The Book Shopper

Zoo Story: Play or Reading?

December is a barren time for author readings and subject matter for postings is usually limited to “Best Books” and “Worst Books” and “Most Underrated Books.” With this in mind, I’ve temporarily expanded the scope of the blog to local theatre. It’s still all about words, right?

Earlier this week my older daughter and I checked out Decatur’s PushPush Theatre's final performance of the Edward Albee’s 1958 one-act play, Zoo Story.  Sheepishly I’ll admit it’s the first time I’ve been there since PushPush hosted a screening of the documentary Paperback Dreams.

My daughter who attends plays regularly in Boston (she has a secret ambition of starting a Moliere theatre troupe so graduate students can practice their French) appreciated the performances of Tim Habeger and Charlie Adair who play two men whose opposite worlds collide at a picnic bench in Central Park.

I’m not sure why only six people attended (holiday week, chilly temperatures, a strong local dislike of the Americanization of The Theatre of the Absurd?), but that made no difference to me or the actors as they remained unfazed even when one of the patrons spilled his M & Ms onto the stage. In a way, the sparse short play like Zoo Story is similar to a reading – and in this case better than most readings -- because at the most basic level it is about the words and who knows better how to say the words than someone with a little stage experience.  

Important Note:  Zoo Story is the first of what PushPush calls its The Working Masterpiece Series. According to their website,  PushPush “will produce a series of low-budget, classic plays to give theater and film people a chance to gain experience with some of the greatest writers of stage and screen.” Next play is Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.  

A Book Shopper’s Top Ten Books of 2009

As a book shopper who always weighs price vs. literary merit, my top ten list usually doesn’t include books published in 2009 as I rarely purchase the latest, fashionable book. I prefer to experience those connections that put me in contact with the right book at the right time. Here are the books that fill up my Christmas Story Book Bag this year:

Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times at Liberation News Service by Ray Mungo (1971). Books Again in Decatur had a hard back copy first edition that I been drooling over not  unlike Ralphie gazing through the storefront window at a Red Ryder BB gun.  Books Again owner Jim Adams made me a good deal on some trade in and I was able to add to my collection of hardbacks from the New Journalists (Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson).

Oedipus Cadet (1990) by Willie Smith, and the Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday (1992) by Luke Salisbury. My book shopping compatriot Dave in Seattle sent these two books as gifts. Cadet was a bizarre book in the way it mixed baseball with the Civil War and a teenage boy’s sex fantasies.  I’ll probably get to the Cleveland Indian book in the Spring when my fancy turns to baseball.

My Usual Game (1995) by David Owen. I picked this up for a couple bucks on ACappella’s discount shelf outside their store on the same night Owen was speaking at the Carter Center. What a coincidence! I intended to give Owen’s book about golf to my brother as a Christmas gift, but it still sits in my to-be-read queue.

Cultural Amnesia (2007) by Clive James. My book friend Bruce in Wichita highly recommended it and so I used all my store credit at Eagle Eye to order a copy. I’ve been reading it off and on throughout the second half of the year. A fascinating collection of essays about mostly 20^th century artists, writers, thinkers, and film directors who enrich the spirit of humanism, as James says “by increasing the variety of the created world rather than reduce it.”

Absurdistan (2006) by Gary Shteyngart. At the Book Nook in Decatur, I picked up this much-acclaimed novel about a rich, sarcastic overweight young Russian man, who returns to his homeland to see his father only to be swept up into one of those small ugly civil wars that seem to be only too commonplace in Central Asia.  It’s kind of like Dr. Zhivago meets A Confederacy of Dunces. At five dollars, it was a solid read.   

Join the MARTA Book Club #2

 

The MARTA book club is a loose, very loose, confederation of people who read while riding the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s public transportation.  There are no meeting times, no organization, no t-shirts, and no special fares.  Very convenient. The only requirement to be a member of the MARTA Book Club is to read a book while riding public transportation. Newspapers do not qualify. Those with Kindles are not welcome (because how in the hell am I supposed to figure out what you’re reading if I can’t see the book cover!) 

What We Are Reading: Of course, we have no way of knowing what EVERYONE is reading, but here’s a sample of what I have observed  since last month's posting:

The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language by Michel Foucault

Absurdistan: by Gary Shteyngart. One of my contributions to the group. I picked up my copy for $5 at The Book Nook in Decatur.

Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin et. al. Despite over a half million books published; no sightings to report.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barrack Obama.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Not everyone gets sucked into A Christmas Carol hype.

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis by Al Gore. Motivation for the public transportation commuter.

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. A repeat from last month.

Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey Tips on how to save money, so you can buy a car?

The Bible.   A standard for many MARTA faithful.

Five Points The Journal of Literature and Art (Vol 9 No. 1) from Georgia State University. I picked up my copy at the Decatur Book Festival but am disappointed that it contained no stories about life at MARTA’s main transportation hub.

Atlas Shrugged. by Ayn Rand

Preaching with Passion by Alex Montoya and John MacArthur.

More Stories from the Heart by Alice Gray.

The Disappearance by J.F. Freedman.

16 Lighthouse Road by Debbie Macomber. Coincidently, she was in town at the Decatur Public Library last month.

The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill.

Frankenstein Dead and Alive: A Novel by Dean Koontz

Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver

Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen

What members thought: Readers are encouraged to keep their thoughts (and eyes) to themselves.  No time is wasted talking about books when you could be reading.

Next assignment: Keep reading and get to work on time.

Holiday Wishes

Last Saturday I took a break from holiday preparations long enough to stop by to celebrate A Cappella’s  twentieth year in book business. As part of the weekend festivities, owner Frank Reiss invited twenty local authors to discuss the books that they most admired. Unfortunately, I caught only the tail end of Futureproof author N. Frank Daniels discussion of Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, but it was enough to get me untracked to pick it up again.

Even as a relative newcomer to this area, I can see that A Cappella and Reiss have had a major impact on people’s lives. As a book shopper, I think of A Cappella as a place where I have stumbled across a few low-priced gems over the past couple years: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical  Thinking ($5), Jim Harrison’s, The Woman Lit By Fireflies ($3) and a book I think is one of the best books when it comes to pointing out the important aspects of reading, Witold Rybczynski’s Waiting for the Weekend which I picked up for $2.50 on the discard shelves that grace the front of the store. I always check the discards at A Cappella’s and judging from the quality of books that I perused during the Decatur Holiday Candlelight Tour of Homes over the weekend, there are some people who could upgrade their libraries by shopping there as well. (My friend Denise goes to house tours for decorative ideas; I scan the book shelves.)

I am not a person who issues blanket statements saying to blindly support local independent bookstores as if they were some charity, because as a book shopper person, I do require certain qualities from my bookstore that involve more than just price (read this). But whether it be A Cappella's or any of the other local book stores, if you have one you like, be sure to keep them in mind when you issue your New Year’s Resolution of reading more books in 2010.