The benefits of a religious education

Despite a brief early foray into short reviews, I usually try not to name books on this blog for fear of coming up on publishing industry radar screens.

But Z.'s new favorite book is the hot-off-the-presses new edition of The C@stle on Hester Street, and it's really beautiful. The new illustrations are gorgeous and the story is a wonderful balance between the grandfather's tall tales and the grandmother's no-nonsense facts.

Here's what Z. said to this passage:

"Grandpa came on a boat, like I did. It was terrible. Hundreds of families were crowded together. Babies were crying. Bundles were piled over. The boat rocked so much, I thought we would drown. But in Russia, life for Jews was very hard.

"We couldn't live or work where we wanted. Sometimes we were attacked just because we were Jews. We had to leave Russia any way we could"

Z.'s response?

"Dat's just like PHA-roah!"


In related cultural capital news, we were talking with her about the teenagers who enacted the weird sister scenes from Macbeth, over and over, on our corner on Halloween. Did Z. think they were good witches or bad witches?

And of course this led to a discussion of Glinda and Dorothy. Z. has watched The Wizard of Oz exactly twice. But she told us dat Glinda asks Dowaty "Ah you a good witch ohrw a bad witch?" After two viewings! The kid's a queerspawn genius, I'm telling you.

Party minus 2 hours

Here in the Rhyming house, Grandad is boning up on JK Rowling's backlist, Z. is having a snack with Mommy, GranGran is (we think) still at her meeting, and Mama is refining her newly acquired Flckr skills. Turns out Flckr's standard medium size results in the right margin of all my pictures being chopped off, so I fiddled with the size. These are: width="400" height="300", if you're interested in these details.

One thing Mama is noticing is that she has apparently done a very good job of branding because hardly any of the shots she took of Potter party decorations are free of the store logo. (I think I've found some that won't tempt you to come stalk me, but I'm just gonna slip in a little friendly reminder of my strong desire to keep this blog's name and the store's name completely separate in the Big Brotherly eye of Google et al. And of my willingness to delete comments to that end.)



The faced-out book has 7 hours left as the store's all-time bestseller. It was written pseudonymously by the editor of the Co-op on the Corner's newsletter. We can always tell he's been working the floor because we get a slew of people in looking for this. HP7 is already at number 13 on our list and, yes, it hasn't been released yet.

Harry Potter-themed cupcakes:



Have a snitch:



Happy reading, all!!!!

Books recent and current

PLEASE, PLEASE, if you like anything you read about here, buy it from your local independent bookseller. You can find someone near you at the Booksense website. Really! You can type in your zip code and everything. Or find a little guy with a website who'll send it to you.

The Devil in the White City, Erik Lawson. I read a lot of mysteries, not much true crime, because I think true crime is sensationalist without having much plot or character interest. Everyone wants to be Truman Capote, but most people wind up closer to Ann Rule. The serial killer thread of this was pretty much what I expected. Howmmmsoever ... I'm secretly in love with Chicago and its architecture, so I really loved all the stuff about the world's fair, and in the two days since I read it have seen two items crop up (in my constant swim through print) that tie back to something I learned from the book, so I feel this was a good part of my continuing education. I understand why this is a perennial Booksense bestseller.

The Black Book of Secrets, F.E. Higgins (US edition forthcoming, Fall '07) For middle grade readers. I'm in the middle of this. This is a quasi-Dickensian story about a pickpocket who finds himself apprenticed to a highly unlikely pawnbroker. I'm really liking the pacing and the writing is very accessible to kids without being clunky. A good choice for Lemony Snicket fans, I think (though I haven't finished).

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert. She and her sister (Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of the young adult book Dairy Queen) came to speak at the store last summer and it was one of the best events we've ever done. I'm only just at the beginning of this and I can't imagine what took me so long. She combines snarkiness and emotional availability in this absolutely stunning way. I think anyone drawn to blogs would love this book.

Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan. I read the first section of this, on apples and John Chapman/Johnny Appleseed, many years ago, loved it, and got stuck in the second section, tulips. I just didn't care that much about the tulips. But I went back to it after I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is one of the few books that I think everyone in the world should read (really: if you eat, you need to know what Pollan has to say). Botany is not a masterpiece, but it's awfully fine. I still think the apple section is the best one in the book, with its strong historic vein, and I still don't think the tulip section is nearly as interesting, but the marijuana and potato sections (sections 3 and 4) come close. There's a clear path from the potato section, in which Pollan contemplates genetically modified crops and monoculture, to the work he's doing in Omnivore. Gardening isn't as universal an experience as eating, but I think this should be on your list if you spend any time reading gardening books or catalogs.

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion. I actually am not prepared to write about this, seeing as it's all about grief and all. But I loved it.

Next up: The Coldest Blood, Jim Kelly. I love smart British mystery novels. Unfortunately St. Martins is only publishing Kelly in hardcover here, but you can see if it cost-effective to get a used paper copy from the UK by looking on abebooks.