BOOKNOTES, the newsletter of THE ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

Fiction

The English Major
by Jim Harrison (Grove)

The protagonist of this irresistibly entertaining novel has lost most of what mattered to him: the farm he's run for twenty-five years, the unfaithful wife who has become career-obsessed, and his beloved dog.

Sixty-year-old Cliff embarks on a multistate road trip, and his exploits include indulging in a lusty affair with a former student, pondering renaming state birds and places, visiting his successful son in San Francisco, fly-fishing whenever possible, and philosophizing in true English major fashion.

You can't help becoming inordinately fond of this hilariously irascible, yet wryly self-aware character, as he finds peace with his world, anew. -E Dorfman

To Siberia
by Per Petterson (Graywolf)

It is rare—even among master storytellers—to find a gentle voice that is pure enough to trace the feelings and musings of a child. Per Petterson has this gift, and the reader can’t resist the mesmerizing pull of this coming-of-age story of a brother and sister with neglecting parents and a looming Nazi invasion. With stunning prose, this simple story unravels flawlessly and is not to be missed.

To Siberia is Petterson's most recent novel since Out Stealing Horses, which was an international bestseller and one of the New York Times Book Review's top ten books of 2007. -J. Stark

Vacation
by Deb Olin Unferth (McSweeneys)

Unferth's eagerly awaited first novel is an adventure starring the ordinary Myers, whose only distinguishing characteristic is the funny shape of his head. Myers is stalking his wife, who is stalking another man, Gray. By proxy, Myers is also stalking Gray, whose daughter and ex-wife are looking for him in South America, unbeknownst to Gray, who might be suffering from amnesia. Confused? Don't worry; Unferth unfurls her swirling plot with ease, weaving the reader's own inevitable questioning into the story. Vacation is homage to these unhinged times, where the connections we have to others are tenuous at best, and is simply one of those books you must read to believe. -M. Woolbright

Death with Interruptions
by José Saramago (Harcourt)

In his latest novel, the Portuguese Nobel laureate conjures the ultimate scenario: What if death (that's small d—the death assigned to one particular country—who also happens to be a woman) decided to cease harvesting human lives? A dream come true—which soon turns to nightmare, as terminal cases linger indefinitely with no hope of recovery or deliverance; as social, political, and business institutions are shaken to their foundations.

She (death) soon sees the impracticality of her experiment, but then—she falls in love with a cello player.

There you have it—love and death—the great preoccupations of all art; perhaps Saramago's last word. -P. Aaron

Couch
by Benjamin Parzybok (Small Beer Press)

When their apartment is unexpectedly flooded, three roommates must move a couch that exerts its will upon them by becoming lighter or heavier depending on the direction they travel; a couch that is unscathed after being hit by a train; a couch that inspires strange people to offer ridiculous sums to buy it; a couch that proves seaworthy and takes them far into the ocean; a couch that demands to be carried through a Central American jungle with armies of trigger-happy bandits in hot pursuit; a couch that may be as old as the world and powerful enough to either annihilate or redeem it. -C. Sabatini

2666
by Roberto Bolaño (Farrar Strauss & Giroux)

Early in 2666, two scholars are discussing an author's style and agree that "delicately" is the most fitting description of how he captures human essence. This is, perhaps, also the best way to describe Bolaño's own style. As a poet turned novelist he delicately arranges each word, building a narrative of individual segments into a thunderous symphony of life and death. Every facet of the human condition is visited somewhere in these pages; yet, disturbingly, violence is the central theme. 2666 is a supremely important work of contemporary literature and will cement Bolaño's reputation as one of the most talented novelists of his generation. -J. Zaidi

Demons in the Spring
by Joe Meno (Akashic)

Demons in the Spring is a delight—both for the quiet intensity of Meno’s short stories and for the illustrations by twenty young artists that accompany them. With humor, compassion, and childlike wonder, Meno shows us the unusual, comical lengths people go to in order to find love (a Stockholm bank robber tries to befriend his hostages); the incomprehensible ways love eludes us (a man's wife turns into a cloud whenever he kisses her); and the ways we try to hide or overcome our grief (a three-year-old girl only leaves the house with a white sheet over her head). -C. Schwennsen

The Flying Troutmans
by Miriam Toews (Counterpoint)

When Hattie's eleven-year-old niece, Thebes, calls her in the middle of the night explaining that she and her brother can no longer take care of their mentally ill mother, Hattie travels from Paris to place her sister in a psych ward. With the sudden realization of the great responsibility she has taken on, Hattie piles the kids into a van in a desperate attempt to find their father.

Miriam Toews has created a story about average people coping with difficult situations and their tendency to run from them. Along the journey, they discover what truly matters and stick together, facing problems head-on. -J. Ditzel

Home
by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

"Can the Scotsman change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil." These are the thoughts of Jack Boughton, once a petty thief, scoundrel, and brooding drunk, the prodigal son who has now returned home to Gilead.

In Home, a companion book to Gilead, Robinson sets her attention to another pious family in the same Iowa town. Through the quiet, self-deprecating humor of her third-person narrator and her still, solemn prose, Robinson dissects questions of personal space, secrets, generations, forgiveness, love, death, faith, and most importantly, what makes a place home. -H. Jarvenpaa

The Given Day
by Dennis Lehane (William Morrow)

In his previous novels Lehane delivers gritty, engaging narratives where flawed, everyday people cope with extraordinary challenges. The Given Day continues this stylistic tradition while transporting readers nearly two hundred years into Boston's past, when deadly influenza, communist bombings, rampant corruption, and political ineptitude are leading the city toward chaos and destruction. There is no simple good or evil, black or white amid these pages, for in Lehane's world everything and everyone is a multifaceted combination of rights and wrongs. A magnificent mixture of history, literary storytelling, and page-turning intrigue, this is certainly Lehane's finest novel yet. –J. Zaidi

Pretty Monsters
by Kelly Link (Viking Juvenile)

Kelly Link's stories are filled with aliens, would-be wizards, fictional television characters that may actually be real, and, of course, monsters. They are also filled with people dealing with the stuff of reality: conflicts with parents, awkward and confusing crushes, extreme poverty, and that murky thing called identity. She creates worlds (and worlds within worlds) both playful and frightening, where the real world and the world of fantasy seamlessly meet. While the title is touted as her first young adult story collection, it is one that will appeal to all ages. -P. Davis

The Ghost in Love
by Jonathan Carroll (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

Jonathan Carroll pushes readers of his latest novel to answer questions of mortality, fate, and the natural order of life with his unique humor, wit, and captivating charm. Meet Ben, an average city-dweller with a strong, beautiful girlfriend, German, and their aging mutt, Pilot. Don't forget another—Ben's ghost—sent to figure out why Ben didn't die as scheduled. Was it a computer glitch, or is Carroll playing philosopher, hinting at something greater? The answer is yes, all done with ease and a keen eye at seeing what few others can. Oh, and with a talking dog, too, of course. -A. King

The Gone-Away World
by Nick Harkaway (Knopf)

Gonzo Lubitsch and his colorful crew of troubleshooters are on a quest to save the world. Following a breakthrough that proves information is the glue holding matter together, a rogue corporation creates the ultimate weapon: It makes matter go away. The ensuing environmental and genetic catastrophe provides the backdrop for a cast of characters that includes pirates, nightmares, ninjas, mutants, and militant mimes. Harkaway's prose bubbles with inventive ideas and wry humor. Riffing on the nature of our identity as individuals and as a species while driving the plot through intriguing twists and turns, this debut novel is an exuberant ride through literary genres. -M. Bucher

The Butt
by Will Self (Bloomsbury)

Like the darkest, most convoluted episode of The Twilight Zone, the world Will Self created here seems imaginary and entertaining, but when you take a closer look, it suddenly does not seem that foreign. Tom Brodzinski's life is thrown into a tailspin the moment his still-smoldering cigarette butt lands on a man on the balcony below his. He is immediately wrapped up in an oppressive legal system riddled with inconsistencies and drastically unwarranted punishment. Tom finds himself on an outrageous journey to pay the consequences, but they just keep adding up until he reaches the thrilling, if not unsettling, conclusion. -J. Wells

Anathem
by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)

In his science fiction, Stephenson is known for delving into the big issues of our time: politics, religion, philosophy. In his latest tome, Anathem, Stephenson surpasses his previous ruminations as he introduces us to the devout philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists that live behind the monastic walls of Saunt Edhar. Fraa Erasmas is one of the devout, a boy of eighteen who lives a simple life of study separate from the corruption of the secular world. Soon, though, as the gates of Saunt Edhar open for their once-a-decade ritual, the two worlds, with the help of Erasmas, will have to work together to stave off the destruction of their shared landscape. -C. Stryer

The Tsar's Dwarf
by Peter H. Fogtdal
trans. by Tiina Nunnally (Hawthorne Books)

Fogtdal's story is grotesque and sometimes brutal, but so richly imagined that it is captivating from the start. It is the story of Sorine, a Danish dwarf and self-described "curiosity cabinet" who is taken from the disease-ridden basement in which she lives to Tsar Peter the Great's court in Russia. Here the lines are blurred between Sorine's world of filth and the comparative lavishness of the nobles, who treat dwarves both as "poppets," to be coddled and dressed up, and as brutish animals. Part historical fiction, part nightmare, The Tsar's Dwarf is a heart-wrenching tale of humanity. -M. Woolbright

The Man in the Picture
by Susan Hill (Penguin)

Dr. Parmitter, an old professor, relates a story about a painting of a Venetian carnival he has on his wall to a former tutor, Oliver. The painting has a way of capturing and drawing the viewer in, but there is also something much more ominous about it. Although Hill's novel is set in the present, it has the elegance of a Victorian ghost story—that Gothic feeling of dread and foreboding. You won't be able to walk away from this eerie story without being disturbed. -G. Berry

Nonfiction

Eat Memory: Great Writers at the Table
edited by Amanda Hesser (Norton)

Regular readers of the New York Times Magazine will delight in this small collection of essays culled from Amanda Hesser's column, "Eat, Memory." Literary giants Pico Iyer, Ann Patchett, Kiran Desai, and Chang-Rae Lee are all included, among dozens more. Their thoughts—all memories, all endearing—will no doubt bring out your own stories of food, for Hesser says that "food is the royal road to the unconscious." Take this book from the park to the kitchen: Included are recipes highlighted in several authors' essays. Julia Child only forgot how to make côtelettes de veau en surprise once. You? Never. -A. King

The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead)

It is easy for Americans to mock and moralize when it comes to their Puritan forebears. Sarah Vowell asks us to remember that the immigrants of the Mayflower and the Arbella are chronologically closer to the Middle Ages than to modern times, that in a way they are our medieval era. Yet the echoes of their beliefs still sound in our politicians' speeches. Furthermore, microscopic and seemingly insignificant religious disagreements yield catastrophic results just as much now as they did then. This book examines the beginnings of Boston in a wry and freewheeling essay that is captivating, relevant to contemporary politics, and very, very funny. -C. Sabatini

The Forever War
by Dexter Filkins (Knopf)

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins's account of life in Afghanistan and Iraq for soldiers and civilians caught up on all sides of these wars is both terrifying and moving. Pieces of the story emerge gradually, embedded within haunting details, such as the former teacher of Persian, wearing the obligatory burqa on a rare trip outside, saying, "This is like a death." The journey (1998–2007) is one of jaunty-humored survivors, deadly true believers, and order both unraveling and unexpectedly restoring itself, punctuated by Filkins's returns to the West to "float among the normals," as returnees call it. -K.M. Allman

Lives of the Artists
by Calvin Tomkins (Henry Holt)

In this fascinating compilation of essays first published in The New Yorker, Tomkins explores the lives and work, challenges and choices, and obsessions and egos of ten contemporary artists who answer that age-old question, "What is art?" with "Whatever we want it to be." Among the artists profiled are Matthew Barney, whose materials include tapioca and Vaseline; the painter John Currin, whose work might be described as "Renaissance meets Internet porn"; and James Turrell, whose medium is light. Tomkins offers up the intimate, the salacious, and the humorous in this brilliant chronicle of ten of the twenty-first-century avant-garde. L. Paus

The Monster Loves His Labyrinth
by Charles Simic (Ausable Press)

Have you ever sliced pickles into your breakfast cereal or had a plate of foie gras paired with a dry Chardonnay? U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic serves his reader a mixed menu of the unlikeliest pairings: stories of suffering and humor, the mythic in the mundane, and sexy intelligence with a bite of folksy vulgarity. The Monster Loves His Labyrinth is a sketchbook of short observations, autobiographical memories, and inspirational gleanings gathered over the course of many years. To quote Simic himself, it is like "A good-tasting homemade stew of angels and beasts." Digest well, and enjoy in small servings. -H. Jarvenpaa

Hurry Down Sunshine
by Michael Greenberg (Other Press)

Hurry Down Sunshine is an intimate look at the myriad ways loyalty and love emanated from and found Michael Greenberg during the summer of his daughter's crack-up. At fifteen Sally spent nearly a month in a psychiatric ward battling mania and consequently drug-addled while her family anxiously and helplessly looked on. Greenberg tends honestly and with a tremendous sensitivity to this experience and uses this memoir as an opportunity to explore the ambiguity of mental illness and the extreme challenges it can bring to a family. -J. Wells

Descartes' Bones: A skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
by Russell Shorto (Doubleday)

When Descartes shifted science's base from theology to reason in Discourse on the Method, he started a battle that still rages today: faith vs. reason and the sacred vs. the secular. Shorto traces the remains of the "father of modern philosophy" from the time of his death in 1650 to today. Touching on the scientific milieu through these centuries and the characters who encountered Descartes' bones, he lays bare a mystery that isn't necessarily solvable but that makes for an extremely curious and engaging history of the philosopher's ongoing influence. -P. Davis

Nothing to be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes (Knopf)

Best-known for his stunning fiction, Julian Barnes now turns his pen to an amazingly written work of nonfiction. Nothing to Be Frightened Of is the author's courageous look at death and everything death has lent itself to in humanity: art, philosophy, religion, and life. Barnes grapples the ideas of old with societal life today in an attempt to find a better understanding of the most mysterious and terrifying part of life, its extinction. What results is a thoughtful and satisfying reflection on a subject that sometimes lacks the public attention it deserves. -J. Wells

The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
by Somaly Mam (Spiegel & Grau)

Somaly Mam, a Phnong woman from northeastern Cambodia, survived rape, beatings, and torture in the brothels into which she was sold. She escaped this fate to become a volunteer health worker and eventually found AFESIP, which rescues prostitutes and helps them build new lives, as she has.

Her story is one of courage and resilience, both her own and that of those she has saved. It is also an indictment of the cruelty and violence under which many of the world's women and children live (both in brothels and within their own families) and a call to action. -K.M. Allman

Epilogue
by Anne Roiphe (Harper)

Anne Roiphe's thirty-nine-year marriage comes to an abrupt end when her husband collapses and dies in the lobby of their New York apartment building. In this raw and revealing memoir of widowhood, seventy-year-old Roiphe must confront the weight of absence and the challenges of being alone even as she attempts to remake her life, as she says, as her partner would have wished her to do. From her struggle to lift the gauze of grief to her foray into online dating, this is a book that will give courage to those who have been forced to begin life anew. -L. Paus

The Big Necessity
by Rose George (Metropolitan)

Welcome to the taboo topic of bodily waste and its disposal. Jack Sim founded the WTO—World Toilet Organization—as a way to legitimize the subject and one day hopes there will be a Peace Prize for Sanitation. Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of India's largest charity, has installed half a million public toilets all over India. In China, rural households are connecting their toilets to a biogas digester that can be used for cooking and lighting. The power of this book is that it proves if we can get past the potty jokes, we can have the important conversation about not wasting water on wastewater. -H. Myers

You Are Here
by Thomas Kostigen (Harperone)

Kostigen demonstrates through firsthand reportage the effects of our behavior and actions on the environment. He goes to all corners of the globe, seeking out and describing the consequences of coal-generating plants in Linfen City, China—one of the most polluted places in the world—renegade logging in both the Amazon and Borneo, and the slums of Mumbai as what could be the larger picture of our future, and most importantly our drinkable water. Kostigen suggests that even small changes in our behavior will cumulatively make a difference. -G. Berry

Children's

Graceling
by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt)

Lose yourself in this fantastic tale of Katsa, a young woman "graced" with a special gift that strikes fear into everyone who looks into her eyes. All, that is, except one: Po, a striking Lienid prince with a gift of his own. This saga will take you from the mountains of Monsea to an island castle, with our heroine fighting evil at every fast-paced turn. Cashore's first novel will hook you with magical kingdoms, courts, and powerful lords, but none more than by watching Katsa grow from an insecure girl to a strong woman. More adventures are sure to come. -A. King

Paper Towns
by John Green (Dutton)

Quentin Jacobsen is in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman. She's lived next door to him all of his life and once, before popularity, they were close friends. Admiring from afar, Quentin pines, waiting for his chance. It comes sooner than he thinks.

Freshly humiliated by high school relationship drama, Margo enlists Quentin in an all-night quest of sabotage and subversion. But just as quickly as she comes back into his life, she disappears, leaving no trace but the clues that only Quentin can follow. Part love story, part mystery, Paper Towns captures the sorrow and joy of teenage relationships. -C. Stryer

One
by Kathryn Otoshi (Ko Kids Books)

Poor quiet little Blue gets picked on a lot by the hotheaded Red. Over time, Red's bullying grows so strong that all of the other colors are afraid of him, and everyone is feeling "blue," too. That is until the day that the number One comes along and shows the group how to stand up and be counted. They learn that they are all unique and special in their way and can become whatever they want. One is a marvelous new picture book that not only teaches children basic colors and numbers ... it also inspires the young imagination with an important life lesson. -D. Hsieh

Ten Little Fingers & Ten Little Toes
by Mem Fox
illus. by Helen Oxenbury (Harcourt)

Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury each have created best-selling picture books loved by many, and here in Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, they collaborate to present a wonderful picture book for youngsters. Bright and charming illustrations of babies combine with thoughtful and catchy rhymes to remind us that not only are there nothing quite as adorable as the tiny hands and feet of babies but also that no matter where we are in the world—of what country, creed, or race—we are all the same; Not a bad message to grow up with. -D. Hsieh

Classic Comics and the Birth of Visual Narrative

by Christopher Sabatini

The art of storytelling is only a moment younger than language itself, and from the Homeric epics on down to the serialized novels of Dickens, there has been an allure in getting the story a little bit at a time. With the explosion of American newspapers in the 1920s and ’30s, a new form of narrative was born: the daily comic strip. The past few years have seen some exciting collections of classic comics from the early era of the art form.

A sublime example of this is Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie (IDW Publishing). The first volume of this projected complete set beautifully compiles the strip’s origin, reprinting from the miraculously preserved original artwork. Anyone who knows Annie only from the stage or screen owes it to himself to get acquainted with the character’s origin.

Milton Caniff gave birth to the adventure strip with his groundbreaking Terry and the Pirates (IDW Publishing). The series does well with the archival treatment, as the individual strips flow together seamlessly. And the artistry is fully preserved; the lavish colors of the Sunday strips are gorgeously reproduced, and every line of every intricate background scene is crisp and clear.

Perhaps the greatest and most influential of the early comic strips is George Herriman's Krazy & Ignatz (Fantagraphics Books), set in the protean lunar landscape of Coconino County, a setting reminiscent of Salvador Dalí or Hieronymus Bosch. The arrangement of the strips is likewise unhinged—the full-sheet storylines are free of the boxy constraints that have come to be expected of comics—the action will often flow in circles or bounce all around the page. Krazy & Ignatz elevates the medium to high art. The complete Sunday strips are available in ten separate volumes from Fantagraphics, and many of the dailies are included in last year’s collection, The Kat Who Walked in Beauty.

It is momentous that these masterpieces, once seen intrinsically as disposable entertainment, are now receiving the treatment that they deserve.