The Book Shopper

MARTA Book Club #16: Money to Burn

Even though mass transit fares are going up on October 2 for a second year in a row with single fares rising from $2 to $2.50 (25% increase), 30 day trip passes rising from $68 to $95 (40 % increase), and 20 trip passes rising from $34 to $42.50 (25% increase), the annual dues for MARTA Book Club remain the same – nil.

 For those unfamiliar with the group, 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 organizational rules, no t-shirts, and no dues. Very convenient. The only requirement to be a member of MARTA Book Club is to read a book while riding public transportation, which for most riders seems to be a steep admission price.

If rising fares weren't enough, have you seen the movie “Contagion” where this mysterious virus spreads throughout the world killing millions? Did you see how the virus spread? Through human contact on public transportation (and Gwynth Paltrow's adulterous character eating some snacks while sitting at a bar). Oh yeah!

Nevertheless, the MARTA book club marches on just as it always has. We just don't burn our card in protest and quit riding public transportation, (which is what the civic leaders want, judging from the oppressive rate hikes), we just get on that train or bus, put our nose in a book, and read.

 What We Are Reading

 Either our main book spotter hasn't been doing his job or the admission price to belong to the club is becoming too high, but the latest offering is a noticeably short list of what we have seen people have been reading since the last posting: (See link on the right for a history of MARTA book club postings)

Characters of Lust by Karlyn LeBlanc

Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar

The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Hiding Place by Carl Weber

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

American Corrections by Todd Clear

A Road More or Less Traveled by Stephan Otis and Colin Roberts

Chi Running: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running by Danny and Katherine Dreyer

Norton Anthology of World Literature

Small Business Management: An Entrepreneurial Emphasis by Justin Longenecker et. al

Novels by George R. Martin, John Grisham

Next Assignment: Keep reading, get to work on time, watch for wet spots (of all kinds) and send us your book contributions and observations via comment or visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/thebookshopper.

 

Atlanta Book Event Calendar - October 2011

Here's a sampler of book related events for the month of October. (Check out all the activity on October 5 alone.) Think of it as a collection of links of different venues, so you can surf and plan your month ahead. I purposely don't put the times so you will have double check each website before heading out. The dollar sign designation ($$) indicates some kind of admission fee is charged. All events are in Atlanta unless noted.

Friday, September 30. Sesquicentennial Civil War evening. Nell Dickerson, architect photographer and author of Gone: A Photographic Plea for Preservation and Robert Hicks, author of A Separate Country. Peerless Books. Alpharetta.

Tuesday, October 4. Don Goodman and Thomas Head, authors of The Happy Table of Eugene Walter. Book signing and refreshments by Chef Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene. A Cappella Books.

Wednesday October 5 thru Sunday, October 9. American Association of University Women (AAUW) book sale at Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody. Details here. (Banner photo courtesy of AAUW)

Wednesday, October 5. A reading from short story writer and novelist Richard Bausch. Robert Woodruff Library, Emory University. Details here.

Wednesday, October 5. Charles Frazier, author of Nightwoods (and Cold Mountain), Georgia Perimeter College. Clarkston. Details here.

Wednesday, October 5 and Thursday, October 6. Dr. Siddharta Mukherjee author The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer at the Atlanta History Center ($$) and the Arena at the Gwinett Center respectively. Call A Cappella Books at 404-681-5128 about the Mukherjee's History Center appearance and Eagle Eye Books at 404-486-0307 about the Arena. (Tell `em who sent ya.)

Bidding Adieu to the Baseball Season

Even though there are a few games left in the season, I did make it out to Turner Field last week on a cool summer evening for a long (12 innings, but I left after nine) unceremonious farewell to 2011. Even though the final score was Florida 6, Atlanta 5, there was no disappointment for me. Emotionally, my team is the Cubs, which I characterize as “monotonous seasons of losing punctuated with several interludes of spirit-crushing defeat (1969, 1984, 1989, 2003).” This year, the Cubs punched out early. If there was a highlight of the Cubs season, it was probably winning two of three here in Atlanta on Bobby Cox tribute weekend. (shown here).

I don't consider myself a Braves fan, but like many, I developed an appreciation of the ball club during the 1980s when the WTBS was the only way to watch a game daily on television. I tell people I am a Braves follower, because I like the rhythm of tracking a team throughout the season and it's easier to do since I live in the Atlanta metro. This season is no different. Full of ups and downs – Jair Jurrjens All-Star performance before falling victim to a knee injury, the emergence of a lights out bullpen of Eric O'Flaherty, Craig Kimbrel and Jonny Venters (well, almost lights out), and Chipper Jones has been amazing this year with his clutch hitting. Conversely, I am sympathetic to the situation of the classy Martin Prado as he continues to wait until Chipper retires. This doesn't means I don't root for Atlanta from time to time, especially if it means making the playoffs and eliminating from post season competition the Cubs' arch rivals – the St. Louis Stinkin' Cardinals.

The same mixture of highs and medium lows has been characteristic with the baseball books that I have read this year. By far, my favorite was the reissue of Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, John Updike's classic of Ted Williams final game with the Boston Red Sox. The slender book is a reprint of the essay Updike wrote after he sat in the stands and witnessed Williams' last at bats (See earlier posting).

Right Off the Bat

Coincidentally, the two other baseball books that I looked at over the summer were both penned by Englishmen. In the case of Evander Lomke & Martin Rowe's Right Off the Bat: Baseball, Cricket Literature & Life, it was Martin Rowe who grew up overseas. The premise of the book is simple as the authors explain to cricket lovers about baseball and likewise to baseball fanatics the rudiments of cricket. Since I consider myself quite knowledgeable about baseball (after all Hall of Famer Sam Rice was born near my hometown,) I was anxious to learn more about cricket, but sometimes a book just isn't the way to learn about a sport. I appreciated what the authors were trying to do, but if you're a baseball guy, reading an the explanation about baseball is redundant and the cricket explanation need more diagrams (the first illustration of a cricket field appears on page 184 in the Glossary and some of the artwork left me scratching my head).

 

But the book, like any baseball season, had its fine moments, more specifically the chapter on Race and Empire, which gives a brief history of the players of color. At first these players, ranging from black players of the Caribbean to the Parsees, Hindus and Muslims who played for India, could only play for England but later competed against the mother country. It was a struggle, reminiscent of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball.

Flip Flop Fly Ball

There is no shortage of diagrams or infographics in Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure by Craig Robinson who grew up in England, but didn't begin become an obsessive fan of the game until he moved to Berlin and then finally to New York in 2007. Though there are a few short narratives, the main emphasis of the book is Robinson's quirky graphics illustrating certain aspects of the game: different managers of all the teams during Bobby Cox's tenure with the Braves, the uniform number that clubs have retired the most (after Jackie Robinson), and the longest championship droughts (it's the Cubs of course, by almost 40 years over the Cleveland Indians). Check out his website for more examples.  Fun stuff to look at, but the type is so small that Robinson has should have included a coupon for a magnifying glass.

Perhaps complaining about the size of the type qualifies as old fart talk, but judging from the average age of hardcore baseball fans who say good bye to every baseball season, it's a statistic that Robinson should include in his next book.

Disclaimer: Paul Dry Books (who published my book The Book Shopper) provided me a reviewer's copy of Right Off the Bat. I bought my own copy of Flip Flop Fly Ball, but the author himself provided the artwork.

The Tale of Two Milledgevilles

By Alfred Thigpen

Bless her heart. Ann Napolitano has attempted to fictionalize the great Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor, and embed her facsimile in her novel, A Good Hard Look. The reviews are out, as is the book, and people will take what they wish from Napolitano’s voyeuristic story, including the impression that it might actually bear any resemblance to early 1960’s Milledgeville, much less O’Connor.

Milledgeville (circa1963)

I grew up in O’Connor’s Milledgeville. My parents owned a discount dry goods store so similar to the one in the film version of Wise Blood that Hazel Motes could just as easily have bought his suit from us. From the store front window I would watch as occasional mule carts driven by old black men vied for the right-of-way with a displaced locomotive that ran down the centerline south toward the state mental asylum. Just one block west of the store was O’Connor’s alma mater, Georgia State College for Women, with its elegant Corinthian columns. You could set your clock by the whistle at Bone’s Brick Yard, or the bugle at Georgia Military College located in the old capitol, the country’s first public neo-gothic building.

To Napolitano, Milledgeville was just another southern town. No such thing. With a population of only 7,500 the former state capital was inhabited by other fascinating historic figures such as longtime U.S. Congressional Representative Carl Vinson, father of the Two-Ocean Navy Act, (which led to the build up of the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor) along with the legacy of silent film star Oliver Hardy, a young projectionist at the movie theater where he picked up an idea or two and set a precedent for every other truly gifted local with a future, namely to leave town. Napolitano misses the unique multi-racial tapestry when she digitally remasters O’Connor’s Milledgeville into various shades of white. Yet Milledgeville had a significant Cuban population owing to families of doctors fleeing Fidel Castro to practice medicine at the asylum, and unlike the common perception, black and white residents commonly interacted, whether intimately, out of spite, or both.

Around the corner from my parents’ store was the Campus Theater (circa 1930’s), and above it, the offices of a prominent lawyer, Marion Ennis. During the town’s much-anticipated sesquicentennial in 1953, a local loan shark burst into Ennis’ office and shot him dead. From there, the shooter strode to the law office of Pete Bivins, and likewise murdered him. This wild man is clearly reincarnated as Singleton, an asylum inmate in O’Connor’s short story “Partridge Festival.” There was a major difference in O’Connor’s version. Singleton, a sort of Hannibal Lector precursor, lived to be locked away. When our local madman learned the town’s tough Irish cop was in pursuit, he immediately shot himself. It was the same policeman who once explained to my mother why he sometimes shot people by saying: “That’s how I get my ginger.”

DBF 2011 Postscript & September Calendar of Book Events

Postcards from the DBF

Strike the tents. Pitch a few unwanted books into the dumpster. The Decatur Book Festival 2011 is now over as the rain from Tropical Storm Lee washes away the ink and funnel cake residue off Ponce de 
Leon Avenue. I am still processing the event, but my favorite moment of irony, besides the book vendor who disappeared from his booth with customers waiting cash in hand, was the Saturday morning festivities near the Children's Stage. There was a long queue of parents and children wanting to have a book signed and it was hot (as if Bookzilla was belching steam) and the line was long and some of the kids were not feeling any love for reading. The dedicated parents looked a little tired. Not all the zombies were at DragonCon in downtown Atlanta this weekend.

My favorite addition to the Festival was the Kudzu Readers Lounge south of the Old Courthouse. It was shaded and they brought their inventory of vintage lawn furniture to share. I didn't see a lot of people sitting and reading, but a few weary book shoppers used the respite as a place to rest or chow down on festival food and beverage.

Atlanta Area Book Events Calendar – September 2011

But as all dedicated book shoppers know, the DBF is just opening day for the fall season. Here's a sampler of book related events for the month of September. Think of it as a collection of links of different venues, so you can surf and plan your month ahead. The dollar sign designation ($$) indicates some kind of admission fee is charged. All events are in Atlanta unless noted.

Wednesday, September 7. Madeleine Albright, author Read My Pins. Lecture. Cecil B Day Chapel. Carter Presidential Library & Museum Theater.

Thursday, September 8. Marsha J. Peters, counselor and author of He Said, She Said, I Said: 7 Keys to Relationship Success. Blue Elephant Books. Decatur.

Thursday, September 8. Linda Niemann, author of Boomer: Railroad Books. Charis Books and More.

Sunday, September 11. Local poets and writers share their works of commemoration on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 attacks. Bound to be Read Books.

Tuesday, September 13. Heywood Smith, author of Wife in Law. Peerless Books, Alpharetta.

Thursday, September 15. Jeffery Wells, author of The Atlanta Ripper, The Unsolved Case of the Gate City's Most Infamous Murders. Manuels Tavern (and A Cappella Books).