This is a lyrical explosion of a book, a challenge to literature, and particularly to narrative non-fiction, as we know it.
Our books no longer reflect the way we understand our lives, Shields argues. They are not fractured enough, not various and stolen, too hemmed in. We are all of us increasingly hungry for the "real", and have created monuments of commodified irreality in a desperate attempt to find it.
This book is indeed a manifesto in the best sense, a call to action for readers and writers. Shields is demanding reader interaction, greater risk, more serendipity and - as difficult, possibly, to acheive as it is easy to say - more reality in our use of the written word. It's a stirring book full of more questions than answers, and one I'm very excited to have as the topic of a conversation here at the store..
News of Note
Staff Picks
The Golden Spruce
Written by David
By John Vaillant (W.W. Norton, $15.95)
I had no idea this would be such an engrossing, eye-opening, and entertaining book. Set in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands, John Vaillant's Golden Spruce is the story of Grant Hadwin, a logger turned environmentalist, whose passion and zeal brought him to cut down a one-of-a-kind, over 300 year-old, golden Sitka Spruce. It's a gripping and well-written narrative set in a landscape of mythic proportions.
One Fifth Avenue
Written by Cheryl
Candace Bushnell (Voice, $15.99)
Tired of those 800 page tomes in translation? Cross-eyed after reading Nabakov's original manuscript of his long-lost Laura? Or simply exhausted after schlepping around those encyclopedically depressing accounts of colossal financial institutions too big to fail? This book is a true guilty pleasure. Bushnell is Hedda Hopper with a modern twist and possesses enough self-awareness to mock the clueless Sex and the City ravers that she,alone, spawned. Give yourself a break. It's always the silly season.
The Big Clock
Written by David
By Kenneth Fearing (NYRB, $14.95)
Raymond Chandler was right when he claimed this guy could give him a run for his money. Besides the noir setting that he gets so right and makes so palpabale, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock is an exceptionally suspenseful story of cat and mouse. Fortunately, it isn't a long one--otherwise it'd keep you up all night.
I had no idea this would be such an engrossing, eye-opening, and entertaining book. Set in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands, John Vaillant's Golden Spruce is the story of Grant Hadwin, a logger turned environmentalist, whose passion and zeal brought him to cut down a one-of-a-kind, over 300 year-old, golden Sitka Spruce. It's a gripping and well-written narrative set in a landscape of mythic proportions.
Tired of those 800 page tomes in translation? Cross-eyed after reading Nabakov's original manuscript of his long-lost Laura? Or simply exhausted after schlepping around those encyclopedically depressing accounts of colossal financial institutions too big to fail? This book is a true guilty pleasure. Bushnell is Hedda Hopper with a modern twist and possesses enough self-awareness to mock the clueless Sex and the City ravers that she,alone, spawned. Give yourself a break. It's always the silly season.
Raymond Chandler was right when he claimed this guy could give him a run for his money. Besides the noir setting that he gets so right and makes so palpabale, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock is an exceptionally suspenseful story of cat and mouse. Fortunately, it isn't a long one--otherwise it'd keep you up all night.