"No Country" best for the Coen's

I just saw the Coen brothers adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men and I even liked the ending...unlike the audience around me that did not.

SPOILER ALERT AHEAD

The ending could not have been more perfect for the Coen's and for McCarthy. We want closure, we want the bad guy to be brought to justice and for the protagonist to triumph...and when we don't you get an audience of "That's it?" This ending was true to the book and true to the characters. This is an ending that should scare you more than frustrate you. The killer is still out there. This was only part of a bigger story that may or may not be told, or need to be told. We already know the outcome.

When Hollywood is churning out remake after remake and sequel after sequel, isn't it nice to have a movie presented that wants you to have to think about it well after the credits have rolled?

ARC's at my bedside

With this holiday season consuming my time after the normal work hours-overtime in giftwrap for the last two weeks-I look forward to dipping my toe in the ARC waters. The Advance Reading Copies that I have received from various publishers have been staring at me, daring me to steal away a moment from Santa's thunder.





I have been able to begin reading Douglas Preston's Blasphemy (due out January), pure escape fiction about uber-tinker toys that need their own zip code to exist. Others I look forward to reading are The Man Who Turned Into Himself by David Ambrose (due in April) , A Short History of the American Stomach by Frederick Kaufman (due out in February).





I also have two books about birds to read-The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Womans's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird-Bruce Barcott (due out February), and The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature-Jonathan Rosen (due out February as well).





I am also really excited to read the new young adult novel from my cousin, Kevin Henkes-Bird Lake Moon (due out in May). Hopefully when I wake up from my weeklong nap after the holidays I will be refreshed to journey forth.

Dimming the lights at the "Lobster"

I just finished reading Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster, and I have to say that I am pleased. Pleased that I read it, pleased that I will recommend it, and pleased that I went through some of what the characters experienced, except mine was pizza.

The story follows Manny DeLeon, the manager of a Red Lobster, as he is about to close the restaurant for good. He must contend with the life he has had as manager, the new one he will begin at Olive Garden, and the staff that he has had to babysit. If closing the restaurant was not enough to struggle with for Manny and staff the area is dropped upon by a snowflake atom bomb.

O'Nan has the power to create simple vignettes and feelings with his characters. Manny has stepped over the unpainted line of work relationships to dating one of the hostesses, who has a boyfriend, while he decides what to do about his girlfriend who is pregnant with his child. Sounds like soap dirt to most but I felt empathy for these characters. As the snow piles up outside the "Lobster" Manny must decide to stay true to the ideals of management and corporate ownership by staying open until the end. I was in these situations earlier in life when I worked at a local pizzeria in Cincinnati. The joys, camaraderie, loathing, mediocrity, and ho-humness of working in a minimum wage job in food are all felt in this ode to the middle class-the best class in the class.

Pass the lemon, I'm wanting more "Lobster".

Embrace the ignorance

It's okay to admit that we are ignorant about certain things, whether they are areas of history, science or human nature. Now there is a book out that allows us to embrace our ignorance, and to be properly educated in the process. Harmony Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, three-quarters of the book belly, has just released The Book of General Ignorance:Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson.

This is the perfect hoilday, birthday, and fare-thee-well book for anyone who thinks they know everything, or nothing, about anything.

Questions presented are from the various left fields of history, science, politcs, literature, and food. Do marmots kill people? (Yes, they cough them to death.) What Edison invention do English speakers use every day? (The word "hello".) What was the first invention to break the sound barrier? (The whip.) What's three times as dangerous as war? (Work.) These questions and many others are just waiting to be explored.

Read it all at once, read one question at various intervals, learn something new every day.

The best of '77-movie wise

I saw an article via one of my favorite sites to visit-imdb.com-that came up with the outrageous idea that 1974 was the best year for movies. With all due respect to 1974, and 1939-the golden year of film-I submit that 1977 was the best year for film, in my experience.



This was the year of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Annie Hall. Come on. '77 had popcorn gems like King Kong (Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges), Orca and Rollercoaster. Roger Moore spooned Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me. Paul Newman made a comedy about hockey with Slap Shot. And The Hill Have Eyes as well.



We were also treated to The Kentucky Fried Movie and Smokey and the Bandit. Animated classics like The Hobbit, Wizards, and The Rescuers were released. And John Travolta strutted across the electric floor in Saturday Night Fever.



Hollywood take note-these are classics-please don't remake them. (Too late for King Kong.)

The Island of Misfit Toys would love remainders

A book need not stop being viable just because it is sitting on a remainder table. What would King Moonracer say if you ignored a book just because it wasn't new anymore? If you see a remaindered, or bargain, book for sale you might want to think of it as the best book deal around. Where else can you get recent titles, perhaps some that are one or two years from the original publication date, for the cheap? Remainders can be your best friend if you have a $25 spending cap at the holidays. And you give a book a second chance to be loved, like the "cowboy who rides an ostrich."



They might be titles that you were interested in when they first came out but decided to wait awhile to read. I am the remainder buyer for the branch store that I work at and I enjoy shopping the sites and talking to reps to fill our tables with the best there is to offer. Not the 3-books-in-1 specials you might see at some box stores, or reprints, but the original manifestations of the book-the ones with the unfortunate black slash through the price (which incidentally is done by the publisher, not the bookstore.)



I treat my remainder tables as if they were my own store front, with different subjects highlighted and generous quantities to choose from, should you desire. Buy them when you see them, you never know how long they will be around.

Backlist baby

I love the backlist...especially during the holidays. Recommending new titles is always fun, but the challenge and true joy comes when I tell a customer about previous titles that an author has written.



I had a customer interested in new books of the Civil War. After highlighting the recent releases I told her about Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic. Intrigued she bought a copy.



After discovering that our store had not sold any copies of William Manchester's brilliant A World Lit Only by Fire in three years I promptly ordered more stock. We have now sold 17 copies since April. Not bad for a book that came out in 1993.



Last holiday, I pulled 30 titles from Nancy Pearl's Book Lust recommendations, ordered 3 copies of each book and displayed them near our book information counter. We sold at least one copy out of the 30 titles, and over 80 books for the total.



Testimony to the power of what was once written still has selling power today.

The joy of movies is book divine

With the annual announcement of the Golden Globes nominations it is always with anticipation as to which books were utilized to create some of the lucky noms. Atonement, No Country for Old Men, Charlie Wilson's War, Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Into the Wild all had a foundation in the book world before they were expanded to the celluloid universe. As is the case with most book adaptations a film can struggle when it gives sight to the words voice. Characters are compressed, details morphed into visual nausea, and the personal interpretation that we all feel when reading the book can become lost. We have already cast the film version in our minds. (Would your mind allow Keanu to speak Shakespeare?)



View the movie as primer...a brief glimpse into a story waiting to be read.

Buying from Peter to sell to Paul

With the continuing buying thrist for Eat, Pray, Love, and the lack of stock at regional distributors, one has to do strange things. Like buying mass quantities from a shopping club warehouse to sell in the bookstore that tries to coexist with the shopping club warehouse. Strange times indeed.

Books that seem to be wrapped the most in 2007

As I have begun my giftwrapping stint at the bookstore I have noticed several books that seem to be wrapped the most. Whether this is due to staff recommendations, book clubs, or Oprah, the following titles love the wrap:

-Eat, Pray, Love
-Water for Elephants
-Life of the Thunderbolt Kid
-The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
-Pillars of the Earth
-The Zookeepers Wife

Books on my wish list-hint, hint, nudge, nudge.

The list I created for my wife to choose from-all of them, please-is wide ranging.



My first hope would be for Diane Ackermann's-The Zookeeper's Wife. This is the incredible story of how the zookeeping husband and wife team of the Warsaw Zoo survived the German occupation of Poland. The zoo became a haven not just for the animals but the townspeople as well.



My next hope would be for David Michaelis'-Schulz & Peanuts: A Biography. Charles Schulz, the quiet genius behind the Peanuts characters, is finally revealed in this intimate portrait of a man who just loved to draw, tell simple stories, and let the artwork speak for him.



One more pick would be for Bob Eckstein's-The History of the Snowman. This book caught me by surprise with the nostalgia and love presented for the rotund character that charms us all.



Finally, a hope for the big book under my tree of photographic images of various wildlife, in a studio setting, from Andrew Zuckerman called Creature. Blank backgrounds with incredibly close-up portraits. Wow!