Japanese Bookstores Declining, Obituary Note: Julie Powell, the Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker, Black Widow by Jennifer Estep, The Bookstore Sisters by Alice Hoffman, and A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair

Hey Book lovers! We're rounding the corner of the first week of November already, and now that we've "fallen back" due to daylight savings time, there's even more time to curl up with a hot cuppa tea or chocolate or coffee and a good book (plus some warm kitties or puppies and a blanket to ward off the chill in the air), and enjoy floating off to different worlds and realms. I've read about 5 new books on my Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, and I'm looking forward to reading more of fall's bounty of cheap or free books by some new and some favorite older authors. But first! Here are some tidbits from the bookselling world.

I've been hearing and seeing reports in the past 10 years or so of a steep decline in Japan's population, where the journalist goes on and on about how the elderly are the largest part of the population and various towns are dying out as their elderly residents pass on. Hence this article on the decline in bookstores. While this all seems sad, I think it's being over-hyped. Pointing out that Japan has fewer bookstores is like saying that Amazon has pushed out or destroyed many mom-and-pop stores of all kinds, and has shuttered more than a few independent bookstores all over the world. This is obvious news, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. I hope that by offering young couples cheap rental apartments (or lower priced homes) in various areas will lead to Japan's smaller towns having an uptick in shops and services as they serve the burgeoning population.

Vanishing Japanese Bookstores

Japan is facing a decline in bookshops https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaNw7gI6alkdR1zTg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBX8LwpoMLg-gVdw.

Kyodo News reported that according to one industry estimate, "the number has fallen by almost a third in the last decade, hit by a combination of a falling population and the spread of the Internet. Some voices have been raised in protest, such as by residents of towns arguing that bookstores are needed for a lively urban environment, but customer numbers continue to fall. And that means that to survive, operators need to exercise ingenuity."

The Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development noted there are currently 11,952 bookstores in Japan, down about 30% from 16,722 in 2012. Kyodo News wrote that gross profits of bookstores in the country "are said to be around 20% after paying the remainder of their sales to publishers and distribution agents.... Along with the population fall and fewer book readers in recent years, an increase in convenience stores that carry magazines puts added pressure on bookstores. They have also been negatively affected by the availability of e-books and online shopping."

Kazuyuki Ishii, executive director for the Japan Federation of Bookstores, said, "Due to the decrease in the number of bookstores, there is a strong possibility that the reading population will fall, setting off a vicious cycle. The time has come for the entire publishing industry to join hands and think of countermeasures."

 

This makes me so sad. Julie Powell was only 49 years old. I loved her blog and I adored the movie based on it. Meryl Streep did a fantastic job of playing Julia Child. RIP to both Julie and Julia. 

Obituary Note: Julie Powell

Julie Powell https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAaOku4I6alkdRBzTA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jBXJOmpoMLg-gVdw, the writer whose decision to spend a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking led to a popular food blog, the Julie/Julia Project; a movie starring Meryl Streep; and "a new following for Child in the final years of her life," died on October 26, the New York Times reported. She was 49.

In 2002, Powell was an aspiring writer, about to turn 30, who was working at an administrative job in Lower Manhattan. To lend structure to her days, she set out to cook all 524 recipes from her mother's well-worn copy of Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. In a blog for Salon.com called the Julie/Julia Project, she "wrote long updates, punctuated by vodka gimlets and filled with entertaining, profane tirades about the difficulties of finding ingredients, the minor disappointments of adult life and the bigger challenges of finding purpose as a member of Generation X," the Times noted.

A few weeks before Powell's self-imposed deadline was up, Amanda Hesser, a founder of the website Food52 who was then a reporter for the Times, wrote about her project, and interest exploded. Hesser told the Times that the Julie/Julia Project had upended food writing: "I'd never read anyone like her. Her writing was so fresh, spirited--sometimes crude!--and so gloriously unmoored to any tradition.... The Internet democratized food writing, and Julie was the new school's first distinctive voice."

Writer Deb Perelman, who started her food blog (now called Smitten Kitchen) in 2003, observed: "She wrote about food in a really human voice that sounded like people I knew. She communicated that you could write about food even without going to culinary school, without much experience, and in a real-life kitchen."

Little, Brown turned the blog into a book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which sold more than a million copies, most of them under the paperback edition's title, Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Sales spiked after Nora Ephron's popular 2009 movie Julie & Julia, which starred Amy Adams as Powell, Streep as Child and Stanley Tucci as Child's husband, Paul.

Powell's second book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, was published in 2009 and would be her last. Judy Clain, editor in chief of Little, Brown and Powell's editor," said, "She had so much talent and emotional intelligence. I only wish she could have found the next thing."

The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker is a feminist ghost story combined with literary fiction with a kind of twisted gothic/romantic LBGTQ subplot that will have you scratching your head. Still, having read Walkers wonderful "Dietland" (and yes, I saw the streaming series) I wasn't surprised at the smooth prose and engaging plot that gripped me from the first page and refused to let me go in the weirdest possible way. Here's the blurb:

"Sarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal." —Maria Semple

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.

INSTEAD IT WAS THE LAST.

Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.

Yet it soon becomes clear that for the Chapel sisters, marriage equals death. 

When the eldest sister walks down the aisle, tragedy strikes. The bride dies mysteriously the very next day, leaving her family and the town in shock. But this is just the beginning of a chain of disasters that will make each woman wonder whether true love will kill her, too. Only Iris, the second-youngest, finds a way to escape—but can she outrun the family curse forever?

Sarai Walker, the acclaimed author of the cult-hit novel Dietland, building off the Gothic tradition of Shirley Jackson, brings to life this riveting, deliciously twisted feminist tale, a gorgeous and provocative page-turner about the legacy of male power and the cost of female freedom.

Seriously WEIRD story here, folks, not going to lie. That said, it's also very imaginative and unique (and I read a LOT of books, so that's saying something) and it was like reading an old tale you found in your grandparent's library, written by EA Poe or Wilkie Collins, where you are by turns gasping in fearful surprise and freaking out or reading as fast as you can to see what in the name of heaven will happen next, and wondering why this all makes sense in some bizarre way. I wanted to scream as each sister succumbed to the family curse, because it was obvious that they should have abstained from dating or marrying men when it would spell the doom of not only the sister (in a horrific gory fashion, too) but also the ruin of her paramour. The only exception is, SPOILER, the lone sister who is a lesbian and refuses to bow to societal pressure and pretend she's straight (though one of the other sisters is also gay, or at least bisexual, she does bow to the pressure of society in the 50s and 60s to be straight and make babies after WWII...this leads, of course, to her demise). That lone sister, Iris, ends up having to change her name and move far away to live a normal life with her female partner. It's only as she is nearing the end of her life that Iris is recognized by a truly pushy reporter, and thus decides to turn her home into a museum to her life as an artist and to the legacy of her insane mother and sisters. What boggled my mind is that Iris always believed the ramblings of her mother, and that her mother, who was either a lesbian or an asexual person forced into a marriage she abhored with a nasty man, was able to infect her daughters with this cruel curse due to her own bitterness. If you read this book and don't end up finding it surprising or strange, then I'm worried about your mental health. A novel that I won't soon forget, I'd give this book an A- and recommend it to those who like lurid and gothic tales like those of Poe or Shirley Jackson.

Black Widow by Jennifer Estep is book 12 in her Elemental Assassins series, and, as usual, I whipped through it in one day, because her books are like potato chips...they're all made from the same tubers but no one can eat just one. Our beloved assassin Gin Blanco is once again faced with a big bad Elemental, the scion of her former nemesis, Mab Monroe, who has not just fire magic, but acid/fire magic (I assume, from the way it's described that it is like napalm). Once more, Gin must battle this Monroe.2 all alone, risking life and limb to save her family and her town. Here's the blurb:

Lethal, sexy, and always ready to protect her friends, Gin Blanco (a.k.a. the Spider) takes on the mysterious M.M. Monroe in book twelve of the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series.

There’s nothing worse than a cruel, cunning enemy with time to kill—and my murder to plan. With wicked Fire elemental Mab Monroe long gone, you’d think I could finally catch a break. But someone’s always trying to take me down, either as Gin Blanco or my assassin alter-ago. Now along comes the Spider’s new arch-nemesis, the mysteriously named M. M. Monroe, who is gleefully working overtime to trap me in a sticky web of deceit.

The thing is, I’m not the only target. I can see through the tangled threads enough to know that every bit of bad luck my friends have been having lately is no accident—and that each unfortunate “coincidence” is just one more arrow drawing ever closer to hitting the real bull’s-eye. Though new to Ashland, this M. M. Monroe is no stranger to irony, trying to get me, an assassin, framed for murder. Yet, as my enemy’s master plan is slowly revealed, I have a sinking feeling that it will take more than my powerful Ice and Stone magic to stop my whole life from going up in flames.

Terrifying as her new nemesis is, what was more disturbing to me was that they found out after the final battle that Monroe.2 has a daughter, a 3-4 year old who has her mother's same elemental acid fire magic...so there's a chance of a Monroe.3 battle on the horizon, about 18 to 20 years down the line. Oddly enough, Estep doesn't tell us what Gin and her gang are going to do about the child or the fact that Gin made her an orphan. Are they going to keep tabs on her? Make sure her dad doesn't turn her into a hateful, evil person out to kill Gin, aka The Spider, for revenge? Anyway, other than my usual complaint of having to skip pages that go over past battles and people long dead, I enjoyed this book and revisiting the characters who surround and support and love Gin as best they can. Plus, I now know to eat something before I read any more of Estep's Elemental Assassin books, because the descriptions of the BBQ and Southern desserts make my stomach rumble. I'd give this installment in the series a B+ and recommend it to anyone who has read other books in the series...trust me, once you start them time will fly by!

The Bookstore Sisters by Alice Hoffman is a short story that I got for free, but would have paid pretty much anything to read. Hoffman is a master wordsmith whose prose is always perfect and her plots as smooth as an icy lake in Minnesota. Here's the blurb:

From New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman comes a heartfelt short story about family, independence, and finding your place in the world.

Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again.

But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels herself drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island. What she finds there may forever alter her path—and change everything she thought she knew about her family, her home, and herself.

This tale fits in with another of her books, as the characters sounded familiar to me. I love the way that Hoffman makes all her novels so atmospheric and mesmerizing, so that when her beautiful and magical people show up in those environs, you know you're in for a good old fashioned "ripping yarn." This story is short enough that it should only take you and hour or two to read it, but please don't gulp it down...slowly savor each page. And when you are done being enchanted, go and beg, borrow, buy or steal every single book in her back list. Seriously, this is not a woman who has ever written anything but wonderful novels, so I can almost guarantee that you won't be disappointed in anything she's written, ever. I'd give this delicious "amuse bouche" of a story an A, and recommend it and everything Hoffman has ever written to discerning readers who like that spark of magic and wonder in their books. 

 

A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair is the first book in her Halfling Saga, and a pain-filled, almost YA (in the coming of age parts) romantic fantasy. Though the plot was uneven, the prose was strong and reliable enough to get readers through to the ending, which wasn't so much of an ending as a stop in the action that lets you know if you want any sort of satisfaction you will have to wait and read the sequel, which of course doesn't come out until next year. Ugh. Well, here's the blurb:  

My body is made of scars,
some were done to me,
but most I did to myself.
 
Keera is a killer. As the King's Blade, she is the most talented spy in the kingdom. And the king’s favored assassin. When a mysterious figure moves against the Crown, Keera is called upon to hunt down the so-called Shadow. She tracks her target into the magical lands of the Fae, but Faeland is not what it seems . . . and neither is the Shadow. Keera is shocked by what she learns, and can't help but wonder who her enemy truly is: the King that destroyed her people or the Shadow that threatens the peace?
 
As she searches for answers, Keera is haunted by a promise she made long ago, one that will test her in every way. To keep her word, Keera must not only save herself, but an entire kingdom.
 
Fans of fast-paced high fantasy such as A Court of Thorns and Roses series, The Inadequate Heir, and From Blood and Ash author Jennifer L. Armentrout, will enjoy the fierce female characters, sapphic representation, and fantasy romance of A Broken Blade.

Personally, I think that the blurb should just quit wimping out and call a lesbian romance a lesbian romance, not "Sapphic representation,"  which is likely to send a bunch of YA readers to Google Sappho (not that finding out about ancient lesbians is necessarily a bad thing, but really, blurbers, ditch the 10 cent references and just use the vernacular...it's not 1922, its 2022.) Yes, the main character was, at one point, in love with a woman, but now she's in love with a man, which makes her bisexual, not a lesbian, and though there are other women who have lesbian relationships in the book, it's not really made into anything smacking of  'representation.' The ending, in which Keera realizes she has been lied to and "played" by nearly everyone is very unsatisfying, because it's made clear that we will only see things played out in the sequel...the characters are at an impasse at the end...and book 2 isn't due out until MAY of next year! While I was unsatisfied at the end, I did enjoy most of the rest of the book for it's troubled and tough main character, Keera, who is scarred and haunted and, like Seanan McGuire's October Day, spends way too much time bleeding and barfing. Still, she refuses to give up, and she manages to kill a whole lot of bad guys while falling in love with the one man she's been told to kill: The Shadow (insert evil laugh here). I would give this book a B+ and recommend it to anyone who likes kick-arse female protagonists on a redemption tour.