Friday, 12/17: Patti Digh at Accent on Books

The forces of nature have been walloping Western North Carolina, along with much of the rest of the country, in major ways since late last week, with snow and wind and bitter cold greeting us every time we dare to venture outdoors. We should be getting a reprieve by Friday which is a good thing, since a very different force of nature will be sweeping into Accent on Books that evening: Patti Digh.

Writer, teacher, mentor, visionary, Patti is the creator of the award-winning "37days" blog and author of several books, including the wildly popular, Life Is A Verb. This fall has seen the publication of two more books by her: Four Word Self Help, a delightful and innovative gift book, and Creativity Is A Verb, which, as the title implies, is a companion to the earlier Life Is. 

Patti is yet another nationally-known writer who has chosen to make her home here in Asheville and we have hosted her before, in what was a hugely successful event. We expect this one to be every bit as exciting and wild and funny and inspiring as Patti herself. You will definitely want to be at Accent on Books this coming Friday, beginning at 6:00 PM. And, of course, personally autographed books by Patti Digh make perfect gifts.

Find out more about Patti --and find a link to her blog -- at her website.         

This coming Friday: Sara Gruen at Accent on Books!

It's a busy season here at Your Favorite Bookstore, but I did want to quickly remind you that this coming Friday, December 10, **nationally acclaimed author Sara Gruen will be at Accent on Books**. The event will start at 6:00 PM, and Sarah will be talking about and signing copies of her new novel, Ape House, as well as her earlier books such as the extraordinary national bestseller, Water for Elephants. 

Sara is an Asheville resident these days, and is actually kind of a neighbor of ours here in North Asheville, so it's a particular pleasure to welcome her to her "home bookstore." It should be a great event, so tell your friends, and come on by this coming Friday, December 10, beginning at 6 PM.

Here is a link to Sara's website.   





 

Bring your child -- and yourself -- to Accent on Books this weekend.

As noted previously, author Gwen Suesse will be here at Accent on Books this evening. And that's just the curtain-raiser for what promises to be a busy weekend here at the store.

Saturday is the first annual Take Your Child to A Bookstore Day. The brainchild of New Jersey native Jenny  Milchman, this is an event dedicated to introducing youngsters to the magic and riches of reading. Here at Accent on Books, beginning at 11:00 AM, we will have a story hour featuring our own Byron Ballard, with gifts and goodies for all young attendees. So take some time out from your busy holiday activities to relax and share the wonders of  books with the next generation of readers.

And then Sunday is The Big Day: our  ** 27th Anniversary (!) Accent on Books Birthday Party & Open House ** . This event -- always held on the first Sunday in December -- has become an indispensable holiday event for innumerable booklovers in Western North Carolina, and with good reason, since it features:

-- Live Music
-- Delicious Food
-- And, most importantly, ** 15% Off All In-Stock Books **

The festivities will take place from 1:00 to 5:00 this coming Sunday, December 5, and everyone who is anyone will be here, including, we hope, you!

Saturday: Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, with story hour at 11:00 AM.
Sunday: Open House and Storewide Sale from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

There! Your weekend plans are now complete, courtesy of Accent on Books. We're always glad to help out. 




 

Thursday, 12/2: Gwen Suesse at Accent on Books

Gwen Suesse has lived a life steeped in music. She has also lived a life confronting the various changes in the roles that women have been expected -- or not expected -- to fill over the past several decades. Gwen has combined these two aspects of her life in her new book, Womansong, which she will talk about at Accent on Books this coming Thursday beginning at 6:00 PM.

The subtitle of Womansong is "Balance and Harmony in a Feminine Key," and music is the organizing principle of the book. Through essays that bear such titles as "Counterpoint," "Improvisation" and "Fantasia," Gwen sets out her philosophy, with highly practical advice for all ages. She also includes a generous number of inspirational quotes, and beautiful watercolor illustrations by artist Renee Locks.

We are delighted that Gwen Suesse will be leading off our December series of author appearances at Accent on Books, and we hope you'll be able to join us for a relaxing and inspirational way to start off the month.

More about Gwen Suesse -- including video of her recent appearance on Lifetime Television -- can be found at her website.    

The Book Fair Ate My Blog Posts

Well, OK, that isn't the entire truth. Certainly over the last two or three weeks our annual book fair that we get together for the fine folks at Carolina Day School has been consuming a great deal of my time here. But other issues have arisen as well, and, perhaps, I've been beset with the dreaded Blogger's Block (dreaded to me, at any rate). Plus, the longer I neglected the blog, the more guilt I felt about it, and that made it harder to return to it. (Thanks, Calvinist upbringing.)

But Accent on Books is still around, with a holiday season full of great books and events coming up, and I'll try to get back on board with this form of communication to let you know what's going on here and elsewhere in Book World. And in case you need to be reminded about how to find us, we are the store in the lower level of Grace Plaza which doesn't yet have its Christmas decorations up! That's right, here at Accent on Books we actually acknowledge the existence of Thanksgiving, so we still have corn shocks and Turkey Day books displayed in our front windows.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving, come by on (I hate this term) Black Friday at a decent hour after a leisurely breakfast and, in the meantime, enjoy your books and support locally owned businesses.

And, in the spirit of the season (Thanksgiving, I mean), please accept our thanks for your support through the years.      

What A Picture's Worth

I don't remember how old I was, but I have a clear memory of a somewhat wistful moment in my childhood when I realized that, going forward, most of the books I would be reading would be largely text with relatively few pictures.

I was reminded of this last Friday when reading a New York Times article which set the book world literally a-Twitter. According to the article, by Julie Bosman, picture book sales have been steadily decreasing in recent years in favor of text-heavy "chapter books." A part of the reason may be the economy -- a 32-page hardcover picture book routinely sells for between fifteen and eighteen dollars (though paperbacks cost less than half that). The more provocative reason proposed: due to highly selective private elementary schools and standardized testing, parents feel pressured to get their children reading at a more advanced level at an earlier age, and these parents see picture books as holding that process back. As one bookseller quoted in the article said, "It's a terrible pressure parents are feeling -- that somehow, I shouldn't let my child have this picture book because she won't get into Harvard."

Having never been a parent myself, I can't speak to this kind of pressure. But my experiences as a bookseller suggest that this move away from picture books is not universally the case. When parents -- and grandparents -- are in our store looking for books for their preschool-aged children, picture books are what they are almost always attracted to. After all, they want children not only to read books but to love them. And while text-heavy books can certainly be read aloud to young children, a picture book provides an entirely different -- and, in some cases, preferable -- read-aloud experience. The scenario mentioned in the Times article of parents in a bookstore steering a young child away from picture books because they're "beyond that" is something that, thankfully, I very rarely see at Accent on Books.

At the very beginning of Alice in Wonderland, we find a bored Alice sitting by her sister, who is reading a book. When Alice glances at the book she is dismayed to see that it doesn't contain pictures or conversations: "'...and what's the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations'?" Conversations may not be at issue in books for preschoolers -- practically all children's books have conversations. But when it comes to introducing young children to the joy, excitement and magic of books, Alice's rhetorical question is very relevant: what's the use of a book without pictures?  

Nobel Prize to Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa of  Peru has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the first South American to win the prize in almost thirty years.

Vargas Llosa, age 74, has published both fiction and nonfiction in a career lasting almost fifty years. He first won international acclaim with his second novel, The Green House, published in 1965. Other well-known works include the quasi-autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), and The Feast of the Goat (2000), a novel about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

In addition to being a writer, Vargas Llosa has been very engaged politically over the decades, even to the extent of running for the presidency of Peru in 1990 (he lost in a runoff to Alberto Fujimori). He has moved rightward in his political views over the years, going from being an ardent supporter of the Cuban revolution, for example, to being more of a supporter of capitalism, and an opponent of authoritarian regimes of both the Left and the Right.

Vargas Llosa has kind of an odd connection to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the last South American to win the Nobel Literature Prize (in 1982). An early admirer of Garcia Marquez -- even writing a book about him -- Vargas Llosa ended up feuding with the Colombian writer, and reportedly punched him in the face in 1976. The two have evidently not spoken to each other for more than thirty years. 

Heidi Johnson-Wright of January Magazine interviewed Vargas Llosa in 2001; the article can be found here. Also, the New York Times has a page of links to articles in that publication by and about Vargas Llosa.

Meanwhile, I continue to hold out hope that the Nobel committee will give a long overdue Literature Prize to Margaret Atwood. Maybe next year.     

In the Present

The Accent on Books Reading Group (contact us if you want more information) is currently reading Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Booker Award-winning novel about the intrigues of Henry VIII, as seen through the eyes of one of his advisers, Thomas Cromwell.

One interesting feature of Wolf Hall is that it's written in the present tense, or the "historical present," as the present tense is called in fiction writing. As John Mullan pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, it is a narrative strategy which, while it has a long history, seems to be popping up more and more in current fiction. Some critics see it as a cheap affectation, the result of the ascendancy of university writers' workshops. Mullan quotes Philip Pullman as calling the historical present "an abdication of narrative responsibility": by avoiding the past tense the author is relieved from -- or abdicates -- the responsibility of putting his or her own perspective on the narrative. On the other hand, it can provide an immediacy, a sense of presence, that past tense would perhaps lack.

As with so much else in writing, the effectiveness of the historical present in the end depends on the talent of the writer using it. In the case of Wolf Hall, I find it to be highly effective, giving you a sense that you are with Cromwell as he navigates the maze that is the politics of Henry VIII's court. And since John Mullan was part of the jury that awarded Wolf Hall the Booker, he obviously agrees with that.

Mullan's article is here.

By the way, our reading group will be meeting at the store at 3:00 PM on Wednesday, October 13, to discuss Wolf Hall. Feel free to come by, if you want to join in.      

Your (Banned) Reading List

Today's the last day of Banned Books Week, so I thought I'd point to one more link on the subject.

Britney Wilkins at the Online College Degree blog has a list entitled, "50 Banned Books That Everyone Should Read." She has divided the list according to reasons the books have been banned or challenged. The reasons and a few of the titles:

• "Protect the Children" (Catcher in the Rye and Harry Potter)
• "Religion and Politics" (Satanic Verses and Grapes of Wrath)
• "Sex" (Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer)
• "Race and Gender" (To Kill a Mockingbird and Color Purple)
•  "Multiple Reasons" (The most ironic title here: Fahrenheit 451)

All in all, a pretty distinguished list of books, found in its entirety here.

Read freely! 
   

From O'Connor to MacArthur

An update of sorts to my previous post about Ron Rash winning the Frank O'Connor award.

One of the earlier winners of that award was Yiyun Li, and she has now been named one of the 2010 MacArthur Foundation Fellows -- in other words one of the winners of the famous "genius grants." Other winners this year from the fields of books and literature are Annette Gordon-Reed, best known as the author of The Hemingses of Monticello, and David Simon, nowadays known for his work in television (The Wire), but formerly the author of journalistic works such as Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner.

The MacArthur Fellows receive $500,000 paid out over five years.This complete list for 2010 can be found here.     

Banned Books Week

If you come by Accent on Books this week, you'll notice our left front window has yellow crime scene tape on it, and books in the display which are upside-down. No, we were not victimized by a break-in; it's Byron's clever way of calling attention to Banned Books Week. Observed every year at the end of September, Banned Books Week calls attention to the reality that fear of knowledge and the power of the written word is still very much with us, and every year individuals or groups try to have books removed from schools or libraries. Sometimes the individuals have not even read the books they are challenging; in every case they have appointed themselves as the final authority in deciding what ideas are acceptable and what ideas are dangerous or corrupting. The recent controversy over the burning of Korans in Florida is but one example of what goes on in communities across the nation on a constant basis, if usually in a less spectacular manner. Banned Books Week is co-sponsored by a number of organizations -- including The American Booksellers Association, of which Accent on Books is a member -- and is administered by the American Library Association. The ALA's website has a lot of excellent resources on this subject including a list of the Radcliffe Publishing Course's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, with notations about which ones have been banned or challenged (nine of the top ten novels and 25 of the top 30 fall in that category). And the AP published an article last week listing some of the more unexpected titles to be subject to challenges over the years, including Brown Bear, Brown Bear, the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and the "Captain Underpants" series.

So we hope you'll take some time this week to appreciate your right to read what you choose, a right which is often not available in other countries, and will not continue be available in this country without our constant vigilance. 

Congratulations, Ron Rash!

Ron Rash, who teaches at Western Carolina University and sets much of his work in southern Appalachia, has won a major literary honor : the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Ron, probably best known for his novel Serena, won the award for his most recent book, Burning Bright, which was described by an O'Connor judge as a  "technically absolutely beautiful -- incredibly well wrought" collection of stories. Past winners of the award -- which includes a prize of 35,000 euros, or about $47,000 -- include Haruki Murakami, Miranda July and Jhumpa Lahiri.

In addition to being an outstanding writer Ron is a great guy, and we at Accent on Books would like to congratulate him on this remarkable and well-deserved honor.  

Update: Oprah Has Called

Well, it seems my "half-joking" suggestion was Oprah's actual choice: she chose Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (see previous post). Not that Franzen needed the boost: his new novel is already the most talked-about book of the fall so far.

Nonetheless, he now has Oprah's imprimatur as well. Guess Nelson Mandela's book will have to find some other way to catch the public's attention.

When Oprah Calls

Next Friday Oprah Winfrey will announce her latest on-air book club selection. Over the past fourteen years these announcements have created something of a conundrum for the book trade. On the one hand, Oprah very reasonably wants to be able to announce the title on her show without word of what it is getting out beforehand. On the other hand, publishers and booksellers -- as well as the Oprah folks -- want to have plenty of copies available for the inevitable spike in sales.

And thus was born one of the odder rituals in bookselling. Several weeks ahead of time, Oprah's people inform the publisher of the selected title that it is the chosen one, but the publishers are sworn to secrecy. The sales reps for that publisher then contact their accounts -- Accent on Books, for example -- with basically this message: "We have the next Oprah selection. I don't know anything about it except that it's a [hardcover/paperback] and the retail price is [whatever]." The bookseller -- yours truly, for example -- then has to take a stab in the dark as far as placing an order.

This has led to inevitable guessing games among book people as to what the chosen title is. My own record in this regard is not exactly stellar: of the 63 previous Oprah choices I've guessed one correctly. What we know about her forthcoming choice is that it is a $28.00 hardcover either published or distributed by Macmillan. One book that fits the description is Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, which I -- half-jokingly -- suggested on Twitter, even though Oprah's previous choice of a Franzen novel led to a public spat between the two of them.

However, Thom Geier, at the "Shelf Life" blog, has a more convincing guess: Nelson Mandela's new book, Conversations With Myself, a title which wasn't on my radar because it hasn't actually been published yet. Geier gives his reasons here.

All will be revealed on September 17. Stay tuned.

Typewriter Repairman!

Back in May I mentioned that we still use a typewriter in the back room, a source of delight or mystification for a number of our customers.

If it ever needs to be repaired, I think I may send it to Manson H. Whitlock up in Connecticut, simply because he deserves the work. The Yale Daily News recently proclaimed him, "the oldest typewriter repairman in New Haven," a pretty safe bet since he's 94 years old. And to judge by the interview the Daily News conducted with him, he may be one of the wisest men in New Haven -- including everyone associated with Yale. Why does he prefer typewriters to computers? "Because I don't even know what a computer is. I've heard about them a lot, but I don't own one, and I don't want one to own me. Typewriters you can own. I think a computer owns you." The most unfortunate change in his neighborhood in recent years? "It used to be when you were walking down the street and someone said 'hello' he was being friendly. Today, he's just answering a phone."

Granted, Mr. Whitlock may not be a paragon of modern feminism ("I think it was a good idea to have the gals come to Yale. The campus is much prettier now."), but he's still a priceless philosopher. The whole interview with him is a gem.

By the way, the title of the post was inspired by this.

Exit, Not Quite Pursued By A Bear

The Governor's Western Residence is located on a mountainside in north Asheville, not too far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. In addition to being a retreat for the state's chief executive it also hosts high-powered meetings and social gatherings.

This past Tuesday evening, the Asheville United Way hosted a picnic there for leading volunteers and donors, with the guest speaker being local author Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee and Requiem By Fire. Wayne asked Accent on Books to provide copies of his novels for the occasion, so I loaded up my Subaru and off I went.

I arrived about 5:30 for the 6:00 event, backed my car up on the path near the picnic area, and was unloading boxes when one of the United Way folks called out, "There's a bear!" I walked over to the wooden fence on the edge of the picnic area and, sure enough, there at the bottom of a grassy bank and at the edge of the woods was a black bear sitting calmly with her back against a tree. As we stared at her she stared back, and at one point grunted and made a lunging movement toward us, causing us to lunge backwards. However, she didn't actually move, but just resumed sitting silently. The event organizers, meanwhile, were beginning to make calculations along the lines of bear plus picnic, and getting nervous about the results.

They got a bit more nervous when, after a few more minutes, the bear roused herself and, now accompanied by two cubs, started lumbering towards the back of the picnic area. As I continued leaning on the fence I was unaware that all but one other person had abandoned the picnic area for the parking lot. Then I suddenly heard the only other person still with me yell something that included the word "Subaru" as she dashed to my car, opened the driver's side door and jumped in. Operating on the principle of run away first, ask questions later, I ran over to the car and jumped in on the passenger's side. Looking in the side view mirror, I saw mama bear looking back at me from a distance of about fifty feet away near the one-story building which stretched across the back of the picnic area. She then vanished from sight, and, after a few more minutes, we slowly and quietly as possible eased out of the car. By this time, the people who had escaped to the parking lot were beginning to make their way back to the picnic area. The cubs were now in a tree right behind the one-story building with mama presumably at the bottom of the tree. Concluding that a bear attack on their major donors might not be the best kind of publicity, the United Way folks had finally made the decision to move the picnic to the back porch of the residence itself. All that remained was for me to retrieve the boxes of books, which were on a table just on the other side of the building from the bears. This was accomplished without incident, though I kept looking around nervously for the sudden appearance of a black, bear-like shape.

The rest of the evening went smoothly and successfully: good food, a great talk by Wayne and even some book sales. The bears had no further impact on events, though some of the Western Residence employees and I saw them as they came down the hill and went back into the woods, the two cubs wrestling with each other in that cute, bear cub nature documentary way.

Of course it's always unfortunate in one sense when bears show up where humans live, since it indicates hunger on their part, encroachment on our part or both. And it would have been even more unfortunate had either bears or humans been harmed in the encounter. Still, in another sense, there was something almost reassuring about what the incident indicated concerning the balance of things. Now matter how important we humans think we are, no matter how many Community Movers and Shakers are gathered in one location, there are times when Mother Nature reminds us who, ultimately, is in charge.

Shut Up and Buy My Book

If you're an author in 21st century America you have almost certainly been given the message, Use Social Media To Promote Yourself. Blog! Set up a Facebook page! Round up those Twitter followers!

Gregory Levey undoubtedly had gotten that advice, and thought it had paid off in a big way when a Facebook page dedicated to his recent book picked up an astonishing 692,000 "fans" in a matter of months. Yet Levey and his publisher, Free Press, didn't notice any particular increase in sales of the book. So, what was up?

Turns out a lot of the book's "fans" were actually just fans of the title: Shut Up, I'm Talking. (Levey's book chronicles his experiences as a speechwriter for Ariel Sharon.) Discussions on the fan page were full of "OMG"'s and "LOL"'s and people wishing they could say the book's title to someone or other, and not much about Israeli politics and international diplomacy.

So, can 692,000 fans be wrong? Maybe not, but they might be irrelevant. Time will tell.

More here.

Read-cation

Let's face it -- Page 854 is slogging through the dog days. The weather here in what the Chamber of Commerce used to call Cool Green Asheville has been very warm and very muggy. (Yes, I realize we won't get much sympathy from flatlanders, but we don't expect this here in the mountains.) And, since your blogging correspondent will be off for the next week things will continue to be slow here.

All the more appropriate to share a summer reading list -- perhaps the ultimate summer reading list since it comes from the First Reader. Here, via the Daily Beast, is a list of the books that Barack Obama has been reading, or is said to have been reading, in recent months. Perhaps it also provides clues to what he will be lugging with him on his upcoming vacation.

Meanwhile, thanks to those of you who have responded to our request for donated school supplies. We've built up quite a collection to pass on to local schools, and we'll continue collecting them for a few more days.

Stay cool, and I'll see you in a week or so.

Weiner & Papa

It is now August, which means our July sale is over. (August has a way of doing that to July events.) Thanks to everyone who came in last month and took advantage of all the great bargains. But fear not: the shelves are far from empty. There's still plenty available for late summer reading, gifts and back to school needs.

Autumn may be approaching, but right now it's definitely summer, and our brains may not be ready for heavy exertion. For some, it's the perfect time to read Jennifer Weiner, and she's fine with that. Carolyn Kellogg wrote a profile of Weiner for the Los Angeles Times, and found a novelist who's perfectly happy with being a "chick lit" author: she's discovered her voice, women respond to her work and she sells a lot of books. It's a pretty good deal all the way around. Jennifer Weiner's latest book is called, Fly Away Home, and we have it in stock.

Meanwhile, down at Sloppy Joe's bar in Key West, Florida, the locals have been celebrating summer with their annual event honoring one of Sloppy Joe's most famous patrons: "Hemingway Days." The festivities included fiction readings, a play, a fishing tournament and the world-famous Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest. Congratulations to this year's winner, Charles Bicht, who somehow was judged to look a bit more like Papa Hemingway than 123 other white-bearded guys dressed in khaki fishing outfits. An article and photographs can be found here.

However you choose to spend the waning days of summer, we hope you enjoy it. And if you need something to read, well, you know where you can find it.

National Independent Retailers Week

July 18-24 is National Independent Retailers Week, a time to celebrate locally owned, independent businesses that provide quality and diversity to your shopping experiences, and contribute their money and their energies to supporting their communities. It is also a time for those of us who work in such businesses, to thank you for supporting us. So, thanks! There is a cool NIRW graphic on the homepage of the Accent on Books website with a link to the NIRW site, so check it out. By the way, if you haven't been to our website since its recent hiatus, you should know that Byron is doing great things with it and will continue to develop it. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

So what are we doing to celebrate Independent Retailers Week? We're continuing our amazing July sale. In case you've forgotten, that's 30% off virtually every book in stock. Only ten days left in the month, so come in and grab some great bargains, and congratulate yourself for supporting locally owned businesses.