July 2009

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Translated Tuesday–Epileptic, by David B.

July 21, 2009 in autism, book review, graphic novels, translation by Claire | 1 comment

I didn’t buy the graphic novel Epileptic (Pantheon Press) because it was translated from the original French and I thought, “That will come in useful for a Translated Tuesday post.”  In fact, I didn’t even realize it was translated from another language until I started to notice that all the characters’ names were French and so were the locations. 

I bought it because I love graphic novels, this one had appeared on some “best graphic novel” lists, and the subject–a sibling with incurable epilepsy–spoke to me.   My nephew had epilepsy (happily, he outgrew it, which does happen with certain childhood types) and I remember how terrifying it was to see him suddenly collapse for no reason.  The drugs which controlled it made him a little sleepier, a little out of it.   That’s one of the problems with neurological disorders: almost any medication that helps also brings with it unwanted side effects.  The brain is a delicate and tricky thing.

Even more meaningful to me than my little familial history of epilepsy was that Epileptic is the story of a family struggling with a son’s neurological disorder that can never be cured.  My own son has autism.  I’ve written about it in two books.  He’s doing great and we are, without a doubt, among the lucky ones when it comes to that particular battle.  But it’s there, it’s always been there, and I had a feeling that David B.’s book would have a particular resonance for me because of it.

And it did.  The book tells the story–not always in chronological order–of the author’s childhood and young adulthood, from 1964 when he’s five until the 90′s when he’s working on this novel (and occasionally getting his parents’ not-always-positive feedback on it).  At first his family is a pretty normal French family, three kids–two boys and a girl-leading what seems to be a relatively content middle-class existence. 

Then his older brother has his first epileptic seizure. 

And from then on, his family is on a painful, psychological, medical, geographic and emotional journey that never leads them any closer to a cure. Read the rest of this entry »

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Frank McCourt In Memoriam

July 20, 2009 in memoir, tribute by Kim | No comments

Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien/Corbis Outline

Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien/Corbis Outline

Several years ago at a dinner party, each of us described how our families were persecuted in their original homeland.  A Chinese friend described the treatment by the Japanese during WWII.  A Korean had her own stories of suffering during the same era.  Our Jewish friends ticked off one pogrom after another.  Then it was my turn, “I’m Irish Protestant, I’m the oppressor!”

My great uncle was the pastor of a large Presbyterian Church in Belfast, so it’s no surprise where my family stood on the Irish conflict.  But, I’m three generations away and tend towards questioning rather than accepting.  When I studied Irish history here’s what I found:  bombings, terrorism, oppression, discrimination, hate, hate, and more hate.   To a Southern California girl it all felt very distant.  And then Frank McCourt wrote Angela’s Ashes.  Frank put a face on the suffering of a country stuck in a cycle of vindictiveness.  We can study the facts of the conflict for the rest of our lives, but Frank showed how it feels for an ordinary family to live it.  If I were teaching a history class, his book would be required reading.

Most of us experienced Frank McCourt as a writer, but a few thousand lucky Stuyvesant High School students learned creative writing from him (can you imagine?).  We have a silent partner on Bookstore People, Colin Summers is our computer genius who keeps the blog going while Claire and I write away.  Truth be told, we can hardly find our blog e-mail without Colin’s help.  Colin was one of Frank’s students and wrote a moving memorial of him on Vanity Fair Online.  Colin shares Frank’s humor and his incredible memory, plus you’ll learn how Colin’s first girlfriend dumped him.

After reading the comments on the NYT’s McCourt article, Claire and I have a new favorite McCourt quote sent in from a former student, Peter A. Geiger:

Frank McCourt was my English teacher in my senior year at Stuyvesant (class of ‘74). He introduced us to African literature such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which sounded even more dramatic in his thick brogue.

When one student asked why we should read this book, what possible use would it be to us in our lives, he answered, “You will read it for the same reason your parents waste their money on your piano lessons. So you won’t be a boring little shite the rest of your life.”

It was the most honest answer to such a question I ever heard from any teacher. Whenever the question came to my head about any subject thereafter I fondly remembered Mr. McCourt and resolved not to be a boring little shite.

The perfect way to memorialize Frank McCourt–try not to be a boring little shite.

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Open Books

July 18, 2009 in bookstore, community service, used books by Claire | No comments

It may not exactly shock you, but we’re all in favor of literacy over here at bookstore people.  So when the marketing director of Open Books, a non-profit dedicated to promoting literacy in Chicago and throughout the world, contacted us and asked if we could help publicize their “blogathon,” we were happy to oblige.  I’ll let her tell you about the blogathon in her own words.

My name is Shoshannah Feinberg and I am a member of the marketing team at Open Books, a nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary used bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond.

Since your blog covers bookstores and Open Books just signed the lease for our used bookstore, we thought you’d be interested in our cause and this upcoming event.

On July 25, Open Books is participating in Blogathon 2009 in hopes of raising $2,500 to support our literacy programs throughout Chicago. During this virtual event, we will update our blog every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight!

Want to get involved? There are three ways to help:

1) Write a post on your own blog to help us raise awareness of the event and get people talking about literacy

2) Give a financial donation by becoming a sponsor

3) Join the Open Books Blogathon team! Blog with us during the 24 hours or help us organize contests, publicity, and other fun!

If you are interested in getting more information about Open Books or Blogathon 2009, feel free to ask! I have documents that can be sent upon request.

Back to me, Claire.  I checked out the website for Open Books and it’s a pretty appealing organization.  Many of their programs are aimed at students in the Chicago area, encouraging them as both readers and writers.  They operate an online bookstore called Better Worlds that offers free shipping and competitive prices, but donates a percentage of their profit from every sale to fund literacy programs. 

They’re also environmentally responsible: they offset their carbon footprint, and, more importantly, they . . .  well, I’ll let them tell it in their own words:

In addition to selling new titles, Better World Books supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 1,600 college campuses and partnerships with nearly 1,000 libraries nationwide. So far, the company has converted more than 25 million donated books into $6.5 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, we’ve also diverted more than 13,000 tons of books from landfills . . .  we see our job as helping to find new homes for unwanted books. Thus far, we’ve donated nearly one million books to partner programs around the world. Our five primary literacy partners are Books for Africa, Room to Read, Worldfund, the National Center for Family Literacy, and Invisible Children.

As you know if you read our blog regularly, Kim and I are somewhat reluctant to support mail order bookstores because we don’t ever want to lose the local indies that give us so much pleasure, BUT if you’re going to shop online, this seems like the place to do it.

Plus Open Books is opening a real bookstore in the fall!  It’s in Chicago, and I hope once it’s opened someone will visit it and write into us about it.  The same building will house their literacy center, with a computer lab, classrooms and community space.

I can’t imagine a better reason to buy books than to help fund the spread of literacy throughout the world.

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Fighting Global Warming? An Environmentalist? Then Careful Where you Buy your Books!

July 16, 2009 in Uncategorized by Kim | 1 comment

 A witty take on how you can prevent “an ecological disaster.”  I love the 1940s WWII feel for a very current message.

Thank you to Regulator Bookshop of Durham, NC for creating “Just Around the Corner.”  Find your local independent bookstore and save the Earth!

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Translated Tuesday – Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin

July 14, 2009 in book review, translation by Kim | No comments

Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin translated by Kurt Hollander

This book will make you uncomfortable.  I squirmed a few times.   It’s the story of a gay man who turns his beauty salon into a hospice.  In an unknown time that resembles the present, at an unknown place that feels like the 87286100827790Mpoorer section of a large city, a plague hits.  Those who succumb die relatively quickly.  The narrator tells us that without the beauty salon, “the majority of the people here are strangers who have nowhere else to die.”  Incredibly noble action, feels like Mother Theresa, so why my discomfort?

Given the swine flu pandemic, the book hits a little close to home.  I’m not one to cater to hysteria, but I have noticed that several times a day I’m washing my hands as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday.”  It isn’t  just the death, it’s the loneliness.  The men in the beauty salon are utterly alone.  Once admitted to the Terminal there is no leaving and no visiting.  Families are only allowed to bring bed clothes, money, and candy.  The narrator even tries to bar God.  Most of the men are the last one living of their friends and family, as is the narrator himself:

If I had died earlier my sickness might have been sweeter, with friends attentive to my complaints standing by the foot of my bed.  Now I have to take care of myself, to silently suffer my decay, surrounded by faces I always see as if for the first time.  Some nights I get scared.  I’m afraid of what will happen when the disease reaches its full splendor.  Despite all the guests I have watched die, despite the fact that death has long believed it has the liberty to do as it pleases in the beauty salon, I realize that now that it’s coming for me I don’t know what will happen.

The narrator’s pre-plague lifestyle was hard for me to read.  I’m ambivalent about his sexuality, but picturing myself as the client of a hairdresser in drag felt edgy.  The book gave me all the information I need about the promiscuous lifestyle of bath houses and male prostitution.  Nothing was graphic, and quite frankly I wouldn’t even know how to picture what was alluded to, it just all felt very empty, distressingly empty.

The hardest part–how well the book lives into its opening quote from Read the rest of this entry »

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