Judgment of Paris
by George Taber Simon & Schuster
Our Price: $16.00
George Taber was the only reporter present at the 1976 blind tasting in Paris in which a panel of prestigious French judges scored a California chardonnay and cabernet over top Burgundies and Bordeaux. Thirty years later, he revisits the event, which has since become a sort of genesis myth for New World wine. Taber casts it as a David-and-Goliath story of a few rough-and-tumble California wineries taking on the entrenched French wine establishment, while exploring the history of winemaking in both regions.
An informative and entertaining read, regardless of your feelings on the globalization of wine that has been one of the results of the Paris Tasting.
A Better Angel: Stories
by Chris Adrian Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Our Price: $23.00
I've never anticipated a book quite as eagerly as I did Chris Adrian's first short fiction collection. Adrian won me over with his second novel The Children's Hospital, and I searched out as much of his work as I could. now, here are nine of his finest stories conveniently contained in one volume. There's a lot of beauty here.
But the guy is messed. his is a dark and troubled soul. Tragedy, catastrophe, and brokenness infest these stories. But Adrian always allows for the possibility of redemption, for the chance of making things whole.
Nam Le’s debut short-story collection is a tour-de-force of a tour-du-monde, taking readers from Iowa to Iran, from Vietnam to Australia, from Manhattan to Medellín. What’s impressive about this incredibly imaginative and talented young writer is the way he inhabits the life of a character, whether it’s an aging artist, a young Colombian assassin, an American woman in Iran, or a Vietnamese-Australian student at the Iowa Writers Workshop named Nam Le.
This is a perfect debut; it’s satisfying on its own, but it whets one’s appetite for whatever Mr. Le will do next.
This is the most original short fiction collection I’ve read in a long time. Maybe ever. I think so highly of it, and it covers such a range of themes and emotions, that I’m having a tough time mustering words to fully express how strongly I recommend it.
“The Bridge” is now one of my all-time favorite stories. And “False Idols” is hilarious. And “Interview with the last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God’s Corpse” is what you’d think it would be, but better.
I really think you’ll like this book.
How Soon Is Never?: A Novel
by Marc Spitz Three Rivers Press
Our Price: $13.95
A novel about the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life.
Joe Green is a writer for a popular music magazine (He’s interviewed Bowie!), chasing bands and girls around Manhattan, but things haven’t been quite right since high school, and even then they weren’t that great. While people his age are planning for their children’s college educations, he worries about losing his edge, his job, and his hair and weeps when he listens to The Queen Is Dead.
Will his harebrained scheme to reunite the Smiths set things right with the world? Find out!
Play It As It Lays, Second Edition: A Novel
by Joan Didion Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Our Price: $13.00
I don’t think for a second that Joan Didion is overlooked by American readers, but I get the feeling her fiction doesn’t garner as much attention as her nonfiction. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I still think you should read Play It As It Lays.
The blurb on the cover compares Didion to Nathanael West. Play It As It Lays evokes the same sense of doom and a dangerous boredom as Day of the Locust. Maria is a failed actress with a failed marriage trying to find some meaning in the vapid, dried-out wastelands of 1960s Hollywood and Las Vegas.
Sex, drugs, and psychoses.
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea
by Stephen Marche Riverhead Hardcover
Our Price: $24.95
Author Stephen Marche recently earned his PHD in English literature, and he wants to strut his stuff. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea is an anthology of short fiction from the fictional island nation of Sanjania, somewhere in the north Atlantic. The collection takes you from the early pamphlet stories and morality tales that mark the beginning of Sanjanian literature to their post-colonial, diasporic, post-modern fiction. The book is complete with a preface from the leading Sanjanian scholar, footnotes, illustrations, critical essays and appendices (including an amusing letter from Ernest Hemingway to John Dos Passos).
Marche is a strong writer with a lyrical style. To be honest, the stories are hit or miss, but the book is always interesting. Fans of Cloud Atlas should take note.
Country of Origin: A Novel
by Don Lee W. W. Norton & Company
Our Price: $13.95
This is a gripping detective story with enough commentary on race relations, international affairs and personal identity to keep it with the literary fiction. More importantly, it's a real page turner, starting with a young American woman's death in Japan, and leading you through back alley, midnight Tokyo, till everything comes together. You'll tear right through it.
It's also pretty sexy, if you like that sort of thing.
The Secret Goldfish: Stories
by David Means Harper Perennial
Our Price: $13.95
These stories are like a welterweight boxer: lean, graceful, muscular, and they will knock you out.
Wow. What a pathetic staff recommendation. Really awkward imagery.
Seriously, though, you should read some David Means. His stories are so good, I hope he never writes anything longer than 30 pages.
The Children's Hospital
by Chris Adrian Grove Press
Our Price: $14.95
In this book Chris Adrian unleashes a biblical flood, puts the survivors in a floating children's hospital under the supervision and observation of four angels, and then asks if even these few deserve to survive.
Adrian, a pediatrician and Divinity School student, reflects on the purpose of sickness and death and wonders if the human race is beyond redemption.
The book drips with a beautiful sadness. And a lot of water.
A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing)
by T Cooper Akashic Books
Our Price: $15.95
As you can probably guess, you will learn absolutely nothing about U.S. history by reading this book. If that’s what you’re interested in, buy one of Alan H’s recommendations. This book is full of lies; touching, intriguing, bizarre and hilarious lies. These stories, only loosely tied together by quasi-historical themes, show what happens when individual lives intersect with, pass through, or get overlooked by history.
If you have questions about the relationship between cannibalism and Manifest Destiny; flying ninjas in Rhode Island; Huck Finn’s career as a transvestite prostitute in Reconstruction-era New Orleans; or what will happen when the revolution takes hold in 2011; then this book will offer you a bunch of lies for answers. If you have no interest in questions like these, then you will probably still enjoy some of these stories.
If nothing else, you will be introduced to some new authors. Unless you already read everything published everywhere. In which case, you’ve already read this. Don’t bother buying it again. Unless you’re just doing it to make me feel good about myself, which is always appreciated.
