A Bookseller's Chance Encounter

An enormous Harley-Davidson rider visited the bookstore this afternoon. He looked like one of the vikings from the Capitol One Venture Card television commercials and towered over me like a grizzly bear on its hind legs.

"I'm looking for The Song of the Lark," he said, lifting his mirrored sunglasses onto his head.

I showed the hulk to the fiction section and handed him the book. I felt like I had to say, "you didn't strike me as a Willa Cather fan when you walked in."

"She's so special," he replied. He paid for the book and left. Awesome, I thought to myself. Bloody awesome.

Skip ahead a few hours. I was feeling peckish after work, so I stopped by a favorite local pizza place, Ian's, for a slice. As I exited the restaurant I heard a booming voice shout, "Hey, Boswell!" It was my au courant Harley rider friend, enjoying some pizza with his rider buddies on their bikes.

I couldn't help but notice the sidecar...

"Y'know, it's been kind of a bucket list dream of mine to ride in the sidecar of a Harley," I half-joked.

"Well, get your ass in."

So there I was, riding down North Avenue in the sidecar of a Harley-Davidson, driven by a stranger, with a box of pizza in my lap, giddy with childlike joy. Thank you Dave the Harley rider from Pittsburgh, wherever you are. Bloody awesome.

--Nick

Halley's Top Ten Books for the Year

When thinking about my imminent departure from Boswell, one of the things that made me saddest was knowing that I wouldn't have the opportunity to wax poetic on my favorite reads at the end of the year in our holiday newsletter.  Thankfully we have our blog, The Boswellians.  Here are my ten favorite books for 2013, in no particular order.  I'm sure you'll notice that all titles involve either science, history, or dogs - subjects that if you talk to me in the store you'll know I'm very fond of.


 #1. Gulp by Mary Roach
  Now I know that I claimed that I wouldn't be listing these in order, but Gulp is truly my favorite book from 2013.  The book is packed with interesting and disgusting facts and experiments around the alimentary canal, and easily tops Roach's book Bonk, a book that I was convinced would always be her best work.  Her writing remains top-notch, there are very few authors who can illicit the range of emotions that she can, I fluctuated between thrilled, awed, grossed out, and sad. This book would probably also win the "Most Times Halley Can Annoy Her Boyfriend About One Book" award, as my boyfriend and I like to sit and read together and I interrupted his reading every five minutes while reading this book to tell him something new that I learned along the way.

#2. The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart

I picked up a galley for this book on a whim at one of our rep nights, I thought that perhaps my boyfriend the plant nerd would get a kick out of it.  When he didn't pick it up immediately, I decided to check it out and was instantly hooked.  It became a book that I would read out loud to Andrew while he cooked, and that got him on board the Stewart train as well.  The book opened my eyes to other books by Stewart which I subsequently gobbled up.  The Drunken Botanist is a beautiful blend of botany and history, and also of some of the social and economic repercussions that are wrapped up in certain crops. Stewart was also part of one of my favorite events that Boswell held at the Great Lakes Distillery earlier in the spring.

#3. The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan
I wrote a whole blog post about this one here.  I should add that Kiernan was a great presenter and the event at Boswell was wonderful, the crowd was filled with people who had ties to Oak Ridge, TN.


 #4. The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel
I picked this book up after reading The Girls of Atomic City, knowing that I still had a historical itch to scratch.  I LOVED every single bit of this book.  I became immersed in the lives of the women standing behind the men of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - every reading session ended with me running to Wikipedia to learn more.  Of all of the books I've read this year, this is the one that left me saddest at the end, I wasn't ready to be done.  This lead to Netflix binges of space documentaries, the search for the perfect edition of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, and my boyfriend thinking I was obsessed enough with astronauts to want a big box of astronaut ice cream.

 #5. The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson 
 This is another book mentioned alongside Kiernan's Girls of Atomic City in my earlier blog post.  The only thing I can add is that this book deserves a Pulitzer just as much as his first in the Liberation Trilogy, An Army at Dawn.




#6. My Dog: The Paradox by Matthew Inman (aka The Oatmeal)
First let me shamelessly flaunt my dog Poppy, the most perfect specimen of a dog on the planet:

 To know me is to know that I am obsessed with my little white dog.  When I first read the My Dog: The Paradox comic on The Oatmeal, I laughed, I cried, and I showed it to all of the dog lovers that I knew.  Inman captured all of the emotions and oddities involved with dog ownership perfectly.  When I got my hardcover copy of it I took it home and read it to Poppy.  That reading session ended in tears when I got to the part about dogs not being able to live forever, but it also made me appreciate the time that I do get to have with my sweet little P.

#7. Once Upon a Flock by Lauren Scheuer
When we were younger my best friend Jodi had chickens on her farm.  I hated them.  They ran around wherever they pleased and were stinkier than any cow I had ever met.  This did not seem like a book for me, but I was intrigued by the mixture of photography and illustration and decided to give it a try.  This was my most pleasantly surprising read of the year. I became engrossed in Scheuer's flock, caring about every single detail of the chickens' lives from their eating habits to egg laying.  I became so wrapped up in the bunch that I finished this book in a laundromat in tears after the death of one of my favorite chickens. This was a fun read that may make the reader obsessed with having a flock of their own.


#8. Maddie on Things by Theron Humphrey
When Stacie first introduced me to Maddie, I oohed and awed over how cute the adorable coonhound was.  After meeting Maddie at Boswell I was even more in love.  Humphrey's photographs are a nice blend of humor and art that showcase the different parts of the United States.

#9. The Inheritor's Powder by Sandra Hempel

Hempel brings together chemistry, crime, law, mystery, and history in this book on arsenic - a once popular method for poisoning.  I loved that Hempel was able to write on science and history while keeping a side plot on an actual case of arsenic poisoning.  This book is not out until October, but it is well worth the wait.


#10. Electrified Sheep by Alex Boese
I have not yet finished this book, but as I am over halfway through I can say with confidence that this is easily one of my favorite books for 2013. Boese writes on the stranger side of science, covering experiments that would probably be frowned upon by most of humanity.  The book is hilarious and crazy, two things that I can get behind.

Girls of Atomic City and Other World War II Reads

I won't lie; I am incredibly excited for today's event. The store has the great fortune of hosting Denise Kiernan, author of The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II at 2:00pm.  Anyone who is familiar with my reading interests will know that they lie heavily in the sciences. I can talk your ear off about bacteria, viruses, the Higgs Boson, astronomy, or medicine. What people may not realize is that I am also a huge fan of history, particularly World War II history. Maybe it's because my grandpa was a WWII vet, or maybe it's because I had incredible history teachers, or maybe it's because my parents enjoyed history; whatever the reason, I've always been hooked on learning as much as possible about WWII. Growing up, Saving Private Ryan was my favorite movie, the History Channel (which at the time was more or less the Nazi Channel) was my favorite channel, and HBO's miniseries Band of Brothers (based on the book by Stephen Ambrose) was a major event. As I grow older, I still have an immense interest in WWII, but now it’s because I've realized how the war itself has had such an impact on our lives today. Leaps in technology came forth, new world powers became defined, and new ideas of horror emerged. 

Me and my buddy Winston in Toronto

 

What I find impressive is that new material continually comes out on the matter, an event that ended 68 years ago in 1945. Over the past few years we've seen more and more books, some which are just another look at aspects already covered, and some which manage to cover topics not previously written on or covered extensively enough. Here are a few of the more recent WWII books that have come out, some which I have read and some of which I'm excited to someday read!

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II  by Denise Kiernan

Kiernan’s book is an amazing read for not only lovers of history, but for fans of non-fiction that’s written in more of a story form. The book begins in 1943 and follows a group of women working in Oak Ridge Tennessee at Clinton Engineer Works. All that the women knew when they were recruited was that they were ‘helping their country win the war.’ They had no idea where they were when they arrived, and they had no idea that their work was ultimately part of the Manhattan Project. This is so far one of my favorite books of the year. It’s been receiving comparisons to Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I think is a fair comparison thanks to Kiernan and Skloot’s abilities to make history interesting to non-nerdy folks.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson

I have only just started this book, but the the finale of Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy” is a triumphant ending to an excellent series that followed the Allies during WWII. The first two books, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 and The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 opened my eyes up to new intricacies of the war that I didn’t even know existed. The Guns at Last Light starts off quickly and exciting with the days leading up to the Normandy invasion, and is a timely read with the 69^th anniversary of D-Day being just two days ago. This is an excellent read for fans of history and I think an ace in the hole for a Father’s Day present.

Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis by Robert M. EdselI have yet to read Saving Italy, but I am a huge fan of Edsel’s 2009 book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. The Monuments Men followed an Allied group responsible for the protection of art in Europe from the Nazis, and is going to be made into a movie featuring the likes of Daniel Craig and George Clooney. Edsel’s follow-up, Saving Italy, again revolves around art and culture protection, but this time in just Italy specifically.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson

Fans of the store’s blog will be sure to recognize Larson’s WWII title, as it was a frequent best-seller in both hardcover and paperback. This is a great pick again for those who loved more story-driven history and for anyone who loved Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.

The Second World War by Antony BeevorI have yet to read this, but I have been incredibly impressed with Beevor’s older works on WWII, covering such topics as the D-Day invasion, the fall of Berlin, and the battles at Stalingrad. This is a compact book that covers all aspects of the war from its beginning to V-J Day.

Here are some other great WWII picks that came out within the past two years:

• Double Cross: The True Story of D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre and Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day by Stephan TaltyThese are two great books for fans of real life espionage.

• Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson and 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler – The Election Amid the Storm by Susan DunnThese two are for those interested in the time before the United States entered the war.
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester
•  Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman- From World War to Cold War by Michael Dobbs
• Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Insider the Center by Ray Monk
  Within the store we have many more WWII books that I do not have the room to talk about here, but I’m more than willing to talk to you about if you come into the store. Hopefully see you soon or today at the event!
  
  --Halley
  
  

  
  

Billions of Reasons Why You Should Read Carl Sagan's "Billions & Billions," a Blog Post from Halley.

If you're a frequent visitor of our store or our blog, you're probably familiar with our little St.George's Day (April 23rd) competition, I'm also going to assume that you've read Hannah and Paul's pleas for purchase of their books.  Hannah gave you ten reasons for why you should be reading The Illumination,  and Paul one upped her by listing eleven reasons why you should read Cormac McCarthy's Child of God.

I am now presenting you with the ultimate one upmanship by presenting you with ONE BILLION reasons why you need Carl Sagan's Billions & Billions. At least, that was my original plan. Based on the fact that simply counting to a billion would take a person over 31 years, I have decided to pick several of the more compelling of my one billion reasons.

#1. It's Carl freaking Sagan.

#345. The reading of Carl Sagan is a fact that is both impressive to friends and enemies alike. Wow and awe those around you with your new-found hoight-toighty sciency self.

#1224. It's good to get out of your comfort zone. I'm assuming that a lot of our customers don't read science based books for fun. If you're a fiction lover, this is the perfect gateway book to not only nonficiton, but to science writing. Billions & Billions is a collection of essays, which makes it pretty accesable if you're apprehensive of reading an entire book about science. The essay format gives you the ability to pick and choose how indepth you want to get with the book.

#90,546. It talks about important and modern issues. Even though the book is now sixteen years old, Sagan was talking about issues that are still heavily debated today. Billions & Billions covers climate change, green energy, censorship, abortion, and war, amongst other things.

#322,411. The book is humorous. This may be a bit of a shock, but Sagan was actually a funny guy. He was frequently a guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, and Carson's parody of Sagan is the origin of the book's title.

#109,201,200. Even more impressive than Sagan's humor is his humility. This book was written while Sagan was battling a horrific disease that would eventually lead to his death. Sagan writes about his battle and remains to have a beautiful and inspiring outlook on life.

#847,193,645. It's fun to root for (and support!) the underdog. Billions & Billions is in a real niche when compared to my coworkers' choices for the contest. As soon as I saw what I was up against, I knew that I was in for a rough ride. Help pull of the upset of the month.

#1,000,000,000. Science is sexy, but science by a turtle-necked genius is even sexier. Show your support for eloquent science and turtle necks with the purchase of this book.

This eloquent plea for Carl Sagan's Billions and Billions brought to you by St. George's Day. Celebrate with a plush dragon, available in taupe or green.

--Halley.