The Book Shopper

Book Shopping with Ha Jin in Atlanta

My latest bedtime book (requirements: short chapters, not too demanding) is State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. The book is a collection of 50 writers writing about 50 states. Ha Jin, a former faculty member at Emory and winner of both the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner awards wrote about Georgia. Jin lives in Massachusetts now.

In the essay, Jin mentions shopping for used books in Atlanta back in the mid-1990s:

“The public libraries in Gwinnett County had an odd custom of discarding any book that had not been check out for a year. They would ship these books to a warehouse…and hold an annual sale, letting them go for a dime a copy. The first time I went to the book sale I bought four boxes…On my way to work, a sixteen mile drive, I would pass five Goodwill stores, all run by churches, and each the size of a supermarket. They all had book sections…Over the years I got many windfalls, among them The Word Finder, the best reference book for English collections but long out of print, and first editions For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Heart of the Matter and Beloved. I cared more about usefulness than rarity, so a useful book, bought for a quarter would thrill me more than a first edition.”

Savannah Book Shopping

All my vacations usually include book shopping and our recent trip to Savannah and Tybee Island earlier this month was no different.  Coincidentally, our trip was the result of book shopping activities. At first, Denise and I planned a long weekend to Edisto Island in South Carolina (any place that has shrimp ‘n’ grits is fine by me), but chatting with Polly Wylly Cooper  author of the Kennesaw State Press’ Tybee Days at the Decatur Book Festival  influenced us to consider Tybee Island.

There are basically four types of book shopping experiences in the Savannah-Tybee area: books and bookstores featuring Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, Civil War books, tattered beach books, and cook books from Paula Dean. Unfortunately, one bookstore, E. Shaver Booksellers, (click on photo ) in the heart of the city looked promising, but unfortunately was closed on Sunday. 

I won’t even approach discussing Midnight or Paula Dean as their legions of fans have already covered those reading and foodie experiences respectively ad infinitum, but I saw several bookstores carrying Civil War books including The Savannah Visitor Center, and two stores at the Fort Pulaski National Monument.   

As one who always looks for opportunities to learn more about the Civil War, especially the engagements here in Georgia, I purchased  David Smith’s brief history Sherman’s March to the Sea 1864, Atlanta to Savannah. I hoped the book would answer my question: Why did Sherman burn Atlanta, but not Savannah? I am not sure, but my understanding is that Atlanta had more facilities to wage war than Savannah and that according to Smith, the outnumbered Confederate military had already decided to evacuate Savannah even before Sherman issued a threat that if the city resisted, it would be burned. Besides Sherman was anxious to invade South Carolina. He wrote “we can punish South Carolina as she deserves, and as thousands of the people in Georgia hoped we would do.” (Georgia, really!) 

 

Decatur Book Festival Wrap-up

 
Strike the tents! The 5th Annual Decatur Book Festival (DBF) is over, but before my book shopper memories began to mix with the other DBFs, I’ll recap with a few observations.

Friday Night with Franzen

Under the warm stage lights, Jonathan Franzen read from his new book Freedom: A Novel for about thirty minutes. The selection was a series of excerpts from Chapter Two, a background story for one of the main characters, Patty, who is date raped by the son of a wealthy influential family, but at the urging of her parents Patty is convinced not to press charges. When he finished reading this passage, Franzen said “That’s the end of that cheery little reading.”

I thought it was kind of an odd selection. It certainly didn’t make me want to go out and buy the book, but I’m also an experienced Franzen reader who knows, that this selection may not be indicative of the rest of the book or that it’s just not something that works at a reading or maybe Franzen purposely read something unpleasant.  My current strategy: Wait until the hype abates and then buy the book.

On the other hand, the question and answer period which lasted another thirty minutes was painful to watch. Franzen appeared totally uncomfortable. I am not sure whether the questions were too ambiguous, but Franzen rambled endlessly. He could take a lesson from the Toastmaster’s playbook. (If you can’t answer a tough question, change the subject and reply with something else. It works, because politicians do it all the time.)

Saturday morning

This is the third year I’ve worked at the book market as a volunteer and hats off to the organizers and especially the volunteer coordinator Lee Ann Harvey who assigns meaningful tasks without overworking us. For the record, on the Saturday morning before the book market opened, many of the vendors voiced their appreciation of how well things were organized. While working you discover who is selling what and my friend Denise bought some long-sought-after book earrings. Now she can be properly attired at the festival even though the volunteer’s shirt featuring the monster Bookzilla is not easy to coordinate.

Saturday afternoon

I didn’t catch the entire roundtable of Tom Key’s moderation of the panel on the influence of  the novel Confederacy of Dunces on novelists Bill Cotter and Doug Crandell, but I was there long enough to  appreciate the dry wit and observations of Cotter. The Austin based writer joked that the failures in meaningful employment prepared him for “failure as a writer.”   

My Decatur Book Festival (DBF) Schedule

Friday, September 3 - 7:00 p.m. Scalp my tickets for the Jonathan Franzen keynote address. Show support for Jodi Picoult.

Friday, 7:45 p.m. Rethink my scalping strategy. As a Midwesterner (like Franzen) “my moral seriousness” tells me not to take advantage of those less fortunate.

Friday, 8:45 p.m. Ask Franzen, during the question and answer session, “What’s with that psychedelic turd scene (p. 316) in The Corrections?”

Saturday, September 4  – 9 a.m to Noon. Report for my stint as a volunteer for the Festival. Double check that my book festival service gets me dibs on working at the Decatur Beer Festival, (on October 16).

Saturday,  12:01 p.m.  Remove DBF volunteer shirt, so I don’t have to ask questions such as:  “Where is the Antiquarian Book Fair?”  Replace with my vintage DBF Blogzilla shirt from last year. Start looking for a food tent that sells turkey legs.

Saturday, 12:01 to 12:30 p.m. Visit some of the book exhibitors. Upon request, go back to the tent that sells turkey legs and get more napkins.

Saturday, 12:30 to 2:15 p.m. Check out the tribute to the A Confederacy of Dunces at the Decatur High School. Tell one of the panelists Bill Cotter, a former antiquarian book dealer, to go across McDonough street and check out Books Again. (They are having a sale this weekend.)

Saturday 3 p.m. Stop by McSweeney’s  (Booth 526) and recycle my extra Believer magazines, compliment them about using an Atlanta studio to produce their music CD (Vol 8. No. 6) and complain that the print is too small in their cartoons.

Saturday, 4 p.m to 6 p.m. Start reading some of the books I purchased. Nap.