Not the Third Wednesday, or There's Nothing Like Live Music

As we walked south on Chicago's North Clark Street towards Carmen Avenue and home, my companion said, "Let's hope this is the third Wednesday of the month," which it was not.  So, we made a little detour into a bar that we've only seen crowded at these times.

Every second and fourth Wednesday of the month, The Western Elstons infuse Simon's Tavern with a rocking roackabilly, a swinging Western swing and 21st century American country.  There's a lead vocalist and guitarist, a bass guitarist, a stand-up bass player, a drummer who some may say is a Buddy Holly look-a-like and a switchhitter playing both the guitar and the "pedal steel guitar."  All look like they're having fun playing oldies but goodies like "Maybelline," and "What Am I Worth (on God's green earth if I'm not worth nothing to you)?" in a whole new way.  The pedal steel guitar looks like two guitar necks with steel strings mounted on bars with air pedals below.  The very able guitarist (whose name I imperfectly heard as Joe P...) played it like a combination harp/organ/guitar with a steel bar and  I was skeptical that it would still be called a "steel guitar" until I did my research.  The pedal steel guitar looked older and well-used and maybe even too small for the player, but sounded great and figured in all the rounds of solos.  The band played an all-instrumental version of "Sentimental Journey" and while the whistling was apt (I see that the way to get a whistle's sounds onto the mic is to place the side of one's cheek to it), the steel guitar is what made the piece a signature Western Elston.  The diverse crowd too was having a great time.  One couple even found room for a tight, crisp two-step.  There was no cover, but it was pass-the-beer-pitcher for tips.

Recall: It was after a rollicking two-set night with The Western Elstons that our master barista slipped on his pant leg while disrobing and broke his arm.  Yes, isn't the name nifty and a delight for Chicago insiders, who would know that there is a Western Avenue and an Elston Avenue, which cross with a third avenue -- Diversey -- on the northwest side of Chicago.

There's live music at Books on First every Saturday night (except before holidays, like this coming weekend, 2 July which precedes 4 July, Independence Day on Monday).  You don't have to miss either The Western Elstons or Sauk Valley's best pass-the-hat live music in a coffeehouse setting.

In Common: Manaus, Sinisterly Arrogant Female Doctors...

I am currently reading Ann Patchett's latest hardcover State of Wonder. It is full of Brazil and the jungle and bugs and rain and people with unknown motives and motivations.

And then, I happen to be doing a cycle count of the Mysteries/Noir/Crime Fiction section and found Leighton Gage's Dying Gasp. He writes about crimes in Brazil, highlighting the very human and very Brazilian Chief Investigator Mario Silvo, his put-upon boss Nelson Sampaio, Director of Brazil's National Federal Police and fellow law enforcement personnel. It struck me that this location of action in this title is also Manaus, the "jungle hellhole on the Amazon" with a (with hope) a more dastardly female doctor than Patchett's.

What are the odds?  Comparing them might prove interesting.  Anyone up to the task?

Making Money

Terry Pratchett lives in his own world, Disc, which neatly mirrors or even presages our universe in this reality, while slyly poking fun at everything here by making it commonplace there.

Making Money was first published on 1 October 2008.  That means he must have written it at least one year before, at least six months before the cracks in the world economic system began to show (although predicted by contrarians skeptical of the "new paradigm").

In the book, our hero Moist von Lipwig is bored with his position as Postmaster General, so bored that he has taken (literally) to scaling the walls to break into his own post office, to which he has all the keys.  His appointment to the position was not sought, but offered by someone who recognized Moist's sense of self-preservation, continuous need for rewarding challenge and most of all, genius for imagining and then, implementing the unthinkable.  During his tenure, he has already turned the post office into an efficient, popular operation and its stamps, a trusted, popular form of substitute currency as well as some coveted and ever increasingly valuable collectibles.  In fact, his stamps are better than gold!

And now, his "angel," the dreaded and all-powerful "Tyrant of Ankh-Morpork" Lord Vetinari has another offer Moist can't refuse:  Reform the Mint.  Popularize the Bank.  Circulate the Money.

(I won't use exclamation points, as that is one punctuation mark that Moist hates -- "hate[s] its manic, desperate cheeriness," in re: the mug of tea on which is printed You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here But It Helps!  It tickles me pink (as it would Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves) that Moist is the kind of man who absentmindedly picks up a thick black pen and drew a comma in the proper place.)  (I might also take this moment to mention bookavore (Stephanie Anderson of WordBrooklyn, NY)'s Twitter profile, which says, "Don't judge me by my exclamation points." [sic -- sentence is finished with a period, not an exclamation point])

Is This About the Book?

The NY Times published yet another article about how desperate the independent booksellers are, charging admission to authors' readings or requiring participants to buy the book at the store.  And, horrors of horrors, there are people who object.  Ann Patchett asks, what about people who can't afford the hardcover?  Well, Ms Patchett, if the titles in hardcover weren't so expensive, perhaps more people can.  Many sought-after and even debut published authors first introduce their new titles in hardcover, disdaining a printing in the mass market or trade paperback format for at least a year later, when the pool of most buyers of hardcovers (such as, the die-hard fans, the public libraries, members of discount bookclubs, the givers of books as gifts to readers) has been exhausted.  And, as mentioned before, there is certainly a prestige to being able to point out that one's book was published in hardcover first.  Yet, for "affordability" and mass distribution, these same authors and publishers allow e-books to be published at the same time or hard on the heels of hardcovers. If e-books is simply another format that readers should be able to obtain a newly published book, why not print the trade or mass market paperback at the same time, also?

I am also stunned to see a publisher's quote: “We pay for the author to travel and come to the bookstore, and then the store makes money from it?"  Do publishers believe they do are doing independent booksellers a favor?  Aren't publishers for-profit businesses, also?  Should they all simply retreat to online author events?  Perhaps not charge admissions, but ask that participants buy their books from the bookstore is the least we can do (perhaps, if buying not the author's book, because they have it already as a gift or purchased elsewhere, then that giftcard idea is good). 

Quite frankly, we would never get that kind of play here in Dixon.  We are unable to get more than one publisher in a great while to send an author.  An author's visit is usually at the instigation of the author.  We have had to discount many books (basically cutting our intake of revenue) in order not to punish loyal customers for not buying online.

I'd like to see how Ms Patchett's new venture as a bookseller fares.  I hope it does well, but affords her a greater understanding of the struggle of independent booksellers.  Of course, with the connections she and her partner have, there will be publishers willing to add the new bookstore to authors' tours.  What is yet unknown is how they would feel about people ordering books online or otherwise taking up valuable space without assisting in the cost (e.g,, overhead, bookseller's time in promoting event, stocking the hardcover, etc) or somehow showing their appreciation for the bookstore's continued existence.  I love how one independent bookseller articulated the problem, “We’re not just an Amazon showroom.”

In another segue, NPR had a piece about a store in which everything is made in (United States of) America, including the packaging in which the product comes.  There are some competitive pricing, but generally, the schtick is that everything in the store can be counted on to be 100% American-made with American materials and American labor, precluding basically all electronics and most electrical appliances.  And, then, there's a quote from a woman shopper who said, while she wants to "shop American" , but ...

"You buy the best deal you can find. That's what it's all about. [For] some people, every penny counts. And if you can save 50 cents, that's a lot," she says.

 So, isn't it really about the money?

Journey through Spain Part II

I wished I had read Michael Kimmelman's "postcard" from The Prado Museum sometime before I visited it.  While I can identify with his description of the crowds around "Las Meninas," I would have liked to have been clued into this little gem of a painting.by Velasquez.  I am not saying I didn't see it, but I don't recall seeing it, as we stuffed as much as we could into our one afternoon there.

Also, if we had known that we could only see Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" on that Sunday or Monday at Museo Reina Sofia (as it is closed on Tuesdays and we left Madrid Wednesday a.m.), perhaps we would have missed Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza or some of the other places around which we wandered.  Again, I probably have seen "Guernica" in person before, perhaps during its time at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.  However, now that is returned to Spain, the context is different, is it not?

Madrid is certainly one place in Spain where we would return to spend more time.

Passive Aggression

An interesting commentary in New York Times discusses the age-old question of whether using one's imagination is an active or a passive activity and whether something electronic is "passive" and thus, "bad" for the intellectual development of a child.  If we conclude that a) using one's imagination is an active activity and b) the process of reading uses one's imagination and thus c) reading is an active activity (Having taken Logic class at Vassar with a "hottie" Philosophy professor is not for naught, although I had already learned a number of these syllogisms and postulates in 10th grade Math class back in West Babylon High School.), then... there is also the sub-analysis of whether "reading" an electronic session which is "interactive" is active or passive.  Or, can a child be using his imagination if the "book" is showing Alice falling into the rabbit hole, even if he has to touch his finger to the screen to start her chase of the rabbit?

But, I have some reactions to the report cited and quoted in this piece.  For one,

The report, a compilation of seven studies, found children swimming in a media ocean. Each day, it said, schoolchildren “pack almost 8 hours of media exposure into 5.5 hours of time” because they multitask with video games, music players and TV.

There is an interesting conclusion that I "read" into the research presented.  Firstly, today's children seem to be doing pretty well, considering they're "swimming," not drowning in video, music and television five-and-one-half hours daily.  And, what exactly does "multitask" mean in this case?  Does it mean having the MP3 player going while they're playing a video game, just like I would have the radio on while cooking dinner, or sports fans watching a ?  I bet they could even have media exposure while they're reading, say, listening (or should I say, being "exposed") to Bach while reading.  And, couldn't one say that "8 hours of media exposure into 5.5 hours of time" is "over-exposure," akin to getting 2 hours of sunlight in a 20-minute tanning session?  And, just like being overly tired means needing a nap, does being "overexposed" to electronic media (since "media" unqualified technically should include newspapers, journals, books and other written material) mean the children would need a rest from it?  Perhaps that is what books have always been.  In that situation, would an e-book be eligible for the respite from the daily electronic ocean tsunami?

The report and article go on to say that despite this

About 90 percent of children ages 5 to 9 still read books most days of the week, the report said, spending about an hour a day, either reading or being read to. 

Where do these children find the time to sleep (unless that's one of the multiple tasks they are performing when they are watching television or playing video games)?    And "most days of the week" implies to me about four days out of the week.  Is this hour in school in which many now have what is called DEAR -- Drop Everything And Read?  Yes, we all must consciously set aside time for reading, or make time seems more apropos, at least a few more hours every day to fit in all that aggressive behaviour.

Happy Bloomsday

For those of you who have not heard, Ulysses takes place one day in the life of Dublin through the eyes of Leopold Bloom.  No, that's not quite right.  It's a lot more complex than that.  Bloom is the character that links each scene.  Regardless, ... that day has been identified as 16 June, and so now we have Bloomsday, even as Leo had despaired of having his own day.

In a prior life, our fearless leader had taken the Newberry Library night course which covered a chapter or two each week.  The first week he came home with the plotting of each chapter and how it related to the ancient Greek story of Ulysses as well as social and religious relations in contemporary Ireland.

Reading James Joyce's Ulysses has become a cult activity.  Books on First had a couple of events in the past for Bloomsday on 16 June, usually including a round robin reading aloud of the book.  Of course, I liked reading about the funeral cortege 'rounding the corner on Dunphy's, a pub but just as likely to be a bookstore/coffeehouse, right? 

-- Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.

Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.

In my half sleep, I thought I heard on NPR that there was going to be a tweet reading of Ulysses on Twitter.  Surely, #bloomsdayburst would be on Twitter's featured list for today!

While not the most accessible of literature, it's really, not so bad, folks, and in the end, a very satisfying read. Of course, it's always better in a crowd, even an intimate one.

Ann Patchett on Her New Bookstore

On Beattie's Book Blog, read about Ann Patchett speaking with Diane Rehm on NPR regarding her new bookstore.
My questions are:
a) Are we operating an icebox in the age of Frigidaire or Cryovac, freeze-dryer, Guinness "widgets" and instant-heat-pills?*
b) Can we really sustain a 3,000 sq-ft store?

Meanwhile, support Patchett and the bookstore by buying her latest book, State of Wonder, just released.  It is an IndieNext book.  See all IndieNext recommendations at the IndieBound website.

*A better comparison might be selling vegetables versus juiced vegetables.  Nowadays, people get their 9 helpings of daily vegetable requirements through a couple of chug-a-lugs.  There is no need to cook or to work that jaw eating pounds of raw vegetables.  It accomplishes the same result, right?

Check out Dixon's June Second Saturdays Street Fair

Dixon's official website has a great write-up on the exciting things happening tomorrow evening. See you tomorrow night!

Consider Us the Turtles of Entrepreneurship

Crain's, the business journal which used to be huge both in physical size and reputation (albeit as the "People Magazine of Business") in all the big USA cities (read New York Chicago, Atlanta, etc), has had like other print media to decide how to survive via the internet.  One is to continue its signature lists (the top hospitals, the top accounting firms, the top law firms, Forty Under Forty, Fast Fifty, ...)  Like the Wall Street Journal, Crain's has discovered the joy of videos.  One of my favorites remains Crain's Chicago Business's Lessons Learned from the Final Five of Fast Fifty Class of 2010, which I am happy to share with you.  It is a videographer's dream -- technique, gimmickry, good interviewing and editing, chief among the touches which impress me, not to mention first and foremost the advice given by these entrepreneurs. 

Of course, the advice makes me feel all the more hopeless, a businessperson who should know better (pull the plug, Carolyn, pull the plug on that moneysucking leech called Books on First!).  However, I take heart in knowing that we add direct income to three employees; sales tax, individual income tax and employment tax revenue to Dixon and Illinois, sales revenue to our vendors which include the largest and shrinking wholesaler of books, a growing toy company owned by husband and wife, the oldest continuously family-owned local newspaper, a small local grocery, a smaller coffee roaster, and a not-for-profit world handicraft organization.  On what else would a girl want to spend her hard-earned money?  Last but not least, we do still take time for outside interests, like family, animals, garden, concerts, travel and good eating.  So, that's why I so much like this video -- it boosts me as well as keeps me very humble.

Young Adults Straddle the Divide Between Children and Grown-Ups

Meghan Cox Gurdon begins her article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal with the plight of the "thwarted and disheartened" mother, not being able to find a book as a gift for her 13-year-old, because the titles found in the suburban B&N all had "lurid and dramatic covers" and were all about "vampires and suicide and self-mutilation."

This piece created a firestorm on Twitter (#YAsaves), not helped by online Journal Community poll that asks, "Are dark themes in youth fiction helpful or harmful to teenagers?"  Does "no effect" count as "helpful" or "harmful?"  Sherman Alexie, whose book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, was in the American Library Association's 2010 Top 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books, responded on one of WSJ's blogs.

There have been books for a very long time about some pretty downer themes.  As one commenter on one site had said, "dark" goes all the way back to the Grimm Brothers.  I cannot tell you when this need started to have children (or pre-adults) read sunshine.  Perhaps that urge coincided with the need for everyone being a winner, lest his self-esteem get bruised and scar him for life.

I did find that most American parents and grandparents today want to give teenagers fun, upbeat as well as inspiring books. And, the teens didn't even need to be their own. Over the years with our Books for Babes drive we have every holiday season, we have experience enough to have on hand some of the Chicken Soup series books for teens (which had been really getting old in every sense of the word -- but I see a new one is due out in July), because the adults who buy them feel good buying them for teenagers.  They even feel good about giving graphic novels about The Three Musketeers.

They do not feel as good buying Ruth Pennebaker's 1996 Don't Think Twice, set in 1967 about a pregnant 17-year-old spending time in a home for unwed mothers.  Although this book is still sought after and recommended by pregnant teens themselves, the status at the publisher is "out of stock indefinitely," meaning the publisher is not going to print any more copies, but reserves the right to do so.  This happens often, when a book has run its course and doesn't become a "classic" with enough sales to justify reprints.  However, should someone who read this book, possibly in 1999 after buying it from Books on First and thought a great deal about it becomes an influential filmmaker and creates a commercially successful movie in 2012 or 2013, the publisher might take a chance on a new movie-tie-in cover, reprint and sell many, many copies.  Would this be an acceptable book, not too dark, not harmful to teenagers?  I think many people are fascinated as much as by a "reality" not their own as they are by those that hit close to home.  I really don't believe that reading a book about cutting oneself is going to send someone into depression.  Teenagers are self-directed.  If they are bored or otherwise cannot abide the book, they won't read it, whether it's dark or light.  And, really, would anyone rather read about a misfit girl never fitting in at the high school or about a misfit girl who realizes she is special, because of her vampire hunting heritage?

Actually, some of the more popular YA books at Books on First represent a bit of fantasy in my mind, full of rich kids in boarding schools or attending private schools in New York City, or a girl who discovers her parents are spies, are currently in trouble and can only be helped by her able assistance, or a girl who is sent to be with her celebrity father for the summer.

For us deprived teens, we could even read about a girl and her dog, which is quite a fantasy for someone like myself whose parents refused to be suckered into that, "every kid should have a pet" philosophy.  "A dog should have at least a third of an acre of fenced-in yard to run around," I recall their saying.  Otherwise, it's just animal cruelty.  Actually, I wrong them.  They did say we could have a pet.  We could choose between a goldfish and a turtle.  Since I and my four siblings chose a turtle, seemingly a little more fun than watching a single fish swim around and around -- which in my mind is also animal cruelty, just when pet shop turtles were being found to have an infectious shell disease, that scheme came to naught. 


How about Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series for inspirational?  Best friends forever (BFFs), who can only generously be described as over-indulged and self-centered, worry about this mysterious "A" who knows all about their secrets -- big and small, and then, spend the next eight installments of this YA series searching for their missing leader Allison (who can't possibly be "A") while continuing to lie, primp, scheme and believe everything they do is so important.  BFFs indeed.

To return to the plight of the suburban mother, the problem was that she was in a Barnes and Noble and was probably shopping at the last minute.  If she had given the matter some forethought, say, two business days before she was hoping to have book in hand, and had found an independent bookseller, courtesy of IndieBound', like Politics and Prose or Tempo Bookstore in Washington, DC, or Kensington Row Book Shop in Kensington, MD (only 2-4 miles from Bethesda per Googlemap), or further afield (4-6 miles away) where a bookseller awaits, eager to help her find a book that her 13-year-old has not yet read.

The possibilities are endless, including the television-series-inspired Glee: The Beginning (inspirational, hmm?), Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone (yes, a little dark, but what a girl and what a family), To Kill a Mockingbird (again, dark, but Harper Lee considered her 1961 Pulitzer Prize winner (the year after it was published) a simple love story) or (if she's read all the Mark Twains for young adults) Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, the book that resulted in all the youths of the Civil War/Conflict Between the States/Northern Aggression the most literate soldiers of all time.  If Mom does not consider Nazis, World War II and the genocide too dark, there is Markus Zusak's The Book Thief or The Diary of Anne Frank.

In an earlier post, I had recommended a good mother-daughter book club, Beth Hoffman's Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, if Mom doesn't mind a little background involving a bi-polar mother whose death results from a wild dash in front of a moving ice cream truck.

What We Had Were A Credit Bubble and Razzle Dazzle Accounting

One of the "free" content that Wall Street Journal still produces are videos of great interviews.  Here is one with Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation, who is a reasonable independent business voice whose ideas resonate with yours truly.

Summertime and the Singing is Easy

Musical Fridays in Downtown Dixon for the summer begin again today with Kathy Cecchetti.  Check it out.
If you miss her today or even if you don't, Kathy and her band Acoustic Circus will be here tomorrow night at 7pm.  Join us for the best pass-the-hat live music in a coffeehouse atmosphere (not to mention surrounded by the books and Melissa & Doug toys) right here in Sauk Valley.

It's About Time!

That is what I have been hearing from, of all people, he who must not be named and Master Barista -- Larry.

Congratulations, Books on First, on the official Books on First page on facebook. Brenda was 12 hours ahead of me. We may actually have been working on something at the same time, but while I was sticking my toe in the water (establishing a personal facebook account just so I can see the Fans of Books on First on facebook wall), she went ahead and created a Company facebook page. This time, the proprietors will need to insist on access to administration.

In any case, if you are a facebook member, check it out.