A blending of the Borges literary legacy with Zoran Zivkovic’s mode of “mosaic novel” writing, The Lost Books of the Odyssey refracts the story of The Odyssey and the person of Odysseus down a long corridor of funhouse mirrors--44 chapters of jazzy improvisation. And, at least on a first reading, Zachary Mason seems to never hit the wrong note; at once evoking with considerable skill the Time of Myth and a limbo-like atmosphere where post-modern narrative play is the most natural thing in the world.
Somehow, through the multiple short narratives, Mason also entirely avoids the triteness and tedium common to so many authors who’ve decided to “screw with the classics.” So, here is one of those conceptual novels that could have gone wrong in countless ways, and a considerable part of the enjoyment comes with watching Mason sustain his daring high-wire act. This is an ideal bedside book, as every story/chapter is only a few pages long and is also likely, late at night, to put you in a dreamy altered-state, frame of mind.And Mike adds:
Reading this short work reignited my love for myth and legend. Mason's must-read debut collects a series of "what-if" and "what-could-have-been" scenarios inspired by Homer's classic. Each chapter is a wildly imagined fable, twisting the familiar into something new and amazing.So come on in and check it out. Three Third Place booksellers can't be wrong (oh, and those New York Times people probably know what they're doing too).
We really do have to nicest, most interesting, well-rounded co-workers here at Third Place Books. Greg, who shelves the history section, is our go-to-guy for all things Everyman's Library. Greg is an Everyman aficionado, and has almost 300 titles in his collection! Crazy! He also keeps a current listing of the Everyman titles on his website, and his little corner of the world wide web gets quite a lot of traffic. Greg says that you would be pretty hard pressed to find another more, concise, complete listing of the Everyman titles out there. Even the Everyman homepage lacks a complete listing. For shame!"Anyone who handles old books will have come across these small and sometimes beautiful labels pasted discreetly (more or less) into the endpapers. Booksellers, binders, printers, publishers, importers, and distributors of books used to advertise in this way their part in bringing the book to market. Most of the earliest examples shown here belong to binders (e.g., the Marcus Ward ticket, ca.1841); these were a continuation of binders' earlier practice of sewing into the binding a small ticket with their signature.
"This collection began with labels found in our own books, but now it is mainly a virtual collection -- each entry is digitally scanned from books found in the excellent research library to which we repair in our spare time. We must admit to having gone from "coming across" the labels in our book-browsing to actually searching for them. Contributors from around the world have added a wonderful diversity to the collection."
He is proud of his recognized ability to write from the perspective of female characters, noting that a reviewer of Midwives complimented “Chris Bohjalian’s accurate description of her childbirth experience...”
There have been a rash of holidays lately, and amidst all the hubbub we forgot to wish you a Happy President's Day!
"When the dust settles on the 20th century’s writers, it’s the genre authors who will be remembered" -- Connie Willis
I spent a fair amount of last week at the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute in
While I made notes on everything from staffing issues to web-site design, there was one moment in the conference that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.
It was no surprise that some of the hot topics of the week were e-books and e-book pricing. There was lots of speculation and conjecture. In the midst of a presentation from a representative from Google, discussing digital books, the presenter, as many do when discussing the future of the book industry, brought up a few analogies to the music industry. A graph was shown that displayed the ongoing declining gross revenue of the music industry over the past 5 years. While many people have discussed at length how publishers, in dealing with the digitization of books, need to learn a lesson from how the record labels mishandled the digitization of music, this presenter, almost as a throw away after thought, brought up what I believe to be a key issue that publishers and bookstores need to begin focusing on right away.
The presenter said, that when asking a top record label executive what he attributed this decline in revenue to, he stated, without hesitation, that “the decline of gross revenue is directly related to the decline of physical well stocked CD stores (paraphrased).” The record label executive was saying that in a physical store there are exponential “serendipitous” sales that simply don’t happen online (or at least not to the same degree).
Customers, media, and publishers often pay lip service to the need for physical bookstores. But this was the first time I had seen data that suggested, if these stores were to go away, outside of it being a cultural blow to their local communities, it would be a significant financial blow to the industry at large, specifically publishers.
So what does this mean? It says that publishers need to make sure that in their overall strategic planning, that their support to physical bookstores remains a very high item on their checklist. Some publishers have taken some very important steps in this direction. Some publishers have programs to ensure that their bestselling stock gets distributed as evenly as possible across all retail outlets (physical, independent, chain and online).
But what else can publishers be doing? One thought came from Mitchell Kaplan of Books and Books in
Maybe these are the answers, maybe they are not. Either way, I hope the publishers who were at Winter Institute heard what I heard and will begin thinking about further partnerships with their showrooms. If they are, I know myself and many other bookstore owners would be happy to explore future models.
Robert Sindelar
Managing Partner,
