Vroman's Walk of Fame, NYC's Drama Book Shop Reopening, This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, Chasing the Shadows by Maria V Snyder, and the Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

This will be my 701st post, on a blog begun out of boredom on Superbowl Sunday in 2005. It's been something of a roller-coaster, but I believe that I've written a lot of good reviews and certainly made some changes in how I read and what I read as a result. 

My good friend Jenny Z lives in Pasadena, CA, where Vroman's is located, and she is able to attend events at the newly expanded bookstore/winebar/cafe. How I envy her having this treasure of a store in her backyard! Anyway, I love that they're celebrating great writers with an author walk of fame, which is something that Amazon will never be able to do.

Image of the Day: Mosley Joins Vroman's Walk of Fame

Vroman's <http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42424194>, Pasadena, Calif., hosted a ceremony this past weekend celebrating the newest inductee into its Author Walk of Fame, Walter Mosley. Mosley added his handprints and signature, joining fellow honorees Lisa See, Michael Connelly, Luis J. Rodriguez and Naomi Hirahara. Following the dedication, Hirahara joined Mosley for a conversation about his books. Vroman's held a tandem celebration of the bookstore's 125th anniversary, where California State Senator Anthony Portantino honored the bookstore with a Senate resolution marking its 125 years of service to the community.

 There used to be a drama bookstore near where I was living in Cambridge, MA during grad school, and I recall being fascinated by it. I would love to visit the original in NYC, but I doubt that is in the cards at this point. Still, Lin Manuel Miranda is a total rock star for helping to save this iconic shop. Theater majors and drama nerds everywhere rejoice!

NYC's Drama Book Shop Reopening in 2020 at New Location

New York City's Drama Book Shop http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42452613 will reopen next spring at 266 West 39th St., "in a garment district storefront just a block south from its previous location," the New York Times reported, adding that the bookshop "is a century-old mainstay of the city's theater community, selling scripts and books about the stage."

The legendary store was purchased http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42452615 last January by Lin-Manuel Miranda and three of his Hamilton collaborators after they learned it would be closing due to a large rent increase. The other partners are Thomas Kail, who directed the musical; Jeffrey Seller, who was the lead producer; and James L. Nederlander, whose company operates the Broadway theater where the it is running.

"It was both a destination for tourists and it was also our hub, and so we wanted to keep it close to the theater district," Miranda said. "And, too, we're in the business of creating community, and that's another thing the Drama Book Shop does, and that's incalculable--I can't tell you how many creative teams on theater companies say 'Let's go meet at the book shop and talk there.' "

After closing the store's previous location in January, they "moved its contents into storage, and, with the assistance of city officials eager to preserve an arts-related business in Midtown, looked for a new location," the Times noted.

David Korins, who created Hamilton's set and is the store's designer, said the new centerpiece will be a large, spiral worm-shaped sculpture of dramatic literature, bursting out of the back wall and corkscrewing into the space.

"With a look inspired by European cafes and a reading room atmosphere, it will sell coffee, merchandise and writing materials, along with play scripts, librettos and books about the arts," the Times wrote. A basement level could be used for classes, readings or other gatherings.

"Early on, Jeffrey sent me an article about European cafes of 100 years ago, and how they were beautiful spaces where people would sip coffee and exchange ideas," Korins said. "We wanted to create a space where we were looking back into the past and into the future, so the space is carved up like a reading room cafe, with a tin ceiling, aged with patinas, and mix and match furniture."

The manager of the former location will helm the new store, with the operation overseen by a Hamilton-related company that already handles another Midtown business--the musical's merchandise shop, the Times reported.

"I'm the old guy in the bodega who is still talking about boxers. I'm an aggressively small-business person http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42452618," Miranda recently said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York, adding: "We're opening a bookstore in post-Kindle, post-Amazon America!"

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger is a magnificent book that I spent an entire day reading, enthralled by his divine storytelling. I believe I'd read Ordinary Grace years ago, but I don't recall much about it. Still, this tale of two orphan boys, Odie and Albert, and their Native American friend Mose, as well as a little recently orphaned girl with strange precognitive gifts, Emmy, and their journey to freedom and a decent life is utterly enthralling. Krueger's prose is gorgeously simple, yet it flows like a river along the smooth and swift plot. Here's the blurb: A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the bestselling author of Ordinary Grace.

1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole. 

This story reminded me of Mark Twain's works and of Ivan Doigs tales of the old West. Odie is such a tough kid in terrible circumstances who still manages to have a tender heart and soul, you can't not be moved by his travails. I thought I might have a problem with Emmy becoming a kind of Deus Ex Machina in the end, but I didn't, really, I was only saddened that we don't get as much information about what happened to her as an adult as we do with the other characters. Still, this great sweeping tale of the Midwest during the depression deserves an A, and I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a classic story.

Chasing the Shadows by Maria V Snyder is the sequel to Navigating the Stars that came out a year or so ago. I've read all of Maria's wonderful fantasy series, including her Poison Study series that is just brilliant. Now she's got a desert fantasy series going and this science fiction series, so I can only imagine what is next for the talented Ms Snyder. Her prose is clean, clear and vibrant, as it winds along her plot with precision and grace. Here's the blurb: Year 2522. Lyra Daniels is dead.

Okay, so I only died for sixty-six seconds. But when I came back to life, I got a brand new name and a snazzy new uniform. Go me! Seriously, though, it's very important that Lyra Daniels stays dead, at least as far as the murdering looters, know.

While dying is the scariest thing that's happened to me, it morphed my worming skills. I can manipulate the Q-net like never before. But the looters have blocked us from communicating with the rest of the galaxy and now they believe we've gone silent, like Planet Xinji (where silent really means dead).
A Protector Class spaceship is coming to our rescue, but we still have to survive almost two years until they arrive - if they arrive at all. Until then, we have to figure out how to stop an unstoppable alien threat. And it's only a matter of time before the looters learn I'm not dead and returns to finish what they started.

There's no way I'm going to let the looters win. Instead I'll do whatever it takes to save the people I love. But even I'm running out of ideas.

Ara Lawrence is a fun character, but her need to save everyone but herself gets her beat up and nearly dead many times in this book. Her love of Niall is also sweet, but somehow seems a bit too hormonal and obsessive for someone her age (that said I am sure its realistic for many young women in their late teens...I just was never one of them). Still, she is a fully-formed character, as are all the others in this book,and I loved seeing Ara "worm" into the Q-net without any assistance, and try to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. I loved the storytelling and the whole book, and can hardly wait for book three coming out next year in November. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who read the first book in the Sentinel of the Galaxy series, Navigating the Stars.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern is the sophomore book by the author of the brilliant and much beloved Night Circus, which made the author a rising star, though it was only her first novel. Because this book took 8 years to create, it was highly anticipated, and many people were hoping it would cement her reputation as a master of magical fantasy. I was so excited to get a copy of this book that I nearly waited by the door for delivery on November 5,Guy Fawkes Day, which would prove to be prophetic. 

It has been a long time since I was so disappointed in a novel like this. I wanted so desperately to love Starless Sea. I kept struggling through the disjointed stories and fragments of tales littered through each chapter, as I sought some sort of cohesive narrative or plot. The whole "meta novel" idea, of a book about a book(s) that had the characters become part of the book about a book while you were reading about them in a book (yeah, I know, makes your head hurt, doesn't it?!) not only didn't resonate with me, it bored and confused me, and made me wonder what the point was. Even Morgenstern's prose was stilted and soupy with sentimental weirdness. I kept thinking that it had to get better and come together at some point, but it didn't even start to ask the right questions until around page 300, and then most of them are never answered. 

Here's the blurb: Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

To add to my immense frustration with this book, every chapter that he was in starts out by naming the protagonist, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, in italics in the first words of the chapter. This annoyed me to no end, and by the final chapter I wanted to scream "WE KNOW HIS NAME, for heaven's sake! STOP already!" Meanwhile, all we really learn is that the so-called "Starless sea" is really made of honey, that bees are great cooks who can make anything out of honey, and that there are doors that move in and out of time. Other than obsessing about honey and books and keys and secret clubs set to kill anyone who knows about the underground library near the honey sea, that's all she wrote. There's no real resolution, no ending per se. There is little that even makes sense in this world, and sadly, no reason to want to visit or revisit it, because it's all nonsense and bits of tales about people who are the embodiment of things like Fate or the Moon. I don't even know how to grade this pastiche of bizarre narratives. I can't recommend it, either, as it becomes tedious and boring during the first chapters. So the only thing I can do is warn you that if you decide to pick up this book,expect to be confused, irritated and befuddled before you're through it. I hope that Ms Morgenstern does better on her third book, which I will likely borrow from the library instead of buy.