Mam's Books Opens in Seattle, Wonka Movie Debuts in December, Quote of the Day, Sequel to House on the Cerulean Sea Out in 2024, Louise Gluck Obituary, 12 Months to Live by James Patterson and Mike Lupica, A Strange Scottish Shore by Juliana Gray, and Caffeine Before Curses by Christine Pope

 The second week of October is winding down, and I've only gotten a few books completed because my husband is in the hospital yet again. I also finished up 6 weeks of physical therapy, so that took up time as well. Meanwhile, though, Sera and Nick have taken me to bookstores in Tukwilla, (Barnes and Noble and Half Price Books) where I've gotten bargains on copies of some newly debuted books that I've been enjoying, not the least of which is because in getting them from stores other than Amazon, I'm not lining J Bezo's already overstuffed pockets. It's a win-win, as the saying goes. Anyway, here are some tidbits and obits and reviews.

I really want to visit this bookstore, and also, of course, make a pilgrimage to Uwajimaya, the wonder-filled Asian grocery store in the International District. It bothers me, however, that they assume that they're the only Asian American bookstore in the PNW, when I've been going to Kinokuniya Bookstore for years in the ID.

Mam's books Celebrates Soft Opening in Seattle

Last month, mam's books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQDZlLoI6ag1Kx0nGw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHC5XypoMLg-gVdw, a new indie bookstore located at 608 Maynard Ave. S in the Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Wash., celebrated its soft opening with a launch party. The Seattle Times reported that the opening of mam's books "feels especially noteworthy. On its cheerful website, mam's claims to be the only Asian American bookstore in the Pacific Northwest, and it is the first free-standing independent bookstore to open in the CID in decades. The shop is expressly dedicated to serving the community at a time when the CID is engaged in a civic conversation about its uncertain future."

Owner Sokha Danh's family arrived in the U.S. as refugees from Cambodia in 1988, first living in Louisiana before moving to Washington State. "I'm very lucky to have grown up in a family that really cherished education," he said, citing library books as a key factor in his youth, though "I remember going to Barnes & Noble and not being able to afford anything.... Growing up, I saw a lot of inequities, and so I've always been a big believer in the underdog."

Danh worked at the Seattle CID Preservation and Development Authority, where he "had the special privilege of getting to know Donnie Chin and Uncle Bob [Santos]. I saw all the greats of the Asian American community doing what they do to make sure it stayed a special neighborhood." After moving over to the City of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods, he felt that he still needed to do more.

"I think it's upon us as the next generation of Asian Americans to create spaces that are relevant for us," said Dahn, who eventually decided that he wanted to open a bookstore where the community can "talk about important issues, explore new ideas and maybe revisit old ones, and create a joyful place in the neighborhood."

He found the 1,000-square-foot space, painted it with bright colors and named it mam's books after his father, the Times noted, adding that the shop "carries literary fiction and nonfiction by Asian American authors in multiple languages, along with a section of CID history books and a wide selection of young adult and children's books. To encourage people to hang out, snacks and nonalcoholic drinks are for sale."

Mam's books is part of a "wave of new community activism street-level,supportive, and interested in preserving the CID's storied past while also building a future that embraces everything that makes the neighborhood special," the Times wrote. "I really don't feel like this space is mine," Danh said. "It belongs to the community."

The trailers for this movie look fantastic, so I can't wait to see it, though I'm not a fan of Mr Chalamet. He's got big shoes to fill from the late Gene Wilder. I also love the all-star cast (Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa! Hilarious!) and the fact that it premiers right after my 63rd birthday!

Movies: Wonka

Warner Bros. has released a new trailer https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQDalOsI6ag1KkskGg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHCJWjpoMLg-gVdw and poster for Wonka, starring Timothee Chalamet "as the enigmatic Willy Wonka in the pic that focuses on the candymaker's origins," Deadline reported. The film's story serves as a prequel to Roald Dahl's classic book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Chalamet had previously told Vogue why he decided to take the role: "To work on something that will have an uncynical young audience, that was just a big joy. That's why I was drawn to it. In a time and climate of intense political rhetoric, when there's so much bad news all the time, this is hopefully going to be a piece of chocolate."

Directed by Paul King (Paddington) from a screenplay he co-wrote with Simon Farnaby, Wonka features a cast that includes Keegan-Michael Key, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman, Jim Carter, Matt Lucas, Natasha Rothwell, Tom Davis, Mathew Baynton and Simon Farnaby, Peter Joseph, Rich Fulcher, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Calah Lane, Colin O'Brien, Rahkee Thakrar, Ellie White, Murray McArthur, and Tracy Ifeachor.

Hugh Grant plays the "something of a whopper" Oompa-Loompa named Lofty, Deadline noted. Wonka opens in theaters December 15.

This is true!

Quote of the Day

“Bookshops offer us much more than a book. They present limitless portals to different worlds. Visiting a bookshop provides us all with an opportunity to be transported to wherever we want to go, maybe it's climbing a multi-story treehouse to find the marshmallow machine, a trip to the outer edges of the universe exploring Arrakis, or even back in time to watch the first pages of the Oxford dictionary come together. Wherever we want to go, we can get there via our local bookshop.” --BookPeople, the association for Australian bookshops, on the importance of Love Your Bookshop Day

Hurrah! I loved "House on the Cerulean Sea" so I'm sure the sequel will be awesome!

Sequel to The House on the Cerulean Sea Announced 

I was late to the The House on the Cerulean Sea bandwagon, but after a family listen on a road trip, I jumped right on (jumping out of a moving car onto a bandwagon, I guess). My understanding was that Klune initially didn’t imagine that the breakout bestseller would get a sequel, but here we are. Details are scant beyond title (Somewhere Beyond the Sea), cover, and a “fall 2024” release date. But that’s enough to get some very excited. And that includes me.

 

 Obituary Note: Louise Glück 

American poet Louise Gluck https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQDbw-gI6ag0IxEgSw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHCcKgpoMLg-gVdw, "whose searing, deeply personal work, often filtered through themes of classical mythology, religion and the natural world, won her practically every honor available," including the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, died October 13, the New York Times reported. She was 80. Gluck "was widely considered to be among the country's greatest living poets, long before she won the Nobel."

The Nobel committee praised her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." She served as the U.S. poet laureate from 2003 to 2004. In 2016, President Barack Obama presented her with the National Humanities Medal.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Gluck's publisher, paid tribute to the poet in a Facebook post, quoting Jonathan Galassi, FSG's chairman and executive editor: "Louise Gluck's poetry gives voice to our untrusting but unstillable need for knowledge and connection in an often unreliable world. Her work is immortal." FSG also shared these lines from Gluck's poem "Faithful and Virtuous Night https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQDbw-gI6ag0IxEgSQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nHCcKgpoMLg-gVdw":

I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem

there is no perfect ending.

Indeed, there are infinite endings.

Gluck began publishing in the 1960s but her reputation grew in the 1980s and early 1990s with several works, including Triumph of Achilles (1985), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Ararat (1990); and The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Her early work, especially her debut, Firstborn (1968), "is deeply indebted to the so-called confessional poets who dominated the scene in the 1950s and '60s," the Times wrote, noting that her poetry was "both deeply personal--Ararat, for example, drew on the pain she experienced over the death of her father--and broadly accessible, both to critics, who praised her clarity and precise lyricism, and to the broader reading public.... But even as Ms. Gluck continued to weave her verse with an autobiographical thread, there is nothing solipsistic in her later, more mature work, even as she explored intimate themes of trauma and heartbreak."

She went on to publish 14 books of poetry, including Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), a complete compendium of her published poetry at the time. "Today it is considered required reading by any aspiring poet--and, arguably, anyone serious about modern American literature," the Times noted. Gluck won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, for Faithful and Virtuous Night. 

"Louise Gluck was one of my two favorite teachers at the Iowa Writers Workshop," poet Rita Dove recalled in a Facebook post, adding that two decades later, "upon the conclusion of my Poet Laureateship, I suggested her to the Library of Congress as my successor, but at the time she shied away from such a public position. Fortunately, by 1999 she had reconsidered, agreeing to serve with W.S. Merwin and me as 'Special Consultants to the Library of Congress' for the LOC's bicentennial year, and a few years after that was willing to take on the U.S. poet laureate post for a term. 'What are we without this?' RIP, Louise. The literary landscape will never be the same."

From Gluck's poem "A Summer Garden”

Infinite, infinite--that

was her perception of time.

She sat on a bench, somewhat hidden by oak trees.

Far away, fear approached and departed;

from the train station came the sound it made.

The sky was pink and orange, older because the day was over.

There was no wind. The summer day

cast oak-shaped shadows on the green grass.

12 Months To Live by James Patterson and Mike Lupica is a legal thriller that is outside my normal range of reading, but Patterson and Lupica's TV commercial with these two grumpy old guys partnering up to write a book was so charming I decided to give it a go. Both men are old hands at writing vigorous, muscular prose, so I was expecting that, but what I wasn't expecting was the thrill ride of a plot that gripped me from the first chapter to the last with vice-like, mesmerizing paragraphs. Here's the blurb:

“Patterson and Lupica make a great team” (Carl Hiaasen) who get “deep into the lives of strong women” (Louise Penny) and Jane Smith is their greatest creation—a badass lawyer with a year to live.

“Jane Smith is the best character we’ve ever created. Bar none.”
—James Patterson and Mike Lupica

Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might’ve committed several murders.

She’s also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn’t have much time. She’s just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she’s murdered before her expiration date.

Poor Jimmy, Jane's assistant and an ex-cop, really gets put through the wringer in this book; beaten, shot, nearly run over, etc...to the point of disbelief in his survival. However, coming from a long line of hard to kill fathers and grandfathers, I can only assume this smart old dude just believes in the "never say die" motto of his generation and guts it out. One of the few things I disliked about the book was that everything that makes Jane "tough" and "admirable" and a "winner" in this book are attributes mainly subscribed to men, so Jane comes off as a guy with the veneer of a woman. It's as if regular women, who have to deal with pain every month and the extreme pains of childbirth, not to mention rampant abuse, both sexual and physical, can't be kind, or vulnerable, or beautiful in a feminine way, or caring and nurturing, because those things somehow negate the ability to be tough and smart and witty/sarcastic, while being an excellent lawyer who "never loses a case." 

I call BS on this misogyny, and I can point to my own mother, who worked full time as a nurse, cooked, cleaned and kept house for our family and raised 3 children with only sporadic assistance from my philandering, spendthrift father. She was also beautiful, feminine and graceful, took in and fed neighborhood children with crappy parents and volunteered for decades with Planned Parenthood, helping women, sometimes clandestinely, to take control of their own reproductive health. She was also fierce and never backed down from a bully, though she was only 5ft4 and weighed around 117 pounds. Men twice her size quailed in fear when she'd get in their face and read them the riot act. She's 86 years old and still kicking butt, BTW. So other than that, this was an unput-downable novel with so many twists and turns in the plot I nearly got whiplash. I'd give this fascinating thriller an A-, and recommend it to anyone who wants to be transported to another place and time.

A Strange Scottish Shore by Juliana Gray is an Emmeline Truelove mystery with a lot of romance and romantic yearning woven throughout the plot. Here's the blurb:

The acclaimed author of A Most Extraordinary Pursuit brings a dazzling voice and extraordinary plot twists to this captivating Scottish adventure...
 
Scotland, 1906. A mysterious object discovered inside an ancient castle calls Maximilian Haywood, the new Duke of Olympia, and his fellow researcher Emmeline Truelove north to the remote Orkney Islands. No stranger to the study of anachronisms in archeological digs, Haywood is nevertheless puzzled by the artifact: a suit of clothing that, according to family legend, once belonged to a selkie who rose from the sea and married the castle’s first laird.
 
But Haywood and Truelove soon realize they’re not the only ones interested in the selkie’s strange hide. When their mutual friend Lord Silverton vanishes in the night from an Edinburgh street, their quest takes a dangerous turn through time, which puts Haywood’s extraordinary talents—and Truelove’s courage—to their most breathtaking test yet.

The prose in this odd mystery novel is overwritten and, like a strong perfume, almost cloying in it's sweet and sour paragraphs. The plot is also foggy and almost impenetrable at times, so you find yourself as a reader all at sea. The ending is meant to be something of an HEA, but it's ultimately unsatisfying, because we're not sure of where everyone ends up in space/time. I'm also not a fan of authors who think that the distant past was a great place because there was no technology or medicine or science. White-washing history doesn't account for facts like the huge mortality rate for women and infants, and for death from diseases that are easily diagnosed and treated in the last two centuries. And what about the belief that people died from being frowned on for one thing or another by God or gods of that time? No one understood germs or handwashing or general cleanliness, so one scratch gone septic could do you in. Romanticizing history is a dangerous and slippery slope. Therefore I'd give this book a C+, and only recommend it to those desperate to hear more about Scotland's sexist legend of the "selkie" or women who wear seal skins but can emerge from them as human and mate with regular lonely fishermen, as long as those men steal their seal skins and hide them to keep the women from transforming back into seals and swimming away.

Caffieine Before Curses by Christine Pope is a paranormal "cozy" mystery that is the first book in a series. Since the main character "Skye" has a bakery/coffee shop, and her best friend's name is Deanne, I felt compelled to pick up this free volume on my Kindle Paperwhite and give it a whirl. Here's the blurb:

When a movie shoot ends in murder, a caffeine fix might be the star’s only hope.

Skye O’Malley’s grandmother always told her she inherited the Sight. But other than an occasional message from a blob of tea leaves or a vague dream, Skye doesn’t think she’s anything special, since she can’t even predict which of her coffee-shop customers will order hard-core black or fancy frou-frou with extra foam.

The only instinct she can rely on is the jangly feeling that something is about to happen. Like when her best friend (and only employee) Deanne tells her that a film crew is coming to their hometown of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The lead is Hollywood’s hottest action-movie star, Max Sullivan, who just happens to be Skye’s former "boy next door"…and her lifelong, unrequited crush.

Just having him around unbalances Skye's carefully curated existence. But when she starts having disturbing dreams involving Max and a prop gun, she can’t ignore them. Especially when the film’s notoriously unpleasant director turns up dead, and the evidence points to one prime suspect. Max.

Max needs a miracle, not a not-quite witch. But he’s placing all his trust in Skye — and her murky tea leaves — to help him find the real culprit before the actual murderer gets away clean.

So Max is, of course, a gorgeous, famous and wealthy movie star whom Skye has had a crush on for decades, and surprise, he uses that attraction to force Skye into helping him out when he's up on a murder charge. Of course, she's happy to help because women can't help themselves around handsome men (in most romance novels) and will throw caution and common sense to the wind the minute the super-hot guy throws an ounce of attention their way, which is pathetic, but par for the course in nearly every romance or romantic-threaded fiction out there.  And Skye downplays her tea-reading gift, because all women are taught not to be "conceited" or  proud or excited about their skills, or smarts...wouldn't want to have the men get jealous, right? They might kill you or your career, after all, if you wound the fragile male ego. Ugh. Still, it's a funny novel with clean prose that moves along at a decent pace. So I'd give it a B- and only recommend it to those who like cliches and tropes about women and paranormal romances in full force in their reading materials.