Read All About It!

As a bookseller, there is nothing I love more than to share my passion for certain authors with anyone who will listen. I’ve gushed (at great length) about my passion for Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve gleefully recounted why I think Neil Gaiman is the best author ever. However, as much as I love them, Doyle and Gaiman’s books are rarely unknown to the average bookstore shopper.  However, many shoppers are unfamiliar with another author I idolize, P. G. Wodehouse.  In fact, unless you have a deep love for British comedy, you may never have heard of him at all.

Thus, dear reader, I present him to you with this bit of praise: P. G. Wodehouse is the funniest writer in the English language. Full stop. He is most well known for his Jeeves and Wooster series, about a bumbling aristocrat in the 1920′s and his ruthlessly competent valet, Jeeves. There was a fabulous TV adaptation of the series with Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves. Wodehouse was also highly involved in the musical theater scene in Britain. He even worked with Cole Porter on Anything Goes! Wodehouse enjoyed sports, particularly golf, and wrote about them often. His body of work is eclectic, but without fail each book, play, or short story will make you laugh out loud. Do not attempt to read him on the train if you are not a fan of odd looks.

My favorite Wodehouse character is one of his least known, which is great for when I want to recommend a book that a customer won’t have read yet.  Ronald Eustace Psmith, particularly in the book Leave it to Psmith, is one of the most brilliant comic characters I’ve ever read. Wodehouse had a particular talent for creating impossible conundrums for his characters and orchestrating ingenious solutions to resolve them. Psmith is perhaps the finest example of this.

Will a brief sample of Wodehouse’s writing convince you where I alone never could? From Leave it to Psmith, Psmith on his unusual name:

“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?”

In Leave it to Psmith, Psmith has decided to leave the family fish business and strike out on his own. His advertisement in the newspaper:

“LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
Psmith Will Help You
Psmith Is Ready For Anything
DO YOU WANT
Someone To Manage Your Affairs?
Someone To Handle Your Business?
Someone To Take The Dog For A Run?
Someone To Assassinate Your Aunt?
PSMITH WILL DO IT
CRIME NOT OBJECTED TO
Whatever Job You Have To Offer
(Provided It Has Nothing To Do With Fish)
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
Address Applications T “R. Psmith, Box 365″
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH”

If even those bits of magical prose do not convince you, the fact that Wodehouse was knighted into the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire may! Stop by the Open Books store if you would like to discuss Wodehouse with me, as there is quite literally nothing I would enjoy more. I may also start in on some of his contemporaries, such as Evelyn Waugh… although I’ll leave that blog entry for another day.

Meghan O'Rourke

Open Books is proud to welcome nationally renowned literary critic, poet, and essayist, Meghan O’Rourke.  Join us at the Open Books store on Wednesday October 26, 2011 at 7 pm where Meghan will be reading from and discussing her newest book, The Long Goodbye: A Memoir of Grief.  The event is free to attend and includes refreshments and a book signing.

The memoir has its origins in O’Rourke’s 2009 series of columns for Slate in which she chronicled her real-time grief born of her mother’s death to cancer on Christmas 2008.

The Long Goodbye

“What I didn’t want the book to be,” O’Rourke says, “was just an account of my suffering that pretends it’s important simply because I suffered.  I wanted to write a book about how writing, how the act of making, is redemptive. But I felt that the honest act of making was intimate and raw.” Ultimately, she wrote the book she needed available to her, but which did not exist.

In addition to the intimate and introspective handling of her specific experiences, O’Rourke tackles our current culture of grief, questioning our age’s ability to provide healthy expressions of grief.  She calls grief “the last taboo” because, she says, “it seems to me that Americans are very uncomfortable around the topic of death. I mean, it’s understandable. Who wants to think about it? And yet if we don’t, we’re cutting ourselves off from a huge part of our human legacy.” She also dethrones, at least for her, the traditional five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance: ”After my mother died people kept mentioning the stages to me. Or they would say, ‘You must be very angry.’ The truth was, I had moments of being angry…but that was not my dominant emotion. The dominant emotion was yearning. I didn’t know what my place in the world was anymore. I was more sad than angry.”

O’Rourke also turned to grief’s literary landscape both for herself and for book research.  She cites C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and John Ashbery as helpful and inspirational.

For more on Meghan’s work, visit meghanorourke.net.

It’s time again for Chicago to unite under one book!  This fall, the Chicago Public Library is hosting their biannual One Book, One Chicago (1B1C) program, marking the 10th anniversary since their debut in the fall of 2001.  One Book, One Chicago was started to provide Chicago residents a sense of community and literary culture as they engage with other Chicagoans in various book discussion groups accessible at multiple locations throughout the city. The program provides residents a chance to read “regardless of race, gender, age, income, or the neighborhood they call home” (Chicago Public Library).

This fall’s 1B1C selection is Saul Bellow’s literary classic The Adventures of Augie March.  Augie March follows the protagonist Augie from adolescence to adulthood as he grows up in Chicago during the Great Depression.  Along the way he encounters new adventures, friends, and obstacles. Dealing with the everyday issues that life throws Augie’s way, this relatable book is perfect for any teen or young adult.

Through October, the CPL will host various events surrounding Augie March.  From readings and lectures, to an interactive tour of “Augie’s Chicago”, there are events for all ages and interests!  One of the scheduled readings that caught our eye is taking place at the elegant Victory Gardens Theater this Monday, September 26.   At I Am Augie: A Staged Reading, you’ll have the unique opportunity to hear actors (including some Tony Award winners !) such as Deanna Dunagan, Eddie Torres, Denis Zacek, and Ian Barford along with special guest local author Scott Turow, read from Bellow’s book.  These actors represent the best of Chicago Broadway and hail from the Teatro Vista, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass and Victory Gardens Theaters.  This star-studded event is just $6!  For information visit victorygardens.org or call Victory Gardens at (773) 871-3000.

To learn more about events surrounding Augie, check out the CPL website. To view “Augie’s Chicago” click here. Interested in finding the book at your local library? Use the CPL book finder.  (Feel free to call the Open Books store and see if we have copies, too!)  If you can’t make it to any of the above events but still want to learn more about Augie, come to Open Books’ October Open Book Club Meeting! The discussion will take place on the Tuesday, October 11th at 6 p.m. and as always, it’s free!

We at Open Books are incredibly excited about the new One Book, One Chicago pick. The Adventures of Augie March is a book I’ve always wanted to read but haven’t yet found the time for- and now it gets to jump to the head of my “to-read” queue! To make things even better, Open Books has decided to discuss Augie at our  October Open Book Club meeting (October 11, 6PM, free), which means our book club will be chatting about it at the same time as the rest of the city. If you’re looking for a One Book, One Chicago discussion group, definitely consider coming by Open Books on the 11th!

As excited as I am about the newest One Book pick, I have to say that I was even more excited about this past summer’s pick- Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. In fact, it has been my plan for a few months (every since my Sherlockian blog post, in fact) to write a long-winded and breathless essay on Neil Gaiman and why he is awesome and why you should read his works, and clearly my segue from Augie March to One Book, One Chicago to Neverwhere to Neil Gaiman gives me the perfect opportunity to do so.

So, Neil Gaiman! Neil Gaiman is one of the most well-known fantasy authors writing today; he is the author of such seminal works at the Sandman graphic novel series and American Gods. Although Mr. Gaiman has a distinct writing style, he is also versatile and loves to skip around in genres. He writes graphic novels (Sandman and The Books of Magic, amongst many others), fantasies (Neverwhere, American Gods), romantic comedies (Anansi Boys), humor (Good Omens, co-authored with Terry Pratchett), short stories (Fragile Things, Smoke and Mirrors), non-fiction (Don’t Panic, a guide to the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), young adult (The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Stardust), screenplays (MirrorMask, Coraline), TV scripts (The Doctor’s Wife, written for Doctor Who), and he even penned the lyrics (and sang!) with his wife Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, and Damian Kulash on their record 8in8. Am I missing anything? Probably!

Basically, allow me as a bookseller to tell you this: Neil Gaiman is pretty great and if you haven’t already, you should read some of his work. His writings are powerful and emotional and say things I often think, but can’t quite put into words; he has the ability to find the eeriness in every day life and, while pointing it out, make it beautiful. If you are new to Gaiman, I recommend you start with The Sandman and never look back, but if you prefer more typical novels, then Neverwhere is a powerful introduction.

Gaiman is a particularly fun author to follow because he offers a great deal of access to his readers. He blogs on his website and often gives teasers on new things he’s working on and answers readers’ questions. He is a very prolific twitterer (@neilhimself) as well. Gaiman interacts with his readership more than any author I’ve seen, which may account for his incredible popularity in certain circles. He is also a tireless advocate for libraries, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and getting books into the hands of children (through his All Hallow’s Read idea)… and as such, Neil Gaiman is an author right up Open Books’ alley!

If you want to know more, stop in at the Open Books Store. I will gladly talk your ear off!

The cover seen most around town.

Fall is upon us–which means it’s time for another round of Chicago Public Library’s One Books, One Chicago program.  This fall marks the literary celebration’s 10th anniversary and 21st book! (For a complete list, go HERE.)  The Open Book Club will be participating by designating its October 11 meeting to the latest selection, Chicagoan Saul Bellow’s 1953 novel The Adventures of Augie March.

The novel follows Depression-era Everyman (and perhaps anti-hero?), Augie March, as he grows up with his brothers and single mother, and meanders his way through a variety of jobs (many of them on the dark edges of society), women, and circumstance. In his 1953 New York Times review, Robert Gorham Davis gives us a starting point on how to relate to his character, as well as his connection to literary history:

“If this resistance to commitment, to identification, this alternation of involvement and detachment keeps Augie from having much substance as a person, it makes him an ideal observer, and a very typical one. From the beginning the anti-romantic, picaresque novel has been the history of such sharp-eyed, alienated individuals, without status, adrift in the great cities of post-Renaissance Europe. They had to survive by their wits, they saw life from beneath, and were quickly stripped of illusions.”

 

A dense tome at 600 pages, filled with his various encounters and begging us to ask, “Where is this all going…?” it could be considered an “unconventional choice for a community reading program” as admitted by the One Book, One Chicago blog.  But, they counterpoint, “it is in fact an ideal selection for a program aiming to bring people together around a book. You cannot read this book on your own. It begs for discussion.”

This pulp-y cover looks more fun!

We would love for you to make us a part of your Augie March community! The Book Club meets the second Tuesday of each month at 6 pm in a no-stress environment for casual conversation and Book Store staff lead discussion.  The events are Free and All are welcome. No monthly commitment required. For more info and a run down of the titles in the Club’s queue, click HERE.