a gorgeous hand-crocheted frog...in our colors!

It's been a quiet day, but hey, we're open.

It's been a lovely day.

There Are Books In The Book Frog!

2011-10-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Paint and carpet were finished on Wednesday. Within a half hour or so of our arrival on Thursday morning, Pete and Jackie had already brought a few cases up from storage and begun placing them.

And I had set up an executive command center in the front of the store, watched over by the Book Frog's first frog, courtesy of Jackie.

The temperature on Thursday was in the nineties, but they hauled and installed all day long.

And by the end of day two, here's what we have. Yes, those are books on the floor.

How sweet is our space? This is the view from the window.

After the Weekend

2011-10-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

The painters worked heroically all weekend, and when it was over (at 2 p.m. on Sunday), here's what it looked like:

One more color's coming, as are more coats of paint (and carpet, of course). Update later today.

Catching Up

2011-10-07T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Book Frog timeline, quick and dirty:

February 16, 2011: Borders files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announces it's closing 200 stores. We learn that Pete's store will be among the 200. We immediately start talking about opening our own bookstore.
April 15th: an angel from heaven walks into Pete's store on its last day of business and offers up a substantial loan to make the store a reality.
April 16th-July 17th: we work, make plans, scam fixtures, and chase the money.
July 18th: Borders announces that it ain't gonna happen, and it will close all remaining stores.
July 19th-September 9th: we work, make plans, buy inventory at liquidation, chase the money.
September 10th and 11th: we buy out the remaining inventory at Borders stores 599 and 86, ending the weekend with a garage full of books.

September 12th-26th: We work, buy lots of stuff, chase the lease.
September 27th-30th: In preparation--we hope--of at last signing the lease, Pete, Jackie, and I move fixtures from the overfull space to a storage space in the bowels of the mall (actually, it's in the old Saks Fifth Avenue space, so although it's dark and dusty there's lots of marble, brass, and rich wood). We take the space from this

To this

October 3rd: The lease is signed!
Which brings us, at last, to today. Today--ah, today!--the painters started work. Ladders, scaffolds, much patching and taping and laying of drop cloths. Tomorrow: the paint.

It's on. There's no more hurry-up-and-wait; it's all hurry up now. Stay tuned, because this isn't a dream, this is really happening.

Liquidation Diary: Too Tired To Talk

2011-09-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

Too. Tired. To. Talk. Must. Rest. They're. Killing. Me.

Liquidation Diary: Thanks Are In Order

2011-09-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

Mindy Auerbach. Randy Harrison. Joe Tosney. Suzanne Strunk. Gina Ricker. Steve Bucklin. Diana Villacana. Cynthia Latish. Nicole Pinsky. Nanette Mathieu. Holly Linden. Brian Stitt.

My Borders bosses. All of them. Most were good people. Some were great people. A couple were extraordinary. One was a good person and a bad boss and one--but only one--was both a bad person and a bad boss. Not a bad ratio for a career spanning seventeen years.

Mindy hired me for my first gig with Borders. She interviewed me in February of 1994 at the job fair she and her management team held for the new store opening in Mesa, Arizona. I was hired as a full-time employee. Eighty-five to ninety percent of Borders' staff was full-time in those days, and one hundred percent had a demonstrated love for and knowledge of books. Mindy certainly loved books (she also loved dogs; I remember her beautiful all-white shepherd rescue, Jessie). She promoted me more than once, and then helped me get promoted right out of her store, in the process placing me very firmly on the road to managing my own store. I'll always be grateful to her for that. Thanks, Mindy.

I met Joe Tosney for the first time on the island of Kuaui. I'd gone there to open a new Borders; Joe was over from Oahu, where he was the General Manager of the first Borders off the mainland. He was in his element, holding court at the dinner table, drinking and telling stories (Joe is a raconteur of exceptional talent). He was promoted soon after that dinner, and would be my boss--sometimes once or twice removed, more than once as a direct report, for the better part of the next dozen or so years. Joe was sometimes difficult but always interesting to work for. He was also quintessentially Borders, a lawyer who left the law to pursue a passion, starting out as an Assistant Manager at the Borders in Boston, ending as a Regional Director. Thanks, Joe.

Steve Bucklin and I were peers first. We worked together as Assistant Managers at the store in Mission Viejo (what a great store that was), swore a lot, and talked books constantly. Steve got promoted and moved far away to Seattle, but then---lucky me!--he came back to my store, and became my boss. (Oh, and he met [at Borders] and married Katie in between, as bookish a gal as they come.) Steve ran the happiest store I ever worked at. When I became a GM Steve was my most important touchstone. Thanks, Steve.

I have worked for Gina in one capacity or another pretty much forever. Never have I met anyone as capable of simultaneously controlling both the details and the big picture as Gina is. Losing sight of the forest for the trees? I don't think so. Many's the time when Gina was my DM that she'd come into my store and suggest moving a table or fixture, and I'd protest on principal. Yeah, I don't know why I felt I needed to do that, but she was always right. Not only that, but she's cheerful and optimistic, and she was kind enough to hire me back as a bookseller when I'd had difficulty finding work after leaving Borders in a pique (after having worked for that one boss who was just plain bad). I couldn't even begin to add up the things I learned from Gina, so I'll just say thanks, Gina. I can't think of anyone I'd rather be working for when the lights go out.

Liquidation Diary: Bleak House

2011-09-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

I've seen stores this empty before, but they were happy places, poised to receive vast shipments of books to fill their shelves. The dying patient gasps.

Even moving Governor Palin's book to the magic table--which moved thirty copies of the Jonas Brothers book in three days--has not helped her sales. Sorry, Sarah.

The sign doesn't work. But it does make me laugh every time I walk by it.

Liquidation Diary: Cancer Ward

2011-09-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning Louie and I were working in the front of store. He was moving and remerchandising DVDs and CDs, I was attempting to make some sense of the tables that were still nominally bookcentric. Louie and I, while outwardly very different--he's young, tattooed, physically fit and uber-hip and I'm, well, not--share a work ethic; consequently, we both had our heads down, working away, trying to make it all nice.

It was extraordinarily depressing.

We were going about our work, fixing displays and making signs, when it struck me. Our job has become like that of caregivers in a hospice or cancer ward, but one with just one giant patient: the store. Every day the patient gets sicker. It contracts in upon itself, pieces fall off, and it's constantly being invaded by new and ever more terrifying germs. The patient is terminal, we all know the patient is terminal, and there's nothing we can do about it. There's not even any way to provide much in the way of comfort, like a morphine drip or a cool cloth to the forehead might at least temporarily ease the suffering of a dying person. All we can do is attempt to pick up the pieces as they fall off and make sure they're more or less properly disposed of.

And, as is often the case when a terminally ill patient is finally given the surcease of suffering that death brings, it will be a relief when Borders finally dies. We'll mourn, but then we'll move on. That day can't come soon enough for this caregiver.

Liquidation Diary: Final Days

2011-09-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

We got the word yesterday. We knew it was coming, we just didn't expect it to be so soon and so all-at-once.

Our last day is actually twelve days hence; the sign is designed to instill a sense of urgency in the customer, to make him buy more, more, more.

It's working. There are entire sections of the store that have been reduce from ten or fifteen shelves down to two or three. Those sections have been cleared out and relocated, leaving acres of real estate in the store empty.

And yet, people are still surprised to learn that we don't have the dictionary they want (or any dictionary, for that matter).

Liquidation Diary: Russia From Her Backyard

2011-08-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

She knows stuff, though it seems nobody wants to shell out even $7.80 to sit at her feet and learn from her. Maybe if the book was two for a buck?

Liquidation Diary: The Signs Are Everywhere

2011-08-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not a numbers gal. I like words. Although I work in a business that involves the taking of money and the giving of change, and I do it every day, still I've been known to count secretly on my fingers or to use a calculator for very simple calculations. But even I know how to look at a chart like the one to the left and determine how much something will cost based on the clearly marked price on it. Why do you suppose it's so hard for my customers?

You might reply that they don't have a copy of this handy chart, to which I reply:

The signs are everywhere. In every section. Stuck to random pillars and posts. Impeding access to the actual books (or baby blankets or handy 9-in-1 tools or highly scented candles). Everywhere.

So why, when they get to the register with their baskets piled high, do fully half of the customers ask, holding up one item after another, "How much is this? And this one? And this?" And then they discard the items which a fifty--or sixty, or seventy--percent discount just doesn't render cheap enough.

Funny how this kind of thing wears you down day after day. But hey--at least I have a job.

For now.

On the plus side, I've been using the charts and taking advantage of the discounts to buy stock for the Book Frog. But if it falls through, what am I going to do with ten copies each of Night, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Great Expectations, and A Separate Peace? Not to mention both the Oxford and the Penguin editions of Song of Roland and Democracy in America, among several hundred other titles.

I wonder if we could do a roaming book truck?

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

2011-08-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

In 1974 I was twelve years old. I had been reading on my own for close to eight years, and had been reading "grown-up" books--with varying degrees of understanding (oh, how I blushed for my younger self when I reread some of them years later)--since I was ten. At some point my dad--who always related to kids better as potential adults than as the kids they were--started giving me grown-up books for birthdays and Christmas. That year, 1974, I received an omnibus edition of The Foundation Trilogy, newly published in paperback.

Isaac Asimov's grand, sweeping, galaxy-spanning future history of the human race blew my mind. It's a trite expression, but--considering my age at the time, and the era when I received the book--utterly apt.

I read The Foundation Trilogy (that exact copy) biannually throughout my teens, and have been giving it a once or twice a decade read (same copy) since hitting my majority. (As a young adult I had my first moment of dreading a parent's impending senility when, for Christmas of 1982, I received another copy, hardcover this time, of the same book. Before broaching the subject with my dad--he was, after all, only 44, so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt before suggesting that perhaps he needed to see a specialist--I opened the book. It was inscribed by the author on the half title page, "To Rebecca with love, Isaac Asimov 22 Dec 82." Very classy, dad.)

As the novel opens (don't quibble with me here, okay?: I know a trilogy is three separate novels, but I read them all at once at a very tender age and have never thought of them as anything but a single entity) the Galactic Empire, which for tens of thousands of years rose and expanded until it "stretch(ed) across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the mighty double-spiral that was the Milky Way," is falling, and has been for centuries. As is the way of these things, though infrastructure crumbles and vice of all kind rages, the quadrillions of inhabitants of the Empire are blissfully unaware.

Hari Seldon is a mathematician and creator of the science of Psycho-History, a discipline which, by using complex computations, can predict the movements of mankind--but only on a massive scale. Though branded a traitor and nicknamed "Raven" for his predictions, he manipulates the powers that be into allowing him to set up a Foundation at the far end of the Galaxy, a group that will be dedicated to writing an exhaustive encyclopedia chronicling mankind's achievements. This, Seldon predicts, will shorten the period of barbarity that will inevitably follow the fall of empire from 30,000 years to a mere millennium.

These plucky couple of hundred thousand exiles, sent to a tiny planet with no natural resources, must dig deep and find their own natural resources, lost to mankind in general centuries earlier as part of the complacency of empire. The first book of the trilogy, Foundation, takes place over the first two centuries of the Foundation era. Told in short, intense episodes, the book follows the rise of the political class on Terminus, the Foundation's planet, as it learns the true nature of its exile, through the development of a trading economy and the creation of a galactic religion revolving around the worship of atomics. Every fifty years or so a "Seldon Crisis" looms, the successful overcoming of which takes the Foundation closer to its goal of restoring humanity to the greatness that allowed it to conquer the Galaxy in the first place.

Book two, Foundation and Empire, continues as Foundation traders roam further and further afield, and closer and closer to the once great seat of power, Trantor. As the Empire has crumbled warlords have taken power, and the Foundation traders peddling atomic trinkets--jewelry that gives the wearer an angelic aura, deep freeze units and other household conveniences--are seen as Magicians. The Foundation's progress toward a new empire progresses apace until a monkey wrench is thrown into Seldon's Plan, a freak of nature which a science dealing "not with man, but with man-masses" could never prepare for.

And the last book, Second Foundation, details the first Foundation's desperate search for their sister Foundation, set up in secret at the opposite end of the galaxy, and which they now view as antithetical to their destiny.

All of the usual criticisms of Asimov's work can be applied to The Foundation Trilogy. The writing is often stilted, the characters one-dimensional (and nearly all male), the dialog wooden. But I didn't care about that as a twelve year old, reading it in just a few marathon sittings. Then, I was awed by the grandeur, the hugeness of the vision. Tens of thousands of years. Twenty-five million planets. Quadrillions of people. The story was compelling. It moved quickly, and it ranged far--far!--and wide. The two episodes that were my favorite on that first reading--that of the young couple, Bayta and Toran, who pick up a fugitive with unusual talents while on their honeymoon, and that of the plucky future novelist Arcadia Darell (none-too-coincidentally just about my age)--remain my favorite episodes today. Both contain, in my estimation, Asimov's best female characters who, while as wildly stereotypically fifties women as it's possible to be, are still bright and courageous and fascinating.

What has struck me upon more mature readings is Asimov's joyous and unbridled optimism, something I don't think most young readers are even capable of detecting, let alone appreciating. If I were to choose an epigraph for the work it would have to be from Hamlet:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!
in apprehension how like a god!

For, though Asimov is clear-eyed enough to recognize the darkness that lies within an individual man and what it can drive him to, still, he's in love with mankind and what we can achieve.

And so, The Foundation Trilogy is and always shall be one of my favorite books of all time. In my personal canon it sits on the same shelf as Gravity's Rainbow, Winter's Tale, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a book that formed me and one that I will always come back to. And if you have never read it, and are thinking of picking it up: I envy you, reading it for the first time! May it bring you as much joy as it's brought me, and may you always be able to see the nobility in mankind.

Liquidation Diary: Q & A

2011-08-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

"Do you have The Help"

"No."

"Can you look something up for me?"

"No."

"Do you have Jaycee Dugard's book?"

"No."

"Is there anyplace to sit?"

"No."

"Do you have Game of Thrones?"

"No."

"Is there anybody in the Music Department?"

"No."

"When is your last day?"

"I don't know."

"Can you help me find a book?"

"No."

"Do you have tables for studying?"

"No."

"Can I use my teacher discount?"

"No."

"Does anybody work in the Kids Department?"

"No."

"Are the books in any order?"

"No."

Working Stiff by Rachel Caine

2011-08-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

It kind of sucks to be Bryn Davis. Discovering a rough job market upon her discharge from the military, she attended mortuary school. She'd been around enough death, she figured, to understand the importance of a professional, soothing presence in the lives of grieving survivors making arrangements for their loved ones. Now she's found a great job as a funeral director at a swanky private funeral home in La Jolla, California, and on her first day at work her only slightly smarmy boss takes her to lunch at a fancy French restaurant.

Hey, wait a minute, all that doesn't sound sucky. She's got a great job, an okay boss, and she lives in La Jolla. What's not to envy? Well, on day one she's accosted by a creepy co-worker, she finds the daughter of a client dead of a very bloody suicide in the funeral home's restroom, and oh, later that night she's killed.

Bryn is revivified by the security team of Pharmadene, the big pharma company that accidentally developed a revivification drug, aptly enough named Returne. These two hotties are there surveilling her boss, who may be running a nasty little drug ring out of the office. Now, Bryn is an unwilling employee of Pharmadene, which won't supply the daily dose of Returne she needs to maintain her gorgeous undead self unless she plays ball.

So yeah, it sucks to be Bryn.

Rachel Caine is the author of, among other things, the popular--and fun!--Weather Warden urban fantasy series. That series, which started out literally with a bang and followed that up with a high speed car chase, features Joanne Baldwin, a wise-cracking clothes horse with supernatural powers. It's had its dark moments, but the pace and the fun has never let up. Zombies being as hot as they now are, and as much fun as diverse sorts of writers are having with them, zombies and Rachel Caine would seem to be a natural fit.

And, possibly in book two of the Revivalist series that will be the case. But Working Stiff, clever as it is and attractive and charming as the three main characters are, never really gets off the ground. There are brief glimpses of the characters's potential to be as interesting as Joanne Baldwin and her friends, and the interplay among the three is often diverting, but it never truly gels, though the action is good. It's just not very much fun. And, on a side note, I kept marveling at Ms. Caine's missed opportunity to take advantage of the unbelievably beautiful and interesting La Jolla setting. Zombies and Southern California--what could be more perfect together? But except for a stray reference or two early on this novel could have been set anywhere in the States.

Here's hoping the next installment in the Revivalist series finds the fun.

Liqudation Diary: Borders Dry Goods and Sundries, Now Open For Business

2011-08-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

At Borders we sell many fine products. Here are just a few of the dozens of exciting new items you can find here.

Located in the aisle that formerly housed books on Health and Beauty you can find inexpensive perfumes to suit your every mood.

Leaving that aisle you will come immediately upon a display of slippers with gripper soles. Grip it good, we say with a chuckle.

Let's pay a visit to the Kids section. Once upon a time there were books here. But now you can find blankets of all descriptions to wrap baby in while you watch TV with her or dandle her on your knee as you play Angry Birds.

Ah, here we have the Travel section. Appropriately enough, the blankets are made of microsherpa (which we hope isn't made from the skin of actual sherpas, because that would be, well, kind of Silence of the Lambs and all).

Although Manga books may well be my least favorite in the store, still, I liked it when there were at least a few books there.

Kind of like one of those houses that realtors say have a "peek-a-boo" view, if you stand on your tip-toes and crane your neck you might be able to see some books from this area.

Well lookie here. At the front and back end of the Fiction section, backpacks. Lots and lots of backpacks. But hey--there are still a few books!

I have nothing to say about the waist trimmer. Absolutely nothing.

We're seriously proud of the new product lines we're carrying. Here, Tom and Amanda show their enthusiasm for a three-dimensional foam super-hero, ah, thing.

Liquidation Diary: Subversion for the Soul

2011-08-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

The most time-consuming soul-sucking task at my soul-sucking job these days is the creation and maintenance of the dreaded "You Pay" sign. Liquidators love "You Pay" signs, as I believe I made clear in an earlier post, and with good reason. They are an easy, splashy way to talk to the customer. "Originally $26.00. You Pay $18.20!" Who wouldn't respond to that? Our liquidator has a particular fondness for computer generated signs, so I used his template the other day and made dozens of them, which I placed strategically all over the front of store. I later learned that I skipped an apparently crucial step. In an empty space that sits under the title of the item I was supposed to write in exclamation point punctuated phrases such as, "Take Me Home Today!" "Read Me Tonight!" "Best Book Ever!"

You get the picture.

Having been instructed to race around the store and fill in the blanks before the big boss liquidator's visit on Saturday morning, I got out my black marker and began. "Clancy Rocks!" on the sign for Tom Clancy's latest factory written thriller, although not exactly the kind of generic message he was requesting, was still pretty bland and inoffensive.

I decided to go topical for The Dukan Diet, the diet (I heard) that Kate Middleton did to fit into her wedding dress.

But then I moved to a table filled with mostly political titles past their prime. On a table filled with George W. Bush's Decision Points,

Sarah Palin's America By Heart,

Glenn Beck's Broke,

Bill O'Reilly's Pinheads and Patriots,

and Laura Ingraham's Of Thee I Zing,

how could I not have a little fun?

Then I couldn't stop.

Here are celebrity memoirs from Ricky Martin (Me) and LaToya Jackson (Starting Over).

Ricky's has a little grammatical editorializing from a co-worker.

And then a couple more memoirs. What is it about memoirs?

And finally, Earth, by Jon Stewart. Hey, it's more truthy than either Mortenson or Frey.

Subversion. It's good for the soul.