Foreshadowing J.D. Salinger

How bizarrely coincidental timing is this? On Wednesday evening, Larry, Carolyn and grandson Jack Dunphy sat talking about J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye and Salinger's seclusion after its publication and then, the next day, I hear a lot about Salinger and Catcher in the Rye and his seclusion after its publication. Jack will be acting in a film based on this book.

For years and years, I knew that book to be a slim paperback volume with a maroon cover all around (front, back & spine). And, then, it was reprinted in white with a rainbow ribbon across one corner. For some time, it was jarring to see this new look, and I was not the only one who thought similarly. And, now, it has a even newer cover. Regardless, all of Salinger's books are backordered by our wholesaler. Death is a good way to sell art.

His seclusion resulted from the attention that the publication of this book garnered him, or perhaps, it was the culmination and accumulation of burden. The tributes and newscasts all mention that. Significant is what I heard on NPR (National Public Radio's All Things Considered) last night from Betty Eppes who described her rare visit with Salinger:

He said, I refuse to publish. He said there is a marvelous peace in not publishing. He said, there's a stillness. And he said, when you publish, the world thinks you owe them something. He said, if you don't publish, they don't know what you're doing, and he said, you can keep it for yourself.

This is in stark contrast to most writers who want to be published. This feeling of being put upon by the world at large is another facet of the feeling which Orhan Pamuk had upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is the same feeling of expectation, but while it pushes Pamuk to a "more responsible" writer and not slack on the job of writing, the apparent oppressive pressure was a nightmare to Salinger.

May you RIP, J.D. Salinger, whether or not you were able to do so here on Earth.

Until We're Blue

The latest on publishing and Apple's tablet has independents holding their collective breath. This is "ungood," a word created in George Orwell's 1984, because we're turning blue.

I pass along an article from a fellow independent bookseller reprinted on our trade association's website. This was written last year in the wake of the amazon.com-wal-mart.com-target.com fight that also left bricks & mortar booksellers breathless.

Vote Early and Often

The last day for early voting for the Illinois Primary is 28 January. I cannot become accustomed to early voting. This is supposed to be somehow taking the place of absentee balloting by people who have to know they won't be able to arrive in person at the ballot box on the appointed Tuesday. Now, the only people who should be applying for absentee ballots would be people who couldn't even physically come during early voting days (although they would still have to know a great deal of time beforehand in order to be able to get the ballot and then, mail it in by 28 January). Those would be, for example, expatriates, snowbird senior citizens and their more unfortunate bedridden or nursing-home-bound compatriots, road warriors living in RVs parked in far-from-home Wal-mart lots or the Obamas.

This year, I heard about "grace period registration" in which someone who did not register timely can still do so at certain places (in Chicago, it must be downtown at the County Clerk's Office) BUT these laggards must be prepared to vote IMMEDIATELY upon registration. The last day to register to vote had always been 30 days before Election Day. I used to bemoan the fact that radio stations and newspapers (plus helpful shopowners) would tell you, "Remember to Vote Today!" on Election Day, but not remind you to register to vote a month ago so that you will be allowed to vote on Election Day. The election gods must have heard me and whispered "grace period registration" in someone's ears, especially since the early voting period backs right smack dab into that registration deadline. Now, you can be reminded to register and to vote a the same time.

Between grace period registration, early voting, absentee balloting and polls open on Primary Election Day from 6am to 7pm, I can't see how much easier our governments make it for someone to do one's civic duty. Yet, the United States consistently has the lowest voter turnout of any democracy in the world. And, I think that statistic includes the ones in which half the electorate has declared a boycott of the polls. In some places, being dead is not even a good excuse. This apathy is pervasive, choking and not worthy of us Americans. I could hardly believe we're still standing as a nation. Through our collective indifference and inaction, we have invited all the grief we have received from our elected officials, their appointed officials, the resulting laws, the interpretations and applications of those laws, and anything else that is covered in the Book of Job. And so on and so forth, adnascentia.

By the way, Belated Happy Republic Day for the citizens of India and Great Australia Day for all of you Down Under. When are your election days?

Hale from Oxford, MS

We received a postcard from a couple of snowbird Dixonites -- the Simeones, who stopped in Oxford, Mississippi, on their way to Florida. They spent a lot of time at Square Books there, and felt compelled to send us a card, effusive about getting to attend an author's reading and getting a pile of signed books, from the likes of Rick Bragg and Wendell Berry, all who had visited Square Books. Oxford, as you may know, is the place to find William Faulkner's home & study as well as John Grisham and University of Mississippi (go Ole Miss!).

We drove past a lot of kudzu into this interesting town, interesting with a mixture of old traditions and new energy, after seeing Frances to her sister's in Nashville, TN. We retreated to the lovely courthouse square after attempting to tour the boisterously crowded University campus. We walked to where the town newspaper Oxford Eagle is housed and met the publisher. We of course spent time and got some ideas from the bookstore. We walked along the legs of the square, past the department store where Larry declined to buy a gentleman's white straw hat to City Hall and visited a bit with the then-Mayor Richard Howorth, who is one of the founding owners of Square Books. We were very impressed that two strangers such as ourselves could simply walk in, ask if we could say hello to the Mayor, get graciously shown through an open doorway and spend a lovely few minutes discussing the weather, bookselling, Wal-mart and the town's history and politics (and how, the post office had to move out of town to accommodate the large USPS trailer trucks).

The Simeones very kindly ended the note filled with names of books and praise for Square Books with the following: "Congratulations -- Books on First is closest setting to this in N. Il!". I try to be optimistic, but I do not believe it will be in our time that we will see DIXON, IL on the list of authors' tours, like New York, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Oxford, MS, Austin, TX, Denver and Berkeley.

Meet & Greet with U.S. Senate candidate David Hoffman

Tuesday, Jan 26 1:30 pm
Books on First 202 West 1st Street Dixon, IL 61021

The event is free and open to the public. This will be an excellent opportunity to meet at least one U.S. Senate candidate who is running for Barack Obama's seat. In its endorsement, the Chicago Tribune described Hoffman as, "independent and incorruptible."

If you have any questions regarding this event, the candidate or the U.S. Senatorial Election, please get in contact with John Laesch 630.878.7454 / john@hoffmanforillinois.com

[This is not an endorsement, but a response to the question, who are these candidates and why are we not hearing anything about them?]

Go Publish!

More on Apple's Tablet and its bid to be an electronic reader+ -- what a marketing machine Apple has become! My take -- we still don't have something that anyone (read: independent booksellers like Books on First) can sell!

Wall Street Journal says they have the exclusive story. But, of course, Graham Beattie is on the job. See his most recent posting from PublishersLunch (I love the slogan (although it's old hat) and might adopt it, too: Published Daily. Unless When Not.)

Keeping the Ad Alive

EDS - Cat Herding
This link is to the best online replay of my and Larry's all-time favorite television advertisement.

Of course, I actually did have a television in 2000. (For some reason, I recall that this ad ran on-air before the Super Bowl, but during Super Bowl XXXIV definitely when Larry first saw it.) It was not very good bang-for-buck as product or Company advertisement, as Larry has no idea what the ad was trying to sell.

However, I did, and also knew where I could find it. Unfortunately, on EDS's website a couple of years ago, the Company put up a notice saying, enough is enough, we are no longer going to offer this video here on our website.

Since then, I have been meaning to find it somewhere in order to save it. It especially is poignant since the disappearance of our cat (half Larry's/half granddaughter Ruby's) Mo (short for Morrissey).

Ahh, what the internet can do. Thank you, youtube.com, spike.com, et al. for keeping the ad alive.

Have Fun Recognizing Main Street Dixon Volunteers

Josh Albrecht, Director of Downtown Dixon's Main Street Dixon program, posts even less blog entries than I do, but he just posted a very long one about the upcoming Black & White Martini Night, for which Books on First is helping to sell tickets. Get a few of your friends and buy a table to make it a very fun night. Martinis, cosmopolitans, a hypnotist, dressing up in black and white, just like for Truman Capote's spectacular party in 1966.

I recommend the following book to get you up to speed: Deborah Davis's Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black-and-White Ball which tells the story of who was Truman Capote and what he did that resulted in everyone who was anyone wanting an invite to his party. Great advice which I don't follow: write your thank you notes before you even go to bed that night.

Losing Languages on One Hand and On the Other...

Here is a piece I heard yesterday (Sunday) a.m., on NPR's Living On Earth, which I am glad to be able to share.

Again, it is about language, how a living language grows and how others die. "Cromulent" reminds me of "Frindle," meaning a "pen" and the book by Andrew Clement. Just like a fact is an widely accepted idea, so a real word is a term in widely accepted usage -- disputed by scientists, purists and other -ists, but fundamentally true.
And, look, I can scarcely believe it; the book has been translated and published in the Chinese language!

Consumer Electronics Show - Las Vegas Odds on E-Readers

CES has been a big deal for decades. At some points in the past, it was a bigger deal to one group of people than to another. Kudos this year to consumer electronic companies which, despite the economic down, pin their future on researching & developing their way out of the doldrums. Of course, we are most interested in e-readers (which, as you may have noticed, we always file under the label of "printed bound books" -- our little code).

There's even one using "ambient light" to have the eye see color!

And, then, there are the combination netbook/e-reader!

Another Dual Review

Larry Pick: Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Dark and funny, masterfully nuanced picture of desperation is this first novel by Klosterman who has written much non-fiction including Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and Fargo Rock City. Introducing Owl, ND, population 600 in the autumn of 1983, a place and time which is déjà vu to all of us. I especially identified with Mitch, just an ordinary high school boy, whose fate in the flash storm of February 1984 is not even mentioned in the local news article – an omission that basically sums up the life of every ordinary person in a small town continuously grasping for a place in history.

He recommended it to Carolyn who says, in addition,

Ditto, except I don't identify with Mitch as much as he does, and moreso with the music and mannerisms of the time, because I was of that same age. I don't believe you have to be of that age to enjoy and "get" it, but if you are, you will, like me, certainly derive a certain additional sense of ownership to the perspective of new teacher/resident Julia and those of all the Owl High Schoolers.

For all our staff picks and more, visit our website: www.booksonfirst.com

*P.P.S. on the Opposable Thumb and Glittens

The opposable thumb has the last say with glittens. When not attempting to be useful and cold, it could burrow beneath the mitten cap and stay warm.

Giving a Helping Hand to Indie Bookstores

I heard an item last night on PRI's The World that I want to share with you. (Actually, I hear a lot of great items I want to share, but it's usually while I'm driving the 113 miles from Walton, IL, to Chicago, or in some other awkward situation.)

It's about Tesco, the "biggest retailer" in England and an independent bookstore. Upon prompting by the manager of Linghams, the Tesco's in Heswall Mersheyside, the Tesco is now directing shoppers seeking less popular books to the bookstore across the street. It's a little hokey, but the concept is there. (Warning, there is very little to read, so you will need a sound card and speakers to listen to this piece.) Hey, World's Biggest Retailer, maybe you can do the same for all the independent bookstores, music shops, et al., which you have obliterated, while stocking only the most popular, "family-oriented" products and selling at deeply discounted prices.

To dovetail off this, at Christmastime, we discussed USA Constitution First Amendment rights versus the right to choose. A staunchly liberal father, whom I have heard to say that he believes NPR is as conservative/mainstream/opaque/conspiratorially covering up as any other licensed and legally recognized radio network except maybe Pacifica, very much appreciated that Wal-mart had sold Eminem albums with all the expletives deleted or actually, hushed, such that the 4-letter word meaning feces or garbage came out as a gentle shhhh, or stuttered, such as the 4-letter poorly used term rhyming with "duck" came out as a "ff-ff-ff" (harkening back to scratched vinyl, it appears). He believes that, it is Wal-mart's business and its prerogative to ban or ask artists to change items to make them agreeable to Wal-mart's policies & customer base. If people did not like that oppression of "art," then, these people did not have to buy them or even shop at Wal-mart. We at Books on First did not want someone coming in and telling us what to stock or what not to stock, did we?

Hard point for a democracy (or for any other civil society). What say you? (As John Adams sang, per the musical 1776, "Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?")

I see two, no -- three, no -- four additional points:

a) Eminem was asked presumably and agreed to this censorship, meaning he wanted to expand his fanbase to those 12-year-olds et al, for whom parents were buying or were allowing to buy his CDs, to create a new image or clean up his image, or to do so for some other reason for which allowing censorship was a good idea (maybe the shhh and ff-ff-ff was a new artistic twist sans live DJs)
b) His regular fanbase who presumably really like his including expletives in the songs did not mind what he did enough to stop buying his CDs (meaning, I had not heard that he lost any fans)
c) How many music shops has Wal-mart put out of business first by selling all those popular yet family-friendly music before having the clout to say to recording artists, hey, change or perish? our way or no way? (Did anyone catch Hank Williams III, who said no, and possibly, not literally perished?) Couldn't someone in the Walton family or the Board or senior management have expressed remorse and then, have all managers put up signs directing shoppers to the local shops where they could go buy those less popular or non-Wal-mart-approved items, such as CDs, books, Asian carp, etc?
d) Books are a lot harder to censor, especially if it is an idea that jars. One pretty much has to ban the entire book. And, most times, unless there are heroes out there (the authors themselves, family, editors, publishers, booksellers or readers) who valiantly push to keep a title alive, a book without a place to be sold simply turns to dust (or the digital equivalent).

I'm not faulting Wal-mart for using its clout. If I had that kind of clout, don't think I wouldn't use it, too. I don't agree with what it uses its clout to accomplish, and fear the implications of an indifferent society. When Wal-mart is the only game in 42 miles, then, where is the freedom of choice?

The Difficulty with "Glittens" (Besides the Created "Word")

What is a glitten? Perhaps some of you already know. This is English (or American language) of which we are speaking, a living language that grows and develops, sometimes in directions way beyond what the village imagines it can or should. That's that adnascentia for you.

Of course, Latin is not as dead as reported. All one has to do is put a "us" at the end of a word and voila (can sometime teach me how to put French characters on a blog?) or rather, ta-dadus, you have Latin!

A glitten is a fingerless glove with a fold-over mitten-like cover for those four exposed fingers, so that it's all-in-one, hence, a glove-in-mitten or "glitten."

Not content with this interesting innovation to muscle out the fingerless glove cum mitten sales (why buy two pairs when you can buy one at 2.14x the price?), IT and fashion hipsters have decided that there can be improvements.

Scenario One: Fast-thinking, Andean mountain-climbing, global-ware buyer thought, we need the thumb exposed, too, so that we can better type text messages on handheld devices in the cold! Or, play video games on handheld devices in the cold! Or, wave through stored photos while the other fingers (exposed or unexposed) hold the handheld device! (Or, use the thumb for whatever Luddites use them for) So, he has these Peruvians knitting alpaca glittens with little slits in the thumbs so that the thumbs can slip out of their little cocoons and be useful. The thumb, not only isolated from the rest of the pack through the traditional construction of a mitten-turned-glitten, must now endure constant exposure to cold from which the other four fingers have protection, because this slit amounts to a hole in the glove/mitten/glitten through which not only can cold air slip in, but through which the thumb can inadvertently (often) slip out into the cold. It's hard to picture, I know, but trust me, that slit in the thumb is not as useful as the texting global-ware buyer had thought. Now, someone has to improve upon it and give the thumb a little mitten cap like the four fingers do. Oh, the travails of an opposable thumb.*

But, Andean brown, black and white geometric designs are so earthshoes. And, what's with those mitten caps flapping around messily, besides fingerless gloves being more hip than glittens?

So, Scenario Two: a hipper buyer (maybe from J.Crew) thought, I'll design it differently. I'll put cute little buttons on the back with loops at the end of the mitten cap, so that when you open these glittens and want to expose the four fingers, like a real fingerless glove, you don't have those mitten caps flapping around, but rather, elegantly buttoned down as if they were part of the design of the fingerless gloves. And, we'll sell them just like that, the mitten caps back, looped onto button, looking elegant and like the fingerless gloves they should be, so the customer thinks, yes, this is not only useful, it's hip and elegant-looking. And, no one would want to use them as a glittens against the cold, so truly elegant as they are, as well as being a cool conversational piece. That is precisely what they are, because they are not glittens if one cannot see how to unloop the offendingly flapping mitten cap from the back of the glove to cover those exposed fingers. And all the while, the opposing thumbs (in this model, not having the aforementioned slit to be able to help unbutton the glitten mitten caps) remain useless but warm. This is poetry.

(As a p.s., I have done a little research and the Andes color scheme seems to be overcome, but I haven't seen anything different on either the thumb slits or the button loops.)

Some News Features on E-books and the "iTablet"

Not a day goes by now that those in certain quarters anticipate and report about anticipating Apple's iTablet, which Steve Jobs has been working on (off and on) for years now.

Steve Jobs is someone I definitely admire from afar. I know virtually nothing about him, except the Company and its products which he has created and that he has had cancer and a liver transplant (and I recall something about his buying a poorly built house he cannot demolish because of local protests regarding its historic value). All of these small facts are what excites my admiration. In any case, I hope he can pull this off, although it's going to take a lot more than creating the Mac, the ipod or the iphone. Sure, he has redefined "smartphone," but the iTablet is very different in that it is neither fish nor fowl. It may be good for someone like myself who maybe can read books, research and write blog posts at the same time.

To create buzz, Apple has started hinting at when it will unveil the product, as if it were a concept car. Announce and then, promise to ship in three months. The show-&-tell date (maybe) will be 27 Jan. Rumor has it that the Company has reserved the Buena Yerba . An Apple spokesman said the company doesn't comment on rumors and speculation," reports the Wall Street Journal. This is guerrilla marketing in plain sight at its finest.

Textbook publishers are excited.

Meanwhile, it is reported that China may be the next great market for e-books. Given that copyright protection for print, films and other creative or intellectual property is not extremely strong there, it's difficult to say whether the promise of anything beyond Chinese language content (I really want someday to write an entire post on that word, "content.") exists right now.

I continue to be delighted by Graham Beattie's Book Blog and love that he was in my favorite city (New York, NY) for the holidays. Meanwhile, he passing along news reports like the one on on a new e-book store in Brazil, Cato Sabido (translates to "Wise Cat" -- oops, just checked and I see that the journalist who wrote it translates to "Smart Cat" -- we agree!) and whether e-books will become popular in the emerging nations of Brazil, China, India and Russia.

A Mystery and More

Webmaster John Chin has the Google search Alert chugging away, finding references in the world wide web on Books on First in Dixon and sometimes, we get an interesting hit which I have never seen before. Thank you (I think) for letting Books on First live on in cyberspace:

Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia, a fellow Indie bookstore, albeit of a different stripe, republished a BookSense (or IndieBound) recommendation I wrote a year ago:
The Kiss Murder by Mehmed Murat Somer:

The publisher's promo says, "Bestseller in author's home country, Turkey, The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency meets Pedro Almodovar in this outrageous new series featuring an ultraglamorous sleuth." I would definitely say it's outrageous -- outrageously smart, outrageously funny and what a guy/gal our hero(ine) is. Just a regular-guy computer consultant by day-tranny lounge co-owner a la Audrey Hepburn by night, looking for respect in all (maybe the wrong?) places and stumbling upon a many-layered mystery that keeps him/her (and us!) puzzled. What a great sense, also, of the many mysteries that is Istanbul! Some would call it a spoof; some, tongue-in-cheek; and still others, simply obnoxious, but for those of us who enjoy a taste of the exotic, this edgy armchair peek of a different culture is outrageously IT!

We appreciate Suzanne C. from Dundee gave us a pretty accurate Yelp! although the webpage itself is puzzling. Why are "Coffee" or "BOOKS" not categories for Books on First?

We also have Holly Wehmeyer, whom I have never met, giving us a mention on her blog. It looks to me like she has some good reading suggestions and she's a poet!