Looking Ahead

As the event and public relations coordinator for Anthology, I have the pleasure of working closely with authors and local musicians in providing readings, book signings and entertainment at the bookstore. We have brought three interesting evenings to our clientele since October, including a wonderful mix of prose and East Indian music with Bhanu Kapil's reading from Humanimal and Aakash Mittal's blend of jazz fusion.

In November, Young Adult author Laura Resau braved a cold and snowy night to travel from Fort Collins to Loveland for a very intimate evening of discussion and stories. Her books, What the Moon Saw, Red Glass, and the Indigo Notebook are insightful accounts of youth and their search for understanding, friendship and love. Over a cup of tea, Ms. Resau shared what inspired her books, travels to Mexico and Latin America countries, and revealed the depth of her characters in a way that reaches not only youth, but adult readers as well.

December we kicked back with what I would list as one of the most talented singer-songwriters I have heard in recent years. Baily Stauffer packed the house while delivering soulful, penetrating guitar, keyboard and vocals. I would compare her to Tori Amos; offering her own special blend of heartfelt emotion in her raw and transparent lyrics. Especially touching was her lovely rendition of O, Holy Night, in a nod to the Christmas season.

I have a special gift for you in January. After the holidays, you may be thinking of taking a road trip, a short journey, a vacation...you won't want to miss Trent Newcomer as he reads from his award-winning book, The Call of the World. Part travelogue/part memoir, Trent shares his insightful and candid accounts of his solo backpacking trip around the globe. Did I mention awards? Winner (Travel Essay)-2009 National Best Books Award (USA Book News); Medalist (Travel Essay)-2009 Independent Publishers Book Award; Finalist (Travel/Travel Essay)- 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Please join us as we host Trent Newcomer at the bookstore January 8, 2010 from 6:30 pm to 8 pm. The event is free. Please mark your calendars for a wonderful evening with this young man. The Call of the World will be available in our bookstore next week.

February brings an evening of music the 12th of February (artist to be determined) and author Sally Bonkrude on February 25, 2010 from 6-7:30 pm. Ms. Bonkrude is a performance coach and author, who's book Conscious Performing helps offer positive inner change and excellence. I will have more information on this after the first of the year.

I hope you will post these dates and events on your 2010 calendars! It would be a pleasure to see many of our customers come out and support both local musicians and authors. Peace and blessings to you in the New Year.
Bridget

New Around the Store

With the Holiday season in full swing, I know that it is easy to get overwhelmed. (Especially with all the commercials on TV, and the ads in every paper you grab.) So I thought it would be fitting to give everyone a little heads up on what is new around the store. This morning we received a lovely order from the amazing toy maker, Melissa & Doug. They specialize in wooden toys, and classic toys. There are lovely puzzles, Rainbow Stackers, and magnetic dress up dolls that are filling the children's section. We also Klutz toy books.

Another wonderful gift idea that arrived this morning are the new NPR CDs. This is a new idea that we are trying out; we get six different CDs that are being played on NPR, every six weeks. This shipment includes Rosanne Cash's "The List", Norah Jones' "The Fall", and the timeless classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas".
We also received lots of new books that are bound to be great Christmas gifts. Keri Smith's "How to Be An Explorer of the World," which is a wonderful book/journal in the same style of her beloved "Wreck This Journal". We have several copies of the intriguing "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", and of the heart-warming bestseller "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society". When you swing by the store to peruse the shelves for the perfect gift, feel free to ask our knowledgeable staff for recommendations. Happy Shopping!

I have never considered myself a "mystery/crime" reader. Late last year, I picked up "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson and flew through it. Pretty sure I didn't even pause to sleep while reading that book. After finishing that amazing book, I was shocked that I wanted to read some more books that are located in the mystery/crime genre. After many suggestions, I picked up one of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books. It was a easy, fun read that I was able to complete in one sitting, but I found it lacked the substance that I had found in Larsson's book. I don't consider myself a book snob, but I was not really thrilled with the heavy hitters of the mystery/crime genre. I read James Patterson, Diane Mott Davidson, and I even tried Patricia Cornwell, but I was still hungering for a more juicy plot. This is when one of my co-workers suggested "Shutter Island" by Lehane. I agreed to read it for two main reasons. #1: My co-worker has always suggested wonderful reads. #2: I had happened to see a preview for the upcoming movie that stars Leonardo DiCaprio (and I always have to read the book before I see the movie).
I will be quite honest, that book sat on my night stand for about a month before I picked it up mid-morning one Saturday. It grabbed my about 30 pages into the story, and after that I could not put it down. I read all afternoon, and into the wee hours of morning. The story takes place on Shutter Island, which is located off the coast of Massachusetts, that is home to a mental institution. It follows the investigation of two U.S. Marshals on the hunt for an escaped patient. That is all I feel comfortable about giving away the ending, but I will say that I was completely taken aback by the ending. I had to re-read the ending to make sure that I had read it correctly the first time through. Swing by the store to grab your copy before the movie comes out, or grab it for a wonderful Christmas present for that person in your life who loves a good web of intrigue.
When you stop by the store, I would love to hear suggestions for more "mystery/crime" books. I think that I am hooked :)

The Holidays at Anthology

The staff decorated the store this past Saturday; I came in to find golden snowflakes, red and green bulbs, and ornaments adding a festive touch to the displays. We celebrate Thanksgiving this Thursday, and my mind holds still to the harvest colors, pumpkins, colored corn and gourds. But in our society, Thanksgiving marks the start of a mad-dash of holiday shopping, Black Friday deals and the ever-increasing need to find the perfect gift for those on your list.

Anthology Book Company is offering a wonderful collection of regional books from the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Winter Catalog. We have been excited to bring these excellent titles to you since we first previewed the collection in late September. Our shelves are stocked with copies of new books ranging from history, fiction, cooking, children's titles and memoirs, to books that speak especially well to the issues and people of the West. As our gift to you, we are able to extend a 20% discount off any title in the Winter Catalog and will order titles in for you, should our supply run low. And of course, our stacks hold many used, rare and collectible books sure to please, as well. What could be better than combing the shelves of an independent bookstore?

My mantra is take things slowly, live in the present, be mindful. So I will slowly take down my fall decorations in my home and then bring in holiday items acquired over the years. And I too will think of loved ones and review the catalog as I move into holiday shopping mode. There couldn't be a better place to shop, than here at Anthology. Peace.

Bridget

Pattern Recognition

It's been a while since William Gibson's Pattern Recognition came out, and I still haven't managed to read it. I enjoyed Neuromancer very much, but haven't been impressed by some of his other work.

Nevertheless, this interview in the Blackbird Archive is fantastic. Most of it, you'll notice, is an extended meditation on what constitutes Science Fiction. This is important. I know I can't give a real answer as to why it is- many more eloquent than me have tried. But I get so tired of the dismissive, "oh, I don't read scifi."

There is an extraordinary body of work that satisfies all the requirements of science fiction but is not marketed as such. The Time Traveler's Wife is about a time traveler, for example, but it's still in the Contemporary Lit section so everyone reads it. Likewise Gregory MacGuire's fairytale re-imaginings like Wicked would be perfectly at home in the scifi section - you wouldn't even have to change the covers. Hundreds of CIA and crime thrillers deal with future weapons and genetic engineering and spy technology - but they have lots of guns, so that's okay.

But more than the tropes listed above, science fiction is a way of thinking.

As the review says;

The next matter to be settled is genre. William Gibson is a science fiction writer, so is this science fiction? The answer is yes and no. Unlike Vonnegut, who goes to some pains to say he's not writing science fiction even when he is, Gibson never shies from the label, even though he's perfectly aware it's not so simple a tag as it once was. Pattern Recognition is set in the present with no aliens or secret technologies. The plot turns on nothing more exotic technologically than chat rooms and posted film clips in a very recognizable Internet. Recently, Neal Stephenson's Cryptomonicon, as fat as Pattern Recognition is lean, was largely treated as a science fiction novel by reviewers, bookdealers, and readers, even nominated for sf awards, though the main action involves the breaking of the Enigma code of World War II and isn't science fiction in the usual sense. China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, on another end of the spectrum, seems science fictional even though it takes place in a Dickensian steampunk world with no connection to ours.

Science fiction, in effect, has become a narrative strategy, a way of approaching story, in which not only characters must be invented, but the world and its ways as well, without resorting to magic or the supernatural, where the fantasy folks work. A realist wrestling with the woes of the middle class can leave the world out of it by and large except for an occasional swipe at the shallowness of suburbia. A science fiction writer must invent the world where the story takes place, often from the ground up, a process usually called world-building. In other words, in a science fiction novel, the world itself is a distinctive and crucial character in the plot, without whom the story could not take place, whether it's the world of Dune or Neuromancer or 1984. The world is the story as much as the story is in the world. Part of Gibson's point (and Stephenson's too for that matter) is that we live in a time of such accelerated change and layered realities, that we're all in that boat, like it or not. A novel set in the "real world" now has to answer the question, "Which one?"

Via Science Fictional. That post also has a link to this interview with William Gibson, equally interesting.

Autumn brings change

When I was young, I welcomed the start of autumn more than any other season. It meant new shoes and notebooks, colors and grasses dying back, and the daylight slipping away into night. Autumn still is my favorite time of year, as I find myself pulling on a sweater for warmth and searching for just the right book in which to lose myself.

I too am changing with the season, as far as reading preferences go. No longer do I want the quick light reads of summer; books that are easily picked up and set down as you carve out of few minutes to read between outdoor activities, vacations and muggy nights. No, autumn demands books with depth; tomes that draw the reader in and offers a respite. Animals begin their task and order of hibernation, preparing for months of quiet sleep. Ahhh...sounds blissful, huh?

So, what to read on this cold November night? I look forward to starting the latest E.L. Doctorow book, Homer and Langley (Random House). Although a novel, I like historical fiction. The lives of New York's fabled Collyer brothers will intrigue and hold my interest, much like Doctorow's Ragtime and City of God.

Then there are the well-noted titles that remain on "my list": The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Diaz; People of the Book, by the impeccable Geraldine Brooks; Out Stealing Horses by Petterson (I tried this in the summer; it's definitely a winter book); The Book Thief by Zusak...I am afraid my list goes on. I am never short of books to read, but find myself quite particular about the mood and timing of my choices.

Some people say they will read whatever they can get their hands on. I tend to be more selective. Perhaps that leads me back to my thoughts on autumn and books. As a child we gathered by the fire on cool fall evenings and my father read the poetry of Robert Service and James Whitcomb Riley to my siblings and me. I can see the leaves falling outside the farmhouse window, watch the corn stalks die back after harvesting, hear the cattle settling in the barn...yes, autumn is about change, but perhaps more than not, it remains the same.

Lovely Poem

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I was extremely fortunate to have a wonderful teacher share this poem with me over the weekend. Even though it is not summer it holds meaning for all seasons. There is not much to say about this except that have learned a lot from this poem and the context in which it was given. I will always remember and refer to this poem in times when I know that changing the self is a necessary process. To be able to change ones perspective and admit ones faults seems extremely essential to me. I think this poem represents the frailty and ever changing life in and around us all. I love it and I'm sure it means different things to different people. For me it is a precious gift and a wonderful reminder.