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Wednesday, May 1
While looking for something else, I found this fascinating catalogue of books from 1903 from a Chicago publisher, Frederick J. Drake & Company. It's slightly re-assuring to know that back then they also sold books on science experiments that could be done at home or how to make money in the stock market. Though I doubt a book about "renowned Dutch comedians" would still sell a lot of copies.
— Brian Sobolak
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from our current book club selection, Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz. In this excerpt, Kotlowitz relates his first meeting with one of the Chicagoans profiled in the book, artist Milton Reed:
"I first met Reed in 1999, while visiting a woman in the Stateway Gardens Public Housing complex, which was then a collection of eight seventeen-story high-rises. He was in the living room of my hostess, where he was painting a gold-trimmed black panther on the cinderblock wall. He had a forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45 beside him, and he was so completely engaged in his work that he didn't say a word. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the rendering, though it was clear that Reed had taken great care with it. He had first sketched the outlines of the panther in pencil, using a ruler and right angle, and then had gone to work with oil-based house paint. Because of its permanence, there was little room for error. I assumed at the time that the panther was meant to conjure up more radical days. I later learned, however, that a number of years before a woman had asked Reed to paint a black panther with gold trim on her kitchen wall to match her black and gold furniture, a common color pairing among public-housing residents. ('They all follow that same tradition,' Reed told me.) word quickly spread, and soon Reed had a reputation. Public-housing residents came to know him as 'Mr. Artist — as in 'Mr. Artist, how much you charge for one them murals?'"
— Alice Maggio
Have you been leaving your Christmas shopping until the last minute? Books make great gifts and local area booksellers and publishers have got you covered.
New Books
Barbara's Bookstore has some special holiday discounts and gift suggestions.
The Book Cellar staff loves The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and the store will be open until 1pm on December 24 for you real last-minute types.
Graham Cracker Comics has several locations around Chicago, but the Naperville store earns a special mention for its "No Sleep 'Til Xmas" event. The store will be open for 32 hours straight, from 11am Dec. 23 to 7pm Dec. 24, and will include food, Nintendo Wii and other gaming events. As the website says, "Tired of spending the holidays with your family? God knows we are. So why not squeeze in a few hours hanging out at your favorite comic shop?" Brilliant.
Quimby's is promoting its limited-edition tote bags, perfect, as the staff claims, for the "nerd that's impossible to shop for during the holidays."
The Seminary Co-op Bookstores announce they have "lots of new titles for those hard-to-shop-for readers in your life." Maybe you know someone who would love to receive The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman or History in a Glass: Sixty Years of Wine Writing from Gourmet by Ruth Reichl, both stocked at the Co-op right now.
Staff favorites at Unabridged Bookstore in Lakeview include Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford and The Laments by George Hagen.
And, Women & Children First not only have lots of great new releases, but the store also has a wide variety of t-shirts and other items in its Cafe Press store.
Used Books
If anyone on your list might appreciate a special used, rare or out-of-print title, Bookworks, Myopic Books, Selected Works and Powell's are just a few of my favorite places.
Local Publishers
For the Chicago history buff, Lake Claremont Press has lots of great titles, including its latest, Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie by Ted Okuda And Mark Yurkiw.
The University of Chicago Press has dozens of titles listed in its special holiday gift guide. From The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art by Greg Bottoms to Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance by Mariana Gosnell, there is something for everyone from the U of C Press.
— Alice Maggio
Feeling uninspired? Want to get away for a couple days and meet with other local writers? Local author Laura Mazzuca Toops (we reviewed her novel Hudson Lake here) is organizing a writing workshop, tenatively scheduled for February 22-24, 2008, to take place at the Lakeside Inn near New Buffalo, Michigan. If a little creative retreat sounds like just the thing you need this winter, visit the author's website for all the details.
— Alice Maggio
• Photographer Pat Graham, who is best known for his photos of indie bands such as Modest Mouse, Bikini Kill and Fugazi, will be at The Book Cellar on Thursday, December 20, to talk about his new book, Silent Pictures: Living Music Photography 1990-2005. This free event begins at 7pm. The Book Cellar is located at 4736-8 N. Lincoln Ave. Call 773-293-2665 for more information.
• This week is also your last chance to catch "Drinking & Writing Vol. IV: The 12 Steps of X-Mas" at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, starring Neo-Futurists Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda and exploring "the connection between creativity and alcohol." And, yes, the theater bar will be open throughout the performance. The show ends December 21, and tickets are just $15, so get one now at victorygardens.org or by calling 773-871-3000.
— Alice Maggio
Your round-up of recent Chicago related lit news from around the web:
• Ana Castillo is interviewed in Color Lines, and she talks about her most recent novel, The Guardians. (read the GB Book Club review of The Guardians here)
• The Chicago Tribune looks at a new book about the Garfield Park Conservatory titled Inspired by Nature: The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago's West Side, and reviews Person of Interest by Theresa Schwegel, calling it "an indisputable crime fiction tour de force."
• In the New York Times Sunday Book Review Rachel Donadio wonders why J.M. Coetzee left South Africa and asks, "Were his 2002 move and his taking of Australian citizenship last year a betrayal of his homeland, or a rejoinder to a country whose new government had denounced one of his most important novels as racist?"
— Alice Maggio
The Museum of Contemporary Art is continuing their Literary Gangs of Chicago series with a show from 2nd Story, a performance event that uses wine and music to present great stories. Produced by Serendipity Theater Collective, 2nd Story can usually be found at Webster's Wine Bar for their monthly series and annual festival. The event is free from 6:30-8pm at Cafe Puck in the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave. Call 312-280-2660 for more information.
— Veronica Bond
Sir, have we met somewhere before? You look familiar. Still having trouble with that coat, I see.
Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon
vs.
The Road Within: True Stories of Transformation and the Soul edited by Sean O'Reilly
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from The Common Lot by Robert Herrick (1863-1938). Herrick was an English professor at the University of Chicago who wrote more than a dozen novels, most written in the tradition of social realism. The Common Lot was first published in 1904.
"Business was war, he said to himself again and again, and in this war only the little fellows had to be strictly honest. The big ones, those that governed the world, stole, lied, cheated their fellows openly in the market. The Bushfields took their rake-off; the Rainbows were the financial pimps, who fattened on the vices of the great industrial leaders. Colonel Raymond might discharge a man on his road who stole fifty cents or was seen to enter a bucket shop, but in the reorganization of the Michigan Northern ten years previously, he and his friends had pocketed several millions of dollars, and had won the lawsuits brought against them by the defrauded stockholders.
"It was a world of graft, the architect judged cynically. Old Powers Jackson, it was said in Chicago, would cheat the glass eye out of his best friend in a deal. He, too, would follow in the path of the strong, and take what was within his reach. He would climb hardily to the top, and then who cared? That gospel of strenuous effort, which our statesmen and orators are so fond of shouting forth, has its followers in the little Jackson Harts. Only, in putting forth their strong right arms, they often thrust them into their neighbors' pockets. And the irresponsible great ones, who have emerged beyond the reign of law, have their disciples in all the strata of society,—down, down to the boy who plays the races with the cash in his employer's till."
— Alice Maggio
More local lit-related news from around the web:
• The Rockford Public Library is moving into a space recently vacated by a Barnes & Noble. The former bookstore space is nearly triple the size of the current Northeast library branch.
• Bill Daley at the Trib has some cookbook recommendations for your holiday gift-giving.
• Check out Fifth Wednesday Journal, a new biannual print literary journal based in Lisle, IL.
• E.L. Doctorow reviews Studs Terkel's memoir, Touch and Go, and says, "The memoir is a literary genre given to narcissistic indulgence, but you will find nothing of the sort here."
— Alice Maggio
Nominations for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards have been announced, and Barack Obama tops the list in the spoken word category for his recording of The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream. In 2006 Obama won the Grammy for spoken word for the recording of his memoir Dreams from My Father, which we recently read for the GB Book Club. Obama's fellow nominees this year include Maya Angelou, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Alan Alda.
— Alice Maggio
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Dutch Chicago: A History of the Hollanders in the Windy City by Robert P. Swierenga:
"The lives of Chicago Dutch Calvinists revolved around their churches. The church stood at the center of the community and defined the religious culture that differentiated the Dutch from other groups. While mannerisms, dress, lace curtains, and a miniature windmill on the front lawn might betray their Dutchness, it was in the religious realm that it came to fullest expression. The church was the one institution brought from the motherland that they could preserve. The Dutch language almost immediately gave way to English in the streets and workplace, as did American style dress and demeanor. But within the ethnic community and its many societies, services, and extended families, one could live from the cradle to the grave among fellow believers and enjoy a measure of security not available to those outside the pale."
— Alice Maggio
Or, "Reason Number 182 Why Newspapers Are Hemorrhaging Readers"
Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, reports that the Chicago Sun-Times is cutting its Books section in half. This comes just a few months after the Trib moved its own Books section from Sundays to Saturdays, thus ensuring that it will never be read. After the move, Sun-Times began to crow about having "the only books section on Sunday." Maybe the new tagline should read, "now 50 percent less literate!" Way to go, Chicago papers.
— Alice Maggio
I've been dealing with a wicked cold and nursing a sick cat, so I'm behind on my links once again. But here a just a few Chicago-lit related stories you may have missed recently:
• The Chicago Sun-Times profiles local author Keir Graff and talks about his new thriller, My Fellow Americans.
• Read an interview with cartoonist Anders Nilsen and view pages from his sketchbooks.
• Speaking of cartoonists, yes, "Mr. Wonderful" by Daniel Clowes is continuing in the New York Times. We are now up to chapter 12.
• The Denver Post reviews the lastest novel by Robert Hellenga, The Italian Lover, and says it "captures a moment in time that is so real you can smell the bus fumes." You can also read an excerpt from the book.
• Want another book excerpt? The LA Times has the introduction from Finding Iris Chang by Paula Kamen.
• At the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr reviews Exit Ghost by Philip Roth.
— Alice Maggio
What is your favorite book that you received as a gift?
— Alice Maggio / Comments (3)
Every other Tuesday (er, Wednesday?) we ask a new lit-inspired question in Ink.
Since the holiday season is upon us, this time I'd like to know: What is your favorite book that you received as a gift? Tell us above in Ink.
— Alice Maggio
On Saturday, Rock for Reading and Open Books are holding their inagural Grand Sort-A-Thon. Rock for Reading is a non-profit organization that fights the rising trend of illiteracy by providing communities with the tools and incentives needed to promote the love of reading. They raise awareness through concernts and benefits and award grants, among other activities. Open Books is Chicago's first non-profit literarcy bookstore -- the proceeds of the store go toward funding adult and family literacy programs. Together, the two have over 10,000 children's books that need to be sorted for distribution and they need your help to get it done. If you can't stay to sort, you can also donate your own books or donate food and drink to keep the hardworking sorters going. The sorting starts at 10am at the Open Books Warehouse, 600 N. Albany Ave. Call 773-209-6878 for more information.
— Veronica Bond
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