The Book Shopper

Jonathan Lethem & Jhumpa Lahiri?

This week’s posting (about Jonathan Lethem) resides at another blog—Atlanta’s A-List. It’s part of a kind of cultural blogger exchange program.  While you are there check out their book club as well. Next month they are reading Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Jonathan Lethem & Jhumpa Lahiri? Not unlike Junot Diaz and Anita Desai sharing the stage last year at the Agnes Scott  College Festival of Writers. (For the record, the Diaz-Desai experience would have been more entertaining if Diaz had read Desai’s stuff and vice versa.)

MARTA Book Club #6 Goes to Boston

 

For those unfamiliar with the club, 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.  The only requirement to be a member of MARTA Book Club is to read a book while riding public transportation. (See related posts)

 

This month I visited our sister book club -- the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority, (MBTA) or “The T” for short.  (Remember the Atlanta Braves came from Boston via Milwaukee). While riding the subway between book stores, I observed what Bostonians were reading at least during one rush hour. As you can see by this short video of “The T” (courtesy of my daughter), you have to look fast to find out what people are reading. 

 

 

What Bostonians Were Reading

 

The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco

In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat by Rick Atkinson

Food Rules by Michael Pollan

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. by Sanyika Shakur

Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price

Heavenly Days by James Wilcox

The Summer Hideaway (The Lakeshore Chronicles) by Susan Wiggs

Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave

What We (Atlantans) Are Reading: Here’s a list of what Atlantans are reading since my last MARTA posting in April:

Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke

Oprah by Kitty Kelley

The Shack by William P. Young

The Fine Print on a Georgia Lottery Ticket

Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson

Boston - Cambridge Running Out of Good Books

I am up near the Harvard campus for a long weekend and so far I've been on a personal crusade to wipe out the area of some of its good books. Too bad Boston - Cambridge! You've had your chance to buy these gems long enough. I am bringing them back to Atlanta.

So far here's the list of the books that are now leaving Boston:

Raven Used Books

Proust Was A Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, $5

Detective Story by Imre Kertesz, $6

Rodney's Bookstore

Salt by Mark Kurlansky, $3

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, $1 (daughter's birthday gift)

Harvard Bookstore

Wanderlust, by Rebecca Solnit (full price)

I am Not Sidney Poiter by Percival Everett (full price)

The Unprofessionals by Julie Hecht, $8

In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas by Larry McMurtry,$1(found on sidewalk cart)

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War By Drew Gilprin Faust (full price)

Tomorrow, I hit the MIT Press bookstore and then on Tuesday it's back to Atlanta. If I were a flight attendant, I would avoid helping me put my carry-on into the overhead.

 

Book Sale for the Military

 
Although well intentioned, I doubt this impromptu book kiosk featuring mostly paperbacks with purple covers will generate much revenue for the military. The kiosk can be found inside a Schnucks supermarket in Savoy, Illinois. 

   

Say3 Books: A Review

 

Even though I was in Champaign, Illinois on family matters, I did breakaway for a short visit to a used book store I had driven past on several occasions—Say3 Books (900 South Mattis).  I finally had the gumption to step inside because you never know what to expect. 

 It didn’t take long to scan most of the shelves as the inventory was compressed (read cluttered) into a few rooms. There was a good mix of quality fiction, (T.C. Boyle, Larry McMurtry)  non-fiction, books about books (my favorite) mystery and romance and I picked up a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I became interested in during Atlanta’s Big Read earlier this spring. The copy of the book was a little yellowed (like the bookstore itself) and it has an afterword written by Henry Louis Gates Jr. The cover included a dated promotional sticker from Oprah telling me to be sure and watch the television version of the book starring Halle Berry.