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.

Something About Childhood Memories, or, Snappy Title to be Determined.

A Blog Post from Mark

I was trying to come up with a list of my 5 favorite books from 2011 for our bookstore newsletter. After going over everything that I’d read during the year, I finally came up with my list. Some titles were fiction, some were memoirs but as I looked over the list, I saw a pattern emerge. A number of books such as We the Animals by Justin Torres, The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, and It’s All Relative by Wade Rouse all had something to do with childhood, either from a child’s perspective of from recollections from childhood. Particularly from the vantage point of children from 11-13 years of age, which are particularly crazy and volatile years.

I even wrote a small anecdote about a book, by request of our friend John Eklund who is a rep for Harvard University Press regarding a new book called On Rereading by Patricia Meyer Spacks. I wrote about having reread a book that I’d been required to read in high school, a book that I hated at the time, but fell in love with when I read it years later. The book was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, which is now I book that I cherish. Here was a story about a boy in his early teens setting out (although not exactly by choice) on an incredible, life-changing adventure. Yet as a young teen reading the story, I somehow was not able to appreciate it.

I think as we get older we not only look back fondly on our formative years, but only as adults are we able to evaluate it and put it into some kind of perspective that fits into who we are now. In an interview about her new book The End of Everything, Megan Abbott talks about her 13 year old protagonist and describes the world of a young teen as ‘big, terrifying, and thrilling’ and how everything takes on a heightened sense of drama.

There is something to that transitional point in our lives, in our early teens, when we are no longer ‘little kids’ but we are not yet grown-ups either. The world is full of mysteries and wonder and it is an exciting and scary time. As we read or write books that center on that time in our lives, it gives us an opportunity to connect once again with who we were then. Not to be there again necessarily, because of course we can’t go back, nor should we really want to. We all have to grow up, but maybe by connecting with stories about childhood, we as adults can rekindle some of the sense of wonder that we had, and the sense that anything in the world is possible.

(My apologies for listing the poster as Daniel, but we just set up Mark's account. It really was written by Mark.)

Ubik; or is this the real life

There is a part in Ubik where Joe Chip awakens after falling asleep in a hotel in Switzerland and attempts to place a call to room service. On the other end of the line is Runciter's voice, his dead boss.  The boss that Joe and his fellow employees just took to the moratorium after being assassinated by a rival. They were hoping to be able to talk to him, that maybe they could bring him back to get new orders and how handle the mishap on the moon.

It did not work, they could not get through to Runciter, he very well could be beyond them forever.  However, here he was talking on the phone in Joe's hotel room. How did he know that Joe stayed here, how could he even talk on the phone? It is the beginning of a long line of contradictions. Pretty soon, Runciter's image starts to appear everywhere, on money, in ads.  Messages start becoming apparent to the survivors that Runciter needs to talk to them, at one point they find an ancient tape recorded message.  As this goes on, the world starts to decay and to weaken. The survivors start to wonder if they actually survived or if reality was unhinged.

Right there is enough to know why we decided to read this book for our monthly sci-fi book club at Boswell's.  It is classic Philip K. Dick at his best and definitely my favorite. The discussion centered around the fact that it is really hard to critique a book that you really loved. I know I have a problem finding fault in the book, and if I really love a book, then I have a really hard time being critical of it.  Thankfully, the group enjoyed the book and we did not have to find holes or lack of continuity. Though the lack of continuity was one of the main driving factors in the book; in fact time seems to collapse in this book as the fabric of reality slips away.  I would say my favorite part to discuss was the ending and how everybody interprets it (not going to ruin the end for you, so I will not delve into it too deeply).

I was thrilled that the first section in the forthcoming book, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick begins with his musings on Ubik.  For all of those rabid fans out there, this is the holy grail for Philip K. Dick followers. These are the thousands of pages of writing that he left behind, they were his thoughts on an event in his life that was simply stated as "2-3-74." The date that he discovers a cosmic mystery, it also led to the famously hard to read Valis trilogy; well if not hard-to-read then hard-to-follow (still loved it). There have been conspiracy theories aplenty surrounding this book and the reasons it was never to be published.  The simple fact is this: it is huge and cumbersome.  It took Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem to really put the book into a format that reach all his fans.  Coming this November it is high on my top priorities as a must read.

Up for this June 13th: CJ Cherryh's, A Wave Without a Shore. Check out the the Boswell Science Fiction Book Club's Wikispace here.  Also, I might have some cool postcards to give away.

The New Must Read Fantasy that is not Martin or Rothfuss

I recently finished the new Patrick Rothfuss, A Wise Man's Fear (which was a great read, even after a 4 year wait), and I realized that I still felt like I needed another great fantasy fix.  Easier said than done. There are so many books in the fantasy section. So many new ones, old ones and obscure ones that you could just trip over, which is what I did with The Winds of Khalakovo.  I was shelving away in the fantasy section when I noticed a sizable pile of copies of one book.  I know I did not order that title, it had to be an event (yes, he is coming on April 23rd at 2pm) that I did not know about, and a fantasy one at that! The publisher for the book was Night Shade books, which published the Hugo and Nebula award winning book The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, a huge plus.  I was intrigued to say the least.

I grabbed a copy to read and was instantly hooked.

The world is incredible: ships that fly, elemental spirits, blight, famine, and characters that try to get their lives right, but are so very flawed. This is not a book where the author creates the world as the story goes along, rather he immerses the reader into a fully realized world, and it is breathtaking.  There are the 'Landed', represented by the Nine Dukes and their type of magic that harnesses the elemental winds to fly their ships between the islands, the Aramahn, who wander the world, never settling down but also practice a different type of elemental magic, and then there is the Maharrat a fanatical group looking to stir up unrest.  Beaulieu weaves these different cultures together to give the reader a unique, complex world to experience.  It is a world that is unraveling, with blight and disease, and political uncertainty.
 
Nikandr is the Prince of Khalakovo, diseased and doomed to a painful, wasting death, yet betrothed to Atiana.  The Nine Dukes of the land come together to celebrate the political alliances that the marriage will cement together, when an elemental kills the Grand Duke. Nikandr has to protect a small Aramahn boy, who is thought to have summoned the elemental. Somehow this boy might just be the key to that Nikandr has been searching for, to keep Khalakovo and the Grand Duchy out of civil war.

That is all I will tell you about the plot; just know that Beaulieu has amazing twists and turns to spin you around his world. So, if you have finished the new Rothfuss, and you are eagerly anticipating George R.R. Martin's July 12th release of A Dance with Dragons, you owe it yourself to come check out The Winds of Khalakovo and Bradley Beaulieu at Boswell Book Company on Saturday, April 23rd at 2pm.

     

My Favorite Book of the Fall is Out this Week!

And, no it is not Freedom by Jonathan Franzen but good guess. Nothing against his new book, a fellow Boswellian, Conrad really liked it and had this to say:

No one writes about dysfunctional families and individuals better than Jonathan Franzen. The struggle to achieve personal independence and identity-battling the constraints of family, friends, lovers, society, and the unrealistic expectations (both our own and other people's for us) that map our lives- is explored with hilarious results in this splendid new novel. If you liked The Corrections, you'll love this!--Conrad

While Franzen blew me away with all the frenzy and media surrounding it for yesterday's release, I was eagerly anticipating Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, which happened to come out on the same day as Franzen.

Skippy Dies starts out a bit depressing, because, well, Skippy Dies by page four. Then, Paul Murray hits the rewind button on his novel and starts the story at the beginning of a school year at Seabrook College and follows the many characters that have a hand in leading to Skippy's demise. The story revolves around Skippy and his friends, as they move through the school year, attempting to use String Theory to open up portals or to evade the local bully Carl. The conversations these kids have are often quite hilarious, and partly because I remember having pointless conversations myself back in high school. Paul Murray nails these conversations with ease, as if he is overhearing them as he writes, fluidly following the disjointed logic of youth. They have nicknames for their teachers, for instance their history teacher is Howard the Coward. Which Howard assumes is just because it rhymes, but secretly he knows that he is hiding out from real life and other secrets that tie him to Seabrook College.

Skippy Dies has many, many plot threads running throughout, and I leave you to discover them. Let's just say that the book is funny, sad, exhilarating, and exhausting all at the same time. It is a journey you will never regret, full of shocks and surprises. And, did I mention that it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize?