The Book Shopper

Reality Blogging

One of the major advantages of blogging besides a future of large royalty checks and spam emails from virtual admirers, is the freedom to write about anything you want to in a manner that is not necessarily restricted by form. As David Shields writes in his literary montage Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2010), forms and genres have become such hybrids, that there is little distinction between fiction and nonfiction. This is especially true with one of the more slippery genres – the memoir, which is really fiction considering the vagaries of memory. “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” writes Shields.

The book is divided into twenty-six chapters of six hundred and eighteen sequences of varying in length from a short sentence to several paragraphs. Shields describes his work as taking: “various fragments of things—aborted stories, outtakes from novels, journal entries, lit crit-- and build a story out of them. I really had no idea what the story would be about; I just knew I needed to see what it would look like to set certain shards in juxtaposition to other shards.” Shields makes it even more interesting by choosing not to include attributions for his material; however, to avoid possible legal problems, Shields' publisher forced him to list of source material in the appendix. (Thankfully so, because there are other authors and articles, worth checking out.)

Not only is Shields entertaining as much as he is insightful, but the book serves a manifesto to bloggers that is more important for the prose be energetic, succinct, and not boring (the greatest sin according to Shields) than to worry about the exact slot your writing falls into. Or in the words of Sheilds: "Genre is a minimum security prison." 

Note: Another one of Shields book worth looking at is Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity  The artwork comes from the author's website though I don't really think he cares if we do the attribution or not.

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Oregon Book Shopping

Last month my longtime fiance Denise and I spent a week in Oregon to get away from the Atlanta summer heat. We flew into Portland for a couple nights and drove through the wineries of Yamhill County before finally making our way to the central Oregon coast. Book shopping is important to us, but admittedly the box we brought back with us was filled with wine and spirits not books. Here's our some pictures from the book portion our trip.

 

Powell's is synonymous with the vibrant book scene of Portland. There are other smaller bookstores nearby, but Powell's takes up an entire city block and they boast over a million books. There isn't a book they don't have, except the one I wrote :-(

 

More Chipper

Since my obsession with the retiring Chipper Jones continues, I had to continue to write about it even though it doesn't quite fit The Book Shopper blog brand. So I sent a brief thought piece, “Is There Happiness After Chipper Leaves?” to Like the Dew, A Journal of Southern Culture and Politics.

For those of you who have may have straggled from Like the Dew to here, click on the “Baseball” link on the right for other books about baseball. One baseball book that seems appropriate in light of Chipper's retirement is John Updike's Hub Fans Bid The Kid Adieu, which is basically a long essay about Updike being at Ted Williams' last game for the Boston Red Sox. I think every great ball player should have such a literary send-off.

Atlanta Area Book Events Calendar - September 2012

If you didn't get your fill of book shopping and authors at the Decatur Book Festival (DBF) over Labor Day weekend, there is a calendar full of events scheduled for September in the Atlanta area. Here's a select few. The dollar signs ($$) indicate there is some kind of admission fee involved. Traditionally, I link to the general information because you should double check the time and venue because they can change at the last moment.

Emory University Professor of Art History Sarah McPhee discusses and signs her new book Bernini's Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini, at the Carlos Museum Reception Hall on Tuesday, September 11th.

One of my favorite local book events is the Georgia Fine and Collectible Book Fair. I felt a little sad at the DBF when as a volunteer, I had to tell a gentleman that the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association 20th Annual Book Fair is no longer at the festival. The fair ($$) is Saturday and Sunday, September 22-23 at the Cobb County Civic Center in Marietta where it was held last year (see photo). For more specifics, visit here.

On Friday, September 21st, the Carter Center hosts Junot Diaz ($$), who is on the road promoting his new novel This Is How You Lose Her. (I posted some thoughts about Diaz' visit to Agnes Scott a couple years ago.) Local bookseller and author, Cliff Glaubert will also be the Center promoting his book, The Curious Vision of Sammy Levitt and Other Stories. Also in attendance at the Glaubert signing are his friends, the well-known writers Terry Kay and Pat Conroy.

The Fulton County Library brings Miami Heat basketball superstar Dwayne Wade to their library on Monday, September 10th. Wade has written a new book about fatherhood entitled, A Father First.

Yuri Taylor and Jake Austen authors of Darkest America: Black Mintrelsy from Slavery to Hip Hop will be at the Atlanta History Center ($$) on Thursday, September 6th and the Auburn Avenue Library on Friday, September 7th.

The Georgia Center of the Book is back into full swing in the month of September with: novelist Ayad Akhtar and his American Dervish (Tuesday, September 18th), baseball historian, Tim Darnell and his The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball (Monday, September 24th) and journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas author of the nonfiction Hidden America from Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make this Country Work (Wednesday, September 19th).