You may remember the "Time Traveler's Convention" sponsored by MIT a few years ago; what you may not know: it was inspired by a Cat and Girl comic. Now in its second volume, Cat and Girl combines idealistic twenty-something angst with the cleverness of an offbeat New Yorker cartoon, and the deadpan tone of a slogan t-shirt (worn ironically, of course). With recurrent references to conspicuous consumption, the peculiarities of the internet, performance artist Joseph Bueys, the artifice that is hipster-ism, David Foster Wallace, and the other minutia Gambrell finds tucked away in the corners of our culture, Cat and Girl takes that liberal arts education off the shelf and gives it something to do.
Robert Frank: The Americans
by Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
Our Price: $39.95
At last, The Americans is back, with this fiftieth anniversary edition, supervised by Frank himself. It baffles me how quickly art books go out of print.... Frank’s legendary series of photos from his Guggenheim-funded cross-country exploration, originally published in 1958, has gone in and out of print for years. As of 2008, it had been unavailable to bookstores for far too long. This is the photography book of all time—and I am so pleased to finally have it in my personal library.
And this story of a bunny with a human daddy becomes unexpectedly complicated (and sad, comic, bizarre) when Fluffy encounters Ms. Owers, the bunny’s pre-school teacher, emerging from Daddy’s bedroom one morning.
Fluffy’s story becomes strangely plagued with real life problems. You’re unlikely to be able to pull yourself away.
Money Changes Everything: Twenty-two Writers Break the Final Taboo--How Money Transforms Families, Tests Marriages, Destroys
by Jenny Offill Broadway
Our Price: $14.95
In one of my favorite episodes of The Cosby Show, Vanessa gets into a fight with some girls at school because they derisively call her “rich girl.” Her brother Theo doesn't understand this; he would love to be known around school for being moneyed.
It's something that we each have more or less of than the other, and we gain and lose it throughout our lives. When it comes to storytelling, the agency, shame, energy, and import involved in the status of one's funds ensures that the narrative stakes are immediately at hand. We can all relate. There's a lot of wisdom in these essays.
My favorite is probably Daniel Handler's “Wining.” Handler, the writer behind the wildly successful (and financially gainful) Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events kids books, tells of the moral crises behind his success, such as the newfound financial ability to purchase and casually consume a $1,200 bottle of wine.
Browse through Baseball Haiku and you'll realize it was no coincidence that the Red Sox held 2008's opening day in Japan. American and Japanese culture meet and intertwine beautifully in these haiku of grass, dirt, and summertime.
The Complete Adventures of Curious George
by H. A. Rey Houghton Mifflin
Our Price: $30.00
I didn't realize how much I missed Curious George until this deluxe edition was published a couple years ago. These are the original seven adventures written by husband-and-wife team Margaret and H.A. Rey (who lived for a time right here in Cambridge). The world needed a deluxe Curious George collection, and here it is... and it's as big and yellow and wonderful as the Man with the Yellow Hat's chapeau.
The Works: Anatomy of a City
by Kate Ascher Penguin (Non-Classics)
Our Price: $20.00
This past holiday season was my first at Harvard Book Store in which the majority of books I bought were actually for other people. In treating myself, I showed remarkable restraint, except when it came to Kate Ascher's The Works. This one made it onto my own bookshelf.
I wouldn't have pegged myself as having much of an interest in how blackouts happen, the number of gallons per minute used in a typical shower, or how to interpret the coded, spray-painted street markings used by city construction crews (though I've always been strangely drawn to those mysterious asphalt ciphers – it never occurred to me that they meant anything other than *dig here.*). Perhaps anything would be fascinating with Ascher's accompanying diagrams – I love these diagrams – but it turns out how all this stuff works is pretty interesting on its own as well. Walking down the street I find myself so much more aware of why everything is the way it is, and why they work the way they do.
Alec Soth's Dog Days Bogotá is a portrait of a city, from the perspective of an inquisitive outsider -- or more accurately, from that of an onlooker who comes to form a very personal relationship with this otherwise new and foreign place. What could be misunderstood as generic “travel photography” is instead a personal mission, and the result is a thoughtful, striking series.
Soth's intent is to describe “the beauty in this hard place,” Bogotá, the birthplace of his adopted daughter. The project and its aims come together in Soth's dog portraits. These scruffy, lonesome dogs (almost all seem to be quietly roaming the streets, lying in the dirt) are depicted with dignity. They have suffered and endured mistreatment, perhaps, but are nonetheless proud.
Church Signs Across America
by Steve Paulson Overlook Hardcover
Our Price: $19.95
That perfect combination of funny, offputting, revealing, absurd, and occasionally wise... the Paulsons have cataloged those memorable church signs, from the communities we've lived in, or those we've wandered through, all over the country (not just red states; not just the South.) Sometimes they make us roll our eyes; we smile; we shudder. The masterstroke was to include images of the churches themselves -- the collection becomes a sociological and architectural study, no longer quite so tongue-in-cheek.
Varieties of Disturbance: Stories
by Lydia Davis Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Our Price: $13.00
Recommended to me by a customer one weekday afternoon, Varieties of Disturbance revived me from a frustrating reading slump. Davis peppers her very short stories (many two pages or less – some simply two sentences) with striking longer pieces, and together these 57 works combine into a provocative mixture of occasionally solemn (often witty), distinctly familiar (but rarely considered) examinations of anxiety and daily dilemmas, faced by nameless characters who stew and mull as much as we do.
I can’t say it much better than Michael Miller in his recent Believer review, “It’s as if her characters were rubbernecking while cruising past the pileups of their own obsessions.” Davis’s unique voice reminds us that the tools of storytelling aren’t limited to arcs, epiphanies, and pristinely taut knots.
Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball (Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illu
by Dan Formosa Da Capo Press
Our Price: $14.00
So, you're well-acquainted with the infield fly rule, the DH, the sixteen ways a batter is out, the hand-to-mouth rule... maybe even Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud. But I suspect you’ll still discover something you didn't know about America's pastime in these pages
All the rules and customs are clearly explained and easily referenced, and the clear, crisp diagrams (particularly those major league field comparisons – they fill me with joy) are a warm, sweet-smelling spring breeze of informative illustration.
* a "fine, chocolate pudding mud" used by every major league umpire to degloss balls before every game -- it has been used for this purpose for the last half-century and is from an "undisclosed location along the Delaware River" in New Jersey. Awesome.
Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers
by Tony Deifell Chronicle Books
Our Price: $24.95
Photography teacher Tom Deifell puts forth the question: "What would children who are blind show us about the world, if they learned to take pictures?" And what would these children receive in return, beyond frustration in their sightlessness? A response to this query later came when Deifell encountered the words of blind photographer Evgen Bavcar, describing the joy of the photographic art: "It was the secret discovery of being able to possess something I couldn't look at."
There is wisdom in these pages; within them find succinct explorations into the nature of photographic communication, perception, and the dilemmas and rewards of pedagogy.
I look through this collection and every other page elicits in me an inarticulate "Wow."
Charles Burns (otherwise known for graphic novel-ing, illustrating The Believer, and other good stuff) has made something pretty marvelous in One Eye -- a collection of paired photographs, and a deft reminder of the power of diptych.
It is refreshing to see a desirable photography book that isn't $60; also refreshing to see such good work created with a simple point-and-shoot digital camera, without the aid of photoshop, or a bustling team of assistants.
This weird, wonderful novel latched onto my brain for the duration of the week I spent reading it. I found myself very directly reminded of its nowhere man narrator as I clambered up the stairs to my apartment at the end of each workday –- reminded of his emerging obsession with identifying and capturing authentic, meaningful, everyday moments. Readers, actors, artists, and observers of all sorts will find something to brood upon in this story of a man who has lost his memory in a violent accident. He is provided with nearly infinite resources to repair his fractured reality; what results is surreal.
Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue
by Maurice Sendak HarperTrophy
Our Price: $5.95
Every one of my peers seems to have a different childhood recollection of Sendak’s Pierre. Whether it’s from the Nutshell Library (a tiny slipcased set of four little Sendak tales) or animated into the 1975 television special Really Rosie (yes, nostalgic ones, it’s available on YouTube) this apathetic little kid is fondly remembered. I was delighted to discover Pierre’s story was available as its own volume, and have eagerly shared it with friends young and old, careless and careful, ever since.
Reasons to Live: Stories
by Amy Hempel HarperCollins
Our Price: $13.50
“‘Tell me things that I won’t mind forgetting,’ she said. ‘Make it useless stuff or skip it.’”
I first read this opening line from “A Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” years ago. On certain days since, when feeling disheartened by the details, defeated by the day, I find myself thinking back to those words.
I like it when simple things reveal (an unexpected, difficult-to-pinpoint) profundity. Hempel’s sentences sit upon the pages of this pencil-thin volume of short -- very short -- stories, carefully crafted to be read and re-read. Alternating between melancholy and whimsy, Hempel draws no conclusions in the end. Reasons to Live is essentially a series of musings that initially seem forgettable -- but then they linger.
I don’t know what compelled me to pick up Strange Piece of Paradise, but eager for a late night page-turner, I began Terri Jentz’s shocking account of the random act of violence that nearly killed her the summer of 1977. Tire marks and hatchet wounds marred her young body after that evening; no one would ever be held accountable.
Something didn’t seem right about relishing this lurid memoir whose one-sentence synopsis reads more like sensational yellow journalism than a bedside evening read. But Jentz enlightens us with meditations on the nature of violence and trauma, community and social interconnectedness, and ultimately it is her painstaking Nancy-Drew-ing that makes her story truly vital. She passionately pursues a complete narrative for herself, forming intense bonds with an emerging cast of characters, and simply seeks an answer to that question: whodunit.
We all crave closure, and in this case, Jentz came to learn that much of Oregon craved an answer to this haunting riddle just as she did.
A hotel room becomes a camera obscura; the site of a cityscape turned topsy-turvey.
Paper cut-outs of Alice in Wonderland spring forth from their pages.
Obliquely-viewed paintings at the Gardner Museum stare out with solemnity.
Boston-based photographer Abe Morell activates spaces with a playful wit that might seem more tongue-in-cheek and mischievous were they not so elegantly rendered. The range of tones, the depth and luster of photographic black... these convey the rich timelessness of a Weston or Adams print, treasured and tucked within the archives of a dimly-lit print room. Over the years Morell has combined the sparkle of the theater with the mustiness of the museum library, and Phaidon's Abelardo Morell whisks you through this oevre, riffling through the photographic treasuries Morell himself has created.
The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood
by Edward Jay Epstein Random House Trade
Our Price: $15.95
I have to admit, until I read The Big Picture, I'm not sure I really
understood what exactly the oft-referenced (in film textbooks, magazines, and A&E Biography specials) bygone "studio system" really entailed. Epstein's book chronicles the story and history of business in Hollywood, and caught me off guard -- I was essentially reading a business/history of marketing book, and loving every minute of it.
Why did filmmakers relocate from the east coast to California in the first place? Why did VHS, rather than the superior Betamax technology, prevail in the home video market? Why do DVD's seem to come out so much sooner after the theatrical premiere than they used to?
The Big Picture answers these questions for the film lover, and discusses what might be the biggest
question of all -- why do so many terrible movies get made? This is the
film book that addresses the fact that it's not all about art; it's all about the Benjamins.
Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir
by Lauren Slater Penguin Books
Our Price: $15.00
Put aside those op-ed pieces -- the ones debating the ethics of rule-bending
in nonfiction writing, the marketing of fictionalized accounts as memoir --
and spend some time with Lauren Slater's disorienting but engrossing work on
the subject. In this "metaphorical memoir" the truth is always uncertain. But Slater turns the notion of the unreliable narrator into a narrator who perhaps sees beyond the truth; maybe we don't trust her, but maybe we do understand her.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Three Rivers Press (CA)
Our Price: $13.00
This unconventional memoir is plain, straightforward, and unpredictably profound, a collection of thoughtful ponderings which cites nothing out of the ordinary. Rosenthal's "encyclopedia" slowly fleshes out the texture of an individual's daily life – the quirks and bubbles that define each of our meandering thought processes, blending the sort of minutia we recognize from Seinfeld with the winking of Eggers and McSweeney’s, while insightful earnestness crops up somewhere in-between.
Amy Rosenthal has plenty of competition for shelf space in the biography section, and yet she manages to divert my attention from those legendary historical figures that fill the wall. She is your friend at the bar who has a story for everything – bowling, rearranging furniture, going to Office Depot. In this case, though, she also has diagrams for her stories – crisply illustrated by Jeffrey Middleton (no beer-stained bar napkins here).
And unlike your storytelling pal, these reminiscences are alphabetized. Flip open to any page and commence your grinning, and then nod along, knowingly.
Lee Friedlander: Self Portrait
by Lee Friedlander Museum of Modern Art
Our Price: $34.95
I find it difficult to overstate how much brilliance and perfection I find in Lee Friedlander's self portraits, despite – no, because of – all their obliquely framed, slapdash, spur-of-the-moment serendipity. For Friedlander there was always something in the way. He's about to take a photo of a woman on the street, but, oh, there's his shadow in the frame. He turns to snap an image of a shop window, but damn, his
reflection overwhelms the scene.
Experienced initially as a comedy of errors, and then increasingly as a mediation on the impossibility of seeing the world through anyone's eyes but one's own, Self Portrait is a Photo 101 lesson in what-you-leave-out-of-the-frame being just as important as what-you-leave-in. If you missed the MoMA retrospective (ugh, me too!) and don't feel like dropping a heftier sum on the impressive catalogue for that show, pick up this piece of the Friedlander
collection. Forty-six plates of self-portraits, and only a handful of
them actually show his face – follow along as the elusive, melancholy,
charming self is revealed.
So I had a revelation one day. Audio books. Yeah. This is how I will make my daily walking about town more productive. This is how I will get to all those books I've been meaning to read for ages. So my browsing began.
But somehow, all the thoughtful nonfiction books and scholarly tomes fell to the wayside when I encountered the work of Roald Dahl in audio form. Narrator Joely Richardson reads like the kindly British aunty you never had. She speaks the way I imagine Matilda's benevolent grade-school teacher would – with the patience and thoughtful consideration of a BBC commentator. I devoured the Roald Dahl library when I became a reader in third and fourth grade – so I never really took up the opportunity to have it read to me. Turns out, it's awfully nice.
Snag it for a family car ride, or just a relaxing (and nostalgia-inducing) walk home from work.
