One good thing about bookstores is that however tough times get, they always have a reliable customer base. Booksellers are also, usually, voracious book buyers. We’re stuck on the things. Sure publishers are often kind enough to send us early copies of some books, or even free copies of others, but never enough to satisfy our monstrous pulpy lusts, and certainly never our curiosities.
Here, for instance, is my stack from this week. Not every week is like this, though neither is this so very unusual, but for some reason I felt the need to grab a book or two or seven the other day. I couldn’t help myself. Padded out with free copies as that stack is, it’s far far more than I’ll be able to read for some time yet.
But I bought this stuff because it interests me, and since my job is often nothing more complicated than conveying my interests to you let’s take a little tour, shall we?
First off, a fantastic collection of essays and literary musings by William Gass titled Finding a Form (Dalkey Archive, $15.95). I’ve only just begun it, but already it’s erudite, funny, and – naturally – incredibly well written. It’s a reprint of the same collection from Knopf back in 1996, but I’m pretty certain I’d never even heard of Gass back in ’96, so it’s new to me. The first two essays, strikingly enough, are about ten pages each and were first published in the New York Times Book Review. That’s right, the same Book Review that is now itself about ten pages long in total. Gass, by the way, is 85 this year.
Beside that is the latest issue of dispatches magazine, their fifth I think, titled dispatches_endgame ($25.00). Dispatches is quickly growing to be one of the favorite magazines of our staff, including our magazine buyer Douglas Singleton, who knows a good (or shitty) magazine when he sees one. Part of that has to do with their excellent design sensibilities, and part to do with the sustained focus of the thing. Each issue is dedicated to a different topic, this one to the ruptures we will face with the coming century of climate change. The essays are personal and strikingly written. They leave you full of facts and impassioned without themselves being didactic or juvenile manifestoes. But the real thing that sets dispatches apart, particularly among digest-sized political magazines, is the space given to extended exercises in photojournalism. Photographs make up the bulk of the magazine, and what photography it is. A variety of photographers display such acumen and subtlety here, you’ll barely wince at the price tag.
Then we have the paperback version of Philip Plait‘s Death from the Skies (Penguin, $16.00). 
This one was a free copy (thanks Bruce) given to me under the assumption that if I read it and like it I’ll urge you, the bookstore-blog-reading public* to pick it up. I honestly don’t know if my recommendation is even needed here, though. Yes, Phil’s blog Bad Astronomy is consistently great, and what I’ve read of the book doesn’t disappoint. It is what the subtitle says: a run-through of the science behind possible astronomic doomsday scenarios. There is, I’m happy to report, an appendix of nearby stars that will go supernova. But all that is irrelevant once you see the hilarious cover by Nathan Fox. This photo is a bit small but trust me, it’s great. I want my armageddon to look just like that.
Two more free books here. The first is The Cost of Living (NYRB, $16.95), early and uncollected stories by Mavis Gallant. Gallant is 87 this year, and has had over one hundred stories printed by The New Yorker. Reading this collection (I haven’t had the chance to read many yet) I can certainly understand why. Her prose is remarkably clean, so that every hint of affect, of voice, stands out with great purpose. But at the same time her characters seem only to play at simplicity, to yearn for it even if it is the simplicity of escape. They’re marvelous stories, but the reason this book was sent to me has more to do with the collection’s introduction, written by one of Brooklyn’s finest. Jhumpa Lahiri will be in our cafe this October to read from and discuss Gallant. I haven’t even posted that fact on our events page yet, so if you’ve read this far welcome to that fun secret.
Then there’s David Malouf‘s Ransom (Pantheon, $23.95). this one was a free copy sent to the store that I greedily snatched up for myself. I probably shouldn’t be highlighting it here for fear that another bookseller will (rightly) claim that I don’t have the time to do it justice. Malouf is considered one of the great Australian writers of our generation, and I’ve never read him before now. What I’ve tasted of this book is thrilling. It’s a retelling of some of the key parts of the Iliad, primarily the relationship between Achilles (don’t picture Brad Pitt) and Priam. The writing is quite unlike Gallant’s; the dialogue is stiff, the speakers prone to archaisms, but that feels natural here. This is a tale being told. Also the cover, which you don’t see here, is one of the most dramatic images of a mule ever taken. I hope, a little further in, this book throws the whole Homeric schtick aside and gets down to some good gritty mule noir.
Ah, two massive books of genre fiction, for the discerning customer who likes to tone his triceps while reading in bed. The lighter blue is the 26th annual Gardner Dozois edited Year’s Best Science Fiction (St. Martin’s, $21.95) anthology. This one has been out for at least a month now, but I’m just getting to it. I buy this anthology every year; have since I was a kid. I’m still waiting to be disappointed. I just finished Paolo Bacigalupi’s story “The Gambler” last night and it was so good it made me want to reread it again immediately.
The book below with the ridiculous font and the castles is the yet-to-be-released sequel to David Anthony Durham‘s Acacia. This second novel, of three, is The Other Lands (Doubleday, $28.00). Acacia got a hell of a lot of hyperbole thrown at it when it came out, and didn’t inevitably live up to some of the wilder claims about its erudition or originality. It is, after all, just a Russ-esque bit of High Fantasy. I suppose Martin-esque is the going term now, and I love Martin, too, but let’s pretend for a moment that there are other writers in the field. Anyhow, Russ-esque yes, but good enough to make anyone who enjoys the genre even a little bit sit up and dust off their sword fantasies for a while. All the best tropes are there: invading barbarian hordes, back room power struggles, a dynasty in decline, and lots and lots of sword-swinging. Durham knows what he’s doing. Like Martin, like Jordan, he splits the narrative between a few characters and we watch them each come into their own (exceptional) place in the world in different ways. Some of those ways might involve pirate armies and war mammoths, just so you know. The book really is full of, if not new tricks, then new takes on old ideas. It’s written fairly well, too. I’ve been pressing it on fantasy readers in our store for a while now, and I’m excited to finally see the sequel.
Man this stack just keeps going doesn’t it? I also grabbed the latest issue of n+1 ($13.95), which just came out this past week. Issue eight, which they’ve titled Recessional, has the usual great essay work and fiction. 
I generally turn to the book reviews in back first, but that might be the nerdy way to go about it. Or is that more pretentious? The joke of course being that there is no way to read this thing that is not pretentious. Then again we’re all already reading this, I assume, so there’s really not too much else for me to say about it. I’ll just note that I would maybe prefer my “Intellectual Scene” portion of the magazine without the corny setups, and that this issue, like every other, is well well worth the price.
Okay, now who would like to place bets that I get distracted by other titles long before finishing any of these?
* Who are you people anyway? Buncha nerds, that’s who.
