Hello and welcome! This is the final post of May, which flew by so fast I barely had time to blink! This post will be a bit different, because I've been sick these past few weeks, so I've not gotten as much reading done as I would have liked. Therefore, I will be posting mostly tidbits and only a couple of reviews. Sometimes, when you're plagued with autoimmune disorders, you have to deal with the spoons you're dealt. Anyway, onto the news and obituaries of a beloved children's author and a librarian.
It takes a lot of Chutzbah to be sarcastic about Bezos the billionaire and his company's python-like stranglehold on book sales. But this bookstore manages to do so quite nicely.
Pagination Bookshop vs. Jeff Bezos
Pagination Bookshop http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48523267, Springfield, Mo., pointed out telling differences http://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48523268 between the founder of a certain online corporate behemoth and an indie bookseller in the Midwest.
On Facebook, Pagination posted: "Jeff Bezos is purchasing a 417-foot superyacht that's so massive it has its own 'support yacht' with a helipad, according to Bloomberg. The estimated cost, not including the boat's support boat, is $500 million. The cost is a small fraction of the $75 billion that Bezos gained in 2020 alone. His total net worth stands just shy of $200 billion, according to Bloomberg.
"Pagination Bookshop is reportedly using books to hold up other books they have carefully curated for customers they know and love while also hosting author events, promoting local arts and literacy, partnering with other small businesses, contributing tax dollars to their local community, employing their neighbors, participating in the local economy, and remembering how excited your mom is about that new Jeff VanderMeer and holding back a signed Indie Bookstore Day special edition for her the next time you come in with your two nieces, who will play on the bean bags in the children's book room while they take down Frog and Toad and read aloud to each other and then get stickers and extra bookmarks when they leave with a book about women scientists they didn't know they absolutely needed until they saw it."
I read a few of Joanne Flukes cozy mysteries, and while I eventually stopped reading them because they were so formulaic, I did enjoy watching the series characters come to life on TV. So I will be tuning in for this latest installment.
TV: Murder, She Baked
Alison Sweeney and Cameron Mathison "are back with a new Hallmark mystery," Entertainment Tonight reported, adding that the Murder, She Baked http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48556647 stars "are reprising their characters from the popular Hallmark Movies & Mysteries movie franchise... but with a slight twist: They'll be kicking off a new mystery!" The upcoming movie, the franchise's sixth, is based on the Hannah Swensen mystery novels by Joanne Fluke.
Sweeney will again play Hannah Swensen, with Mathison returning as Mike Kingston and Barbara Niven as Hannah's mother, Delores Swensen. Production begins this week in Vancouver on the movie, which will premiere this summer on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Sweeney serves as an executive producer alongside Craig Baumgarten and Lighthouse Pictures.
"I'm so excited to revisit Hannah Swensen and to again work with Cameron and Barbara on these fun stories that combine romance with intrigue," Sweeney said. "The fans have been so vocal in their love of these characters and it's exciting to be bringing them back to life and to return to Hannah's bakery where it all began."
I would LOVE to revisit this bookstore, mainly because I love Victoria BC, the lovely wee town, and also because a bookstore in Black Diamond, Wash, used to be in a former bank building with an old vault in the back of the store. I really miss that place.
"Change is afoot " at Canadian indie Munro's Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48590674, Victoria, B.C., which posted on Facebook: "You may know our store was originally a Royal Bank of Canada. Built in 1909, it has undergone many transformations over the years.... Perhaps our most striking behind-the-scenes features are the old bank vault doors. They don't get much use these days, though we still name our storage spaces after them ('the hardcover vault,' 'the remainder vault').
"While we treasure the touch of drama they bring to our bookselling home away from home, they're not the most practical feature when trying to haul boxes of books in and out of tight spaces. That's why tomorrow, we'll be removing one--just one!--of the doors from our receiving room.... (And rest assured, the door is not an original feature. Our building has received multiple heritage awards, and we're devoted to maintaining its character even as we modernize.)" On Thursday, the deed was done http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48590675.
What an amazing librarian! She sounds like a woman after my own heart. She also reminds me of "Bunny" (portrayed by Katherine Hepburn) in the movie "Desk Set," where a group of librarians had to answer a wide variety of inquiries from movie stars and set designers and directors and everyone else on a film lot in Hollywood.
Obituary Note: Ruth Freitag
Ruth Freitag http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48590680, longtime research librarian at the Library of Congress, called "the librarian to the stars" by the New York Times for helping so many science and technology writers, died on October 3 at age 96. Her death became widely known only in the last few weeks.
"In a way," the Times wrote, "Ms. Freitag was her own analog version of Google, providing answers to a wide array of queries from writers and researchers in astonishing depth and detail decades before computers and the internet transformed the research process."
Among her fans and the people who relied on her were Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. David DeVorkin, the recently retired curator of astronomy at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, told the Times, "She was absolutely the go-to person for getting manuscript material and books."
She was also renowned in the field for compiling bibliographic guides and resources on a range of subjects. "Her crowning achievement was her illustrated, annotated, 3,235-entry bibliography on Halley's comet, replete with citations of books, journals, charts and pamphlets, as well as references in fiction, music, cartoons and paintings. It was indexed and bound and published by the Library of Congress in 1984, just in time for the celebrated comet's last pass-by of Earth in 1986. Even the Halley's Comet Society in London called Ms. Freitag for information."
After graduating from Penn State in 1944, Freitag joined the Women's Army Corps and spent three years in China. She then joined the Foreign Service and was stationed in London and Hong Kong. She traveled with her mother for a time around the world, then after her mother's death earned a master's degree in library science from the University of Southern California in 1959. As the Times recounted: "The Library of Congress recruited her that year as part of its elite program for outstanding graduates of library schools. After six months of training, she joined the library as a full-time employee and stayed until she retired in 2006 at 82."
This sounds fascinating, adding backstory to Willy Wonka's life. I wonder what Roald Dahl would think of this take on one of his most iconic characters.
Movies: Wonka
Timothee Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name, Lady Bird), will star in Warner Bros. and the Roald Dahl Story Co.'s Wonka http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48592734, based on characters created by Roald Dahl. Deadline reported that "the story will focus on a young Willy Wonka and his adventures prior to opening the world's most famous chocolate factory.... Wonka will mark the first time Chalamet gets to show off his singing and dancing skills with several musical numbers set to appear in the film. He's been the top choice for some time but scheduling was a hurdle that had to be overcome as training for those numbers is included in the prep for this film."
Paul King will direct from the screenplay he wrote with Simon Farnaby (with prior writers including Simon Rich, Simon Stephenson, Jeff Nathanson and Steven Levenson). "This marks the third time WB has taken on the Wonka story," Deadline noted, citing previous adaptations of Dahl's classic novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1971 and 2005.
I'm really looking forward to visiting this new Barnes and Noble, especially now that they've closed down the B&N in Issaquah, which I used to visit at least twice a year.
B&N Opens Kirkland, Wash., Store
A new Barnes & Noble store in Kirkland, Wash., is opening today, Patch reported http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48634518. Located in The Village at Totem Lake shopping center, it is the first new B&N store to open in the Seattle area for more than a decade.
B&N has said that Kirkland store marks a "dramatic change" in appearance compared to other locations, and store manager Dave Rossiter and his team will have a lot of leeway in curating the store's inventory. There are particularly large children's and young adult sections, and the new shop also features an in-store cafe.
The Seattle Times said that the 8,200 square feet store doesn't have "straight-line rows of shelves, but room-like nooks for each genre http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48634519. Within those nooks are thousands of books, a small selection of DVDs, puzzles and gift items, and a cafe." The paper compared the store, one of the new-design B&Ns, with indie bookstores, noting, among other things, its handwritten shelf talkers, unheard of under the old B&N regime.
RIP to this amazing author and illustrator. I used to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Nick when he was little all the time. I also would read him The Grouchy Ladybug and Do You Want to be My Friend? We both loved Carle's books because they were sophisticated enough to be interesting to adults while also remaining entertaining for children.
Obituary Note: Eric Carle
Eric Carle http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48634532, artist, illustrator and writer, died on May 23. He was 91. As his family said, he was "a true creator... renowned for his multi-dimensional practice, spanning a large body of fine art works in collage, painting, works on paper and fabric, and sculpture; theater and furniture design; and the stories he envisioned in over 70 brilliantly illustrated and designed children's picture books."
The best known of these is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which focuses on a ravenous week in a caterpillar's life followed by a metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. First published in 1969, it has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 55 million copies. It's also one of the New York Public Library's top checkouts of all time and is featured on multiple Library recommendation lists, including last year's 125 Books We Love for Kids. Carle's other titles, which altogether have sold more than 170 million copies, include Do You Want to Be My Friend? (1971), The Grouchy Ladybug (1977), Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me (1986), "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth (2002) and The Very Clumsy Cricket (2017).
Carle was born in 1929 to German parents in the United States. At age six, Carle's homesick mother moved the family back to Germany, where his father was drafted into the German army at the outbreak of World War II (in 1947 he returned from Soviet captivity weighing 85 pounds). Near the end of the war, at age 15, Carle was forced to dig trenches on the Siegfried Line. In 1952, he returned to New York to work and was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War and stationed in Germany.
After working as a graphic designer at the New York Times, art director at a medical ad agency and as a freelance artist, his picture book career began in 1967 when author Bill Martin Jr., while in a doctor's office waiting room, saw a medical advertisement in a medical journal for antihistamines with an illustration Carle had done of a big red lobster. Soon after, Martin invited him to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Carle won the 2003 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (now called Children's Literature Legacy Award) and held eight honorary degrees, including from Williams College and Amherst College.
In 2002, Carle and his wife, Barbara, opened the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art http://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48634535> in Amherst, Mass., near their longtime home in Northampton. With the aim of inspiring "a love of art and reading through picture books," the museum has more than 12,000 objects, including 8,500 permanent collection illustrations, and has a theater, libraries and educational programs.
In 2018, Penguin Young Readers created The World of Eric Carle imprint, dedicated to his work. He is also published by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins Children's Books and Macmillan.
Carle's artwork was vibrant. His family wrote: "Drawing on his formal training and ongoing practice as an artist (which Eric fondly referred to as his 'art art'), Eric quickly developed a distinctive, personal style that he continued to explore and refine in his books, illustrations, and fine art. Numerous artistic influences came together in Eric's creative output. His art took root in the long tradition of collage, an artistic technique tracing back to the 1900s Dadaist movement, combined with his hand-painted, colorful, and textured tissue papers, which recall the work of abstract artists associated with the Academy of Fine Art Stuttgart (the so-called Stuttgart avantgardists), from where he earned his fine art degree."
Asked why The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been so popular, Carle said in a 2019 interview, quoted by the New York Times, "It took me a long time, but I think it is a book of hope. Children need hope. You--little insignificant caterpillar--can grow up into a beautiful butterfly and fly into the world with your talent."
In the light of the moon, holding on to a good star, a painter of rainbows is now traveling across the night sky.
I really enjoyed this work by Aveyard, and having read her other books, I'm surprised that they chose this one to bring to the small screen as a series. Still, I will watch it with great interest when it does debut.
TV: Red Queen
Elizabeth Banks will play a major supporting role and direct a potential series for Peacock based on Red Queen http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz48634562, the YA fantasy novel by Victoria Aveyard, Deadline reported. Banks and Max Handelman are executive producing through their Brownstone Prods.
Co-written by former Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz and Aveyard, Red Queen comes from Warner Bros. TV, where Brownstone and Schwartz have overall deals. Schwartz, who will be showrunner on the project, executive produces alongside Aveyard. Brownstone's Dannah Shinder co-executive produces.
The Skylark's Secret by Fiona Valpy is an odd Scottish potboiler that I managed to download for next to nothing on a promotion. I was expecting it to champion the protagonist's independence as a creative and artistic single mother, but instead, the theme of the book seemed to be that you're better off staying in the same small village all your life, where you can marry some stodgy local and have a bunch of children and be worn out by the time you're 40. Heaven forbid you want a successful career and no children! How abnormal and unwomanly! The sexist stereotypes abound in this novel, and I found them tiresome. Here's the blurb:
Loch Ewe, 1940. When gamekeeper’s daughter Flora’s remote highland village finds itself the base for the Royal Navy’s Arctic convoys, life in her close-knit community changes forever. In defiance of his disapproving father, the laird’s son falls in love with Flora, and as tensions build in their disrupted home, any chance of their happiness seems doomed.
Decades later, Flora’s daughter, singer Lexie Gordon, is forced to return to the village and to the tiny cottage where she grew up. Having long ago escaped to the bright lights of the West End, London still never truly felt like home. Now back, with a daughter of her own, Lexie learns that her mother—and the hostile-seeming village itself—have long been hiding secrets that make her question everything she thought she knew.
As she pieces together the fragments of her parents’ story, Lexie discovers the courageous, devastating sacrifices made in her name. It’s too late to rekindle her relationship with her mother, but can Lexie find it in her heart to forgive the past, to grieve for all that’s lost, and finally find her place in the world?
I personally don't feel that you need to return to a town full of old gossipy women and henpecked men to actually "find your place" in the world. I think you can build your own place and family yourself, wherever you land. This was one of those books that I can't say that I loved or hated, it was just average and okay, if you managed to skirt the sexism inherent in the text. The prose itself was decent, and the plot didn't drag, but I found the story to be antiquated and the romance trite...the ending was no surprise,either. I'd give this mediocre tale a C+ and recommend it to anyone who likes straight romances set in a small Scottish village.
The Girls in the Attic by Marius Gabriel is another ebook that I snagged for a low price from a publisher's promotional email. Yet another WWII tale, this time told from the POV of the Germans and the German Jews hiding from the Nazi's, I was surprised at how brutal this supposedly romantic novel was. SPOILER, only one of the main characters survives to the end of the book. Here's the blurb:
The bestselling author of The Designer presents a sweeping story of blind faith, family allegiance and how love makes one man question everything he thought he knew.
Max Wolff is a committed soldier of the Reich. So when he is sent home wounded, only to discover that his mother is sheltering two young Jewish women in their home, he is outraged.
His mother’s act of mercy is a gross betrayal of everything Max stands for. He has dedicated his life to Nazism, fighting to atone for the shame of his anti-Hitler father’s imprisonment. It’s his duty to turn the sisters over to the Gestapo. But he hesitates, and the longer Max fails to do his duty, the harder it becomes.
When Allied bombers fill the skies of Germany, Max is forced to abandon all dogma and face the brutality of war in order to defend precious lives. But what will it cost him?
So I am aware that the bombing of Dresden and nearby towns, all beautifully laid out with gothic/germanic architecture,was horribly devastating, not just to the actual infrustructure, but also to the thousands of people killed and displaced by the destruction. And there is no doubt that war makes brutes of the men who fight them. Still, I find it hard to sympathize with the Germans, especially those who worked with or were part of the Nazi party, who murdered millions of Jews, Homosexuals, pacifists, Gypsies, people of color, intellectuals, etc. Not only did they systematically exterminate nearly an entire group of people merely for their religious beliefs, they experimented on women and children, and documented their murder and torture of so many people meticulously (and proudly). While Gabriel makes note of the fact that Hitler was a madman, surrounded by fanatics and criminals, his insistence that most Germans were innocent of war crimes and faith in the Nazi regime comes off as naive in the extreme. I am filled with disgust when I think of my own German heritage, and I have never been interested in visiting Germany to seek out information on my ancestors, though I believe that some of them were probably members of the Nazi party. Hence the main love story in this book, between Max the reformed Nazi and a Jewish gal that his mother was hiding in her attic, leaves me cold. The prose was fairly well constructed, and the plot moved along at a measured pace. But I can't really say that I enjoyed the book, or the female protagonist, who was somewhat of a cliche. I'd give this book a B-, and recommend it to anyone interested in the German side of WWII, told from the perspective of those Germans left behind, trying to survive.
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