The Book Shopper

MARTA Book Club #14: Green and Read Metropolis

For anyone remotely interested in regional transportation issues check out the MARTA  Book Club's Book of the Month, David Owen's Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability. Now that Oprah's Book Club will soon be sunk into anonymity, the MARTA Book Club – a loose— very loose— confederation of people who read while riding the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s public transportation – is ready to fill the void.

The premise of Owen's book is that the greenest city in America is New York City, because the population density and smaller domiciles coupled with the availability of alternative methods of transportation makes it --- based on energy consumption per capita – a model metropolis (in terms of its environmental sensibilities) . Owens looks at cities throughout the world (including Atlanta), talks about the paradoxes of green consumerism and that the real solutions are relatively simple, except they require a change in mindset of a planet and their relationship with the automobile (not so simple).

If you read this book while riding MARTA you will feel very good about yourself and you will be eligible to join the MARTA Book Club. There are no meeting times, no organizational rules, no t-shirts, and no special fares. Very convenient.

What We Are Reading: Here's what other people just are reading since our last posting. We regret since we cannot determine the title of a electronic book they are not tabulated. If want to see all the MARTA Book Club postings, just visit the links to the category MARTA on the right side of this web page.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass

Grace (Eventually) Thought on Faith by Anne Lamott

Debt Cures They Don't Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau

Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver

Doo Hickey: A Novel by Pete Hautman

The Lost by J.D. Robb, et.al

Book Shopping with Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos, famed Cuban-American novelist who will be at Oglethorpe University  next Monday, June 20th may be most known for the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, but Hijuelos also knows the economic pleasures of book shopping. Check out this passage from Mr. Ives Christmas (1995) when Mrs. Ives purchases used books for Pablo, the boyfriend of her daughter, Caroline:

And because Pablo had always liked books and treated Caroline so well, and liked to show her the essays he wrote in school, she insisted upon buying him paper back novels, five or six at a time, crumbling moldy, second-hand inexpensive editions that hardly made a dent in her budget. How could she resist a twenty-five cent edition of Sons and Lovers, Dubliners, Bleak House, Moby Dick or for that matter, Don Quixote or Sonnets of Shakespeare for the same price as a slice of pizza?

Hijeulos will be talking about his new book Thoughts Without Cigarettes. Hijuelos' appearance includes both music and food and the proceeds to the event benefit the Decatur Book Festival. For more information and to order tickets (they are still available), visit the A Cappella Books website.

Also be informed if you book shop for Hijuelos' Mambo Kings, make sure you get the original hardback cover (shown here), it's by far the coolest.

Charitable Books

Beyond “just” reading, books have other value, as evidenced in their recent ability to raise money and help people around the world. The First Baptist Church of Decatur held their annual yard sale fundraiser on the church lawn last week (to support youth ministry). Items included appliances, housewares, lawn mowers, clothes and my raison d'etre --- books. I went over about 7:30 a.m. on the first day to book pick with my book shopping brethren (shown).

I am always impressed how fast seasoned book shoppers can scan through boxes of books. The speediest connection searching for books on the internet cannot beat an experienced shopper sizing up aisles of paperbacks and hardbacks. It's the same speed you have when go through your kids' full trick or treat bag and pick out all the Snickers while they are getting their sugar-hyped selves ready for bed.
I didn't have the good fortune that I had last year's sale, but I did notice numerous works of Tom Wolfe, 
Garrison Keillor and Pat Conway to name but a I few. I made two “donations” by purchasing a book of Terry Kay's, the recent winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Writers Association and Nobel Prize Winner Jose Saramago. What can I say? I am influenced by the experts.

Better World

If you think the Baptist Church had a lot of books, it was a drop in the bucket compared what a hundred
local community volunteers and supporters gathered in behalf for Books For Africa. On June 4th, the Atlanta-based online bookseller Better World Books and volunteers gathered at a BWB warehouse in Smyrna, Georgia to celebrate an impressive milestone: the shipment of over 1.4 million books to Africa through the BFA and BWB partnership. The group waved goodbye to a shipping container filled with 40,000 donated  books. (Do I feel remorse that I didn't get to look through them? Slightly.)

Better World Books collects discarded books and resells them online, contributing a portion of all revenues to literacy causes like its longtime partner Books for Africa. To date, BWB has raised $2 million for BFA. (Photo and information courtesy of BWB).

Atlanta Area Book Events Calendar – June 2011

For awhile I've been thinking about doing a calendar of local events, as there seems to be a scarcity of this kind of information (at least to my knowledge). I have no intention of listing every event of the month, but think it more as a collection of links of different venues so you can plan your month ahead. The dollar sign designation ($$) indicates some kind of admission fee is charged. Look for a July calendar in the last week of June.

Saturday, June 4 to Monday, September 5. The Lost Gone with the Wind Manuscript Exhibit. Atlanta History Center, ($$ )

Wednesday, June 8 thru Wednesday, June 29. Tayari Jones, Brooke Gladstone, Atlanta Queer Festival, Poetry Atlanta & more. See the Georgia Center for the Book events page.

Friday, June 10. Tayari Jones. Author of Silver Sparrow. Charis Books and More.

Saturday and Sunday, June 11-12. The Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association Sale is being held at the Cobb County Civic Center. For details visit here.

Sunday, June 12, Tayari Jones, Author of Silver Sparrow (this is not a typo – three local appearances in five days). Blue Elephant Book Shop.

Wednesday, June 15. Dinner with author Maria Menounos, Every Girl's Guide to Life presented in part by Eagle Eye Books and Athens Pizza. ($$)

Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes: A Review

As a contributor to NPR'S This American Life, and with appearances on Jon Stewart and David Letterman, it is no surprise Sarah Vowell has accumulated a legion of fans over the years along with a string of bestsellers. Her most recent book is Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of Hawaii that focuses on the Protestant missionaries who brought religion to Hawaii in 1820, which eventually led to the islands' 1898 American annexation.

My question is: Does anyone who isn't already a big fan of Vowell's thinks this is a very good history book? I liked her Assassination Vacation, but Unfamiliar Fishes sounded like a continuation of The Wordy Shipmates and I had enough of that book during her reading here in Atlanta a few years ago.

In short, Unfamiliar Fishes reads like one big riff on Hawaiian history reminiscent of the “native Hawaian” Ula's (played by Rob Schneider) rant in 50 First Dates (“Okay you haole you think you can come to this island, eat our pineapple, bang our women, and make my sister clean your hotel rooms.”) Coincidentally both the movie and the book pay homage to late Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole's (known more as Iz) rendition of “Over the Rainbow.”

Comparing to Unfamiliar Fishes to 50 First Dates may be silly, but the book has a few shortcomings as a history book, especially for an author who has made it her mission to translate history to the masses. It's has structural faults: The book has only one map (but I am a map junkie). The book has no chapters, no subheadings, no index, no chronology of events, and no family tree of the Hawaiian Royal Family (which would have been really helpful). I know it's unfair to criticize a book for what it doesn't have, but if Vowell's impetus to write the book is to educate us why not provide us with a few reading aids? (See Comments)