Keith Richards.

Jessica Pallington West has a book out, What Would Keith Richards Do? Daily Affirmations From a Rock and Roll Survivor, from whence the title gem came.

Amazon info but no free reads inside the book. Alas.

Labels: books, music, people, quotation

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:12 PM|| |

The Book Seer

Entertaining. Tell it what book you just finished reading (assuming, of course, that you liked the book) and it will tell you what amazon.com and LibraryThing think you should read next (assuming, of course, that you want to read something similar).

Labels: books, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:13 AM|| |

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: writing essays and memoirs for love and money by Adair Lara. [an Amazon click]

Adair Lara was talking about her new book this past Wednesday at Book Passage, Corte Madera. (She also teaches classes there on occasion.)

I mentioned her appearance on Facebook (although I didn't drive across the bridge to see her) and added

Adair Lara wrote a column for the Chronicle ... until she didn't. I liked the column. Miss her.

A sample of her column work.

Fun thing about Amazon is that you can (often) poke into a book and see how it begins. On the first page of Lara's new book, I read

If I even think about writing, I find myself in the pantry eating cereal straight from the box. Writing is a scary, vulnerable, and in a way conceited act, one that says the words you set down are worth a stranger's time to read, and that this is a worthy use of your own time.

I may take Lara's book to Camp to read, even if I'm not intending to write a memoir any time soon. ...

Labels: books, commentary, people, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:32 AM|| |

Autograph fraudster poses as Capote, Vonnegut, Crichton | Philadelphia Daily News | 05/19/2009

Man who forged autographs in books (for resale) pleads guilty.

Labels: books, crime, news

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:11 PM|| |

This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing

[...]

The underlying problem facing the industry is twofold: there are too many books, and too many of them are derivative of each other. You've heard of Gresham's Law—the idea that bad money drives out good. Our industry has long suffered from Grisham's Law, where opportunistic authors and publishers try to imitate John Grisham and other category leaders with books modeled on someone else's commercial success. That strategy might make sense if there were great demand for these imitators, but in today's overcrowded, competitive marketplace, this kind of thinking is dangerous, because it devalues the environment into which we present our work.

[...]

[link via Dystel & Goderich Management blog]

Labels: book promotion, books, publishers, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:34 PM|| |

I found a good home for my softcover edition of The ALICE B. TOKLAS COOKBOOK. I have an older, hardcover, first edition that I intend to keep but, really, there aren't many differences 'twixt these two.

One difference, the newer edition has a foreword by MFK Fisher.

One other crucial difference, for those of us who spent our young adult years in the sixties and seventies, this edition contains the recipe that (for legal reasons) the publisher could not include in the first edition. Yes, the recipe for Haschich Fudge -- no, not brownies ... fudge, even though the talk was always of Alice B. Toklas brownies.

The Haschich Fudge recipe is not a Toklas original, but rather came to Toklas from painter and film-maker Brion Gysin, according to the notes.

-------------
Haschich Fudge (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)

This is the food of Paradise -- of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un évanouissement reveillé.'

Take 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of coriander. These should be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa [sic] can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called canibus indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.
-------------

Now that I've saved the recipe (although for what reason I don't know), I can pass the copy of the later edition on to someone who will give it a good home.

Labels: books, food, history, recipes, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:46 PM|| |

let me just mention that TRANQUILITY WITHOUT PILLS: all about Transcendental Meditation by Jhan Robbins and David Fisher (1972) is a thinly-disguised advertisement for TM and has not much of anything with practical application.

Oh, it talks (vaguely) about what happens in classes. It has testimonials from happy campers. It also has "do not do this at home alone" sorts of warnings and "come in for your free first sessions" come-ons and "you really need to get the Real Authorized training or don't even bother" notes.

Don't bother reading it if you're looking for any substance.

Labels: books

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:22 PM|| |

Mary Jane Maffini and I met over dinner at Left Coast Crime. She'd arrived in Hawaii from Canada and was hungry. I'd arrived from California and was hungry. Why not share a table?

We exchanged names and stories. I told her that I'd almost been named "Mary Jane" by my parents after a distant ancestress. Turns out one of her sleuths is named MacPhee. A name in my family tree too. Zounds. Who couldn't like someone as nice as Maffini, who is also probably a cousin if we go back far enough?

MJM just posted a link on Facebook to her new book trailer.

Labels: books, writers

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:07 AM|| |

The 18 most memorable movie library scenes in honor of National Library Week

Library of Congress proudly twitters that they nab two of the spots!

Labels: books, libraries, movies

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:45 PM|| |

 

No, actually. That's Ripley, Borderlands Books' hairless cat.

Ripley sat in my lap purring and snoozing during Sawyer's talk and was reluctant to leave it when the presentation was over.

We hied off to Foreign Cinema afterwards for a late dinner, Sawyer having signed my copy of WAKE before the event kicked off.

Check out the book and the other seventeen books and zillions of short fiction items Sawyer has written.

The pilot for a FLASH FORWARD series is up for consideration in the next few days. Good luck to Sawyer on that.

After dinner at Foreign Cinema it was home again home again via the #14 Mission and the #30 Stockton, and a quarter mile walk up Telegraph Hill and home. The transit connections, though, were perfect. Maybe a four minute wait for the #14 and another four minute wait for the #30. Can't get much better than that. Thanks, Muni.

Labels: books, bookstores, photographs, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:41 PM|| |

New blog from Crawford Kilian: Write Your Nonfiction Book ... Online!

The blog is new (only three posts so far) but I'm expecting some interesting content. Currently online, the book proposal.

Blog also includes links, links, links to blogs, links to online magazines, links to a collection of Kilian blogs, links to Web writing resources, more.

Labels: book promotion, books, nonfiction, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:31 PM|| |

Query Shark

How an agent =really= feels. Query critiques for the strong-at-heart.

e.g. Please don't ever put I look forward to hearing from you soon in a query letter. It sets my teeth on edge. Other agents may not have quite the ..ah...toothy! reaction that I do, but why risk they do. Be safe. Don't say it.

Hosted by Janet (Jet) Reid at FinePrint Literary.

Her voice may sound familiar to you.

Shhh.

Labels: agents, books, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:49 AM|| |

Read-it-First with Suzanne Beecher

Join St. Martin’s Read-it-First e-mail book club and sample a hot NEW release each week. Each weekday morning, we’ll send you a taste of the week’s featured title right to your inbox. By the end of the week, you’ll have read approximately a few chapters, enough to decide whether it is the right book for you…sometimes just before it even hits the stores!

And it’s all completely FREE!

I signed up just in time. Next week (April 13th) is featuring Louise Ure's latest: LIARS ANONYMOUS.

    Click cover image for more info.

Labels: books, mystery, writers

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:48 PM|| |

TV interview on ABC News 10's Sacramento and Co.

Simon talks about dyslexia and his writing and the back doors you learn to use to do what you want to do when the dyslexia is holding you back. Simon, for those who don't know him, writes thrillers (as Simon Wood) and horror (as Simon Janus) and (under yet another pseudonym, Simon Oaks) has a nonfiction book out last month, WILL MARRY FOR FOOD SEX AND LAUNDRY.

Simon's Web site

Labels: books, mystery, video, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:41 PM|| |

Book trailers are like movie trailers, in a way. Movie trailers cut and piece from the movie to give you a taste of what you will see when you see the movie, to lure you into the theater to buy a ticket.

Book trailers are a video advertisement for a written book. They cut and piece from the book -- add sound, action, pictures, sometimes live actors -- and turn the result into what would be a mini-trailer for the movie the book would be if the book were a movie. The hope is that you will see the trailer and buy the book.

Came across this one just now and thought it was a good example.



There was a panel that included some talk on book trailers at LCC a few weeks ago. You can make your own trailer for something less than $100 (and up) and post it on Facebook or your blog or you can pay one of the companies that know what they're doing (Circle of Seven Productions was specifically named) and for something in the range of $2K-3K (although the price can be much higher, depending on your needs) you get a professional video and the placement/marketing expertise of the company. Or you can make your own trailer and contract with a company like Circle of Seven to do the promotion.

Book trailers as advertisement. As lures. With hopes that the trailer will go viral and the fever will translate into sales.

This trailer (Michael Connelly, THE BRASS VERDICT) is a more sophisticated production with screenplay and actors.



Would you buy a book from a book trailer?

Do you ever send them on?

Labels: book promotion, books, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:28 AM|| |

Christopher G. Moore was at Left Coast Crime 2009.
Christopher Moore was not.

The book dealer who brought Christopher Moore's books to sell to conference attendees didn't know the difference, or thought that conference attendees didn't. No excuse, really. The list of conference attendees included a hot link to Christopher G. Moore's Web site where 'tis obvious he writes a very different tale than Christopher not-G Moore.

Imagine your surprise if you'd purchased a Christopher Moore book from the book dealer and, having reached the head of the "have Christopher Moore sign your book" line, you discovered the Christopher Moore (Christopher G. Moore) in front of you looked nothing like the author photo on the (Christopher Moore) book you had in hand.

Here's the basic difference 'twixt the two:

"Think Dashiell Hammett in Bangkok." —San Francisco Chronicle (Christopher G. Moore)

"Moore's storytelling style is reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams." — Philadelphia Inquirer (Christopher Moore)

Now you know ...

Buy either. Buy both. Different reads. Very different reads. Both worth reading.

Labels: books, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:59 AM|| |

Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce

The videos at ted.com are pretty cool.

We saw Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and -- most recently -- Outliers and also staff writer for The New Yorker) last night at the City Arts & Lectures series at Herbst Theatre ("in conversation" with Kevin Berger, Salon) with tickets my brother gave his nibs for Christmas.

What a funny, bright guy Gladwell is. Sharp. Verbal. Quick.

I really don't care if you think he dumbs down science or puts his own spin on things. I think he'd be a great guy to hang out with at a coffee shop and discuss the world and what he was working on.

I'll be looking for his writing in The New Yorker even more than I was before.

Bits from last night.

KB: You start Outliers talking about hockey players (and why successful professional hockey players are usually born in January, February, and March). Why?

MG: Well, because I'm Canadian.

Jeb Bush quote about the struggles he had to reach where he is today, which MG characterized as an "heroic struggle against advantage."

MG talked about the Beatles and how they became the best band evah. He mentioned that most people don't consider the fact that for years before they came to America and were discovered, they'd been the house band at a Hamburg strip club where they played eight hours a day for six days a week. Live. On stage. They were playing live (and getting better and better) for thousands of hours before they "made it."

"We have chosen to overlook the extraordinary discipline they devoted to their vocation."

We say, oh, they're talented. Or oh, they're lucky. They were neither. They played over a thousand live gigs before they "made it."

The talk was very interesting. Interesting enough that I'm Googling (Hi, Sergey! Hi, Larry!) as I speak. How many other videos are there out there of Gladwell doing his schtick.

He closed with a discussion of his mother, a brown Jamaican (as he called her), mixed race, and the advantages she had, and her parents, and her parents parents going back that made her what she is today.

His point is that just because you live here and are successful and don't worry where your next meal is coming from or where the fresh water is or the fuel you need to cook ... this all isn't due to the fact you worked so hard and sacrificed and were lucky but is more due to the fact that you were born into circumstances that put you where you are today.

Don't forget that.

Don't forget that those in less fortunate circumstances weren't born to your parents.

Or, as Phil Ochs would say

Labels: books, people, San Francisco, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:26 PM|| |

Bookride, a blog from ANY AMOUNT OF BOOKS, 56 Charing Cross Road, London.

"a guide to the most wanted and collected books. There is some evaluation of why the book is wanted, what it is worth - with a range of selling prices, some trivia, apercus and bon mots, a few anecdotes, so called jokes and occasional rants."

Entertaining blog for book huggers.

Labels: blog, books, bookstores

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:03 PM|| |

Started out just after 1P. Stomach still gurgling from too much fish & chips at the Duke the night before at the Mx meetup. And I'd ordered the small portion! Not used to fried fish no more. ...

We decided that on our way to chk out the rental (we're meeting the new tenant there today and didn't want to be surprised by some horrible something) we'd stop at an Open House I was curious about and then wander over to the rental and on to elsewhere.

We set out first to find the Tatiana statue that's been hidden off the Greenwich Steps. Not so "hidden" anymore. Someone's chalked TIGER --> arrows on the Steps to point out the side path where the statue's been placed. Walked back up the steps to verify the location of a GWSF photo. Walked over to Russian Hill and stopped at 1145 Vallejo.

1145 Vallejo
SFH. 3BR 2.5BA sep gdn apt. ("legal" the blurb sheet sez, but only because there's no stove -- only a microwave oven -- so it's considered a guest room with separate entrance, I think. Perhaps the "legal" means that the lower level re-do into guest quarters was done with permits.) Pkg. (Actually, once we saw it, we decided "Pkg" was "parking for two Minis" or "parking for a Mini and "that Smart car I plan to win at the Tel Hi North Beach Citizens raffle")

Only $1.495m (marked down on the blurb sheet from $1.625m).

Deals abound in San Francisco real estate! Nice wood floors. Maple on the staircase w/ a great banister. Oak on the floors. Gas stove. Yard. Spruced up and all. Quiet street. (Street stops at Jones, so there's not much through traffic.) No views. Only!! $1.495m. Kee-ripes. There must still be people these days with cash in their pockets or something. I would not want to be an appraiser in this market. Where are the comps? What is a place worth? (Whatever anyone is willing to pay.) How much should a bank lend?

From Vallejo we walked down to Polk and poked around in antique and cool-stuff shops, Walgreen's. Walked over to the rental to make sure everything was set for the meet with the new tenant today. We walked down Laguna to Fort Mason and stopped by Book Bay, the Friends of the Library Bookstore, to ... um ... browse

We browsed. I browsed through the ($0.50 or 3/$1) tables. His nibs browsed through the Californiana and elsewhere. I browsed elsewhere. We wound up with the following, which include a couple San Francisciana books:

Ruth Newhall San Francisco's Enchanted Palace 1967 HB $30 - his nibs was quite intrigued by this book about the Palace of Fine Arts. The book was dust-jacketed and wrapped in Bro-Dart cello and had ephemera tucked inside dealing with the initial setup and publicity for the Exploratorium. The ephemera really sealed the deal for his nibs, who is a huge Exploratorium fan. The splurge for the day.

Jerry Flamm Good Life in Hard Times: San Francisco's '20s and '30s $5 TPB
Patricia Highsmith Plotting & Writing Suspense Fiction HB $5
1930 Annualog (Sci Am Pub Co) HB $5
Lee G. Miller An Ernie Pyle Album: Indiana to Ie Shima 1st. HB $5

on the 3/$1 tables
Round Up: the stories of Ring W. Lardner (Scribner. c 1924, 26, 29) HB
Jacqueline Winspear Pardonable Lies HB 2005 1st
Lee Child Bad Luck and Trouble BookClub 2007
Joyce C Oates. Beasts Carroll &Graf "copyright TK" (TK???)
Angus McDonald The Five Foot Road: in search of Vanished China SC. 1st ed.
Dunning - Booked to Die PB
William Murray - Tip on a Dead Crab PB
Gallagher Gray - Death of a Dream Maker PB (GG pseud for Katy Munger)
Wm Faulkner - Six mystery stories: Knight's Gambit (who knew Faulkner wrote mystery short stories? I didn't.)

I had my Friends of the Library card, which gives me 10% off, plus my once-a-year coupon for 25% off, so my grand total was $35 or so after the discounts. Not bad for books enough to keep me entertained for quite a while and a couple of good San Francisciana books.

I'd remembered to bring not only the once-a-year coupon but also a cloth shoulder bag, so we piled most of the books in the bag (they didn't all fit), took the rest in a smaller paper bag, and lugged them up and over the hills home.

home-> Vallejo 0.9m
Vallejo -> rental 1.1m
rental -> Book Bay 0.7m
Book Bay -> home 2.0m

for walkaround total of 4.7m.

Today we'll do the walk to rental on a more direct route (1.8m) then to dinner at Isa (0.8m). (We haven't been in what seems like a long while and we'll be so much closer than we usually are!) And then home (2.4m).

5m total. How did that happen?

Labels: books, bookstores, life, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:48 AM|| |

Coming Soon to the Tenderloin: Another Dirty, Poorly Lit Place For Books [SFWeekly - The Snitch]

Oh. Now. How come I never knew this bookstore existed until this morning when I was wandering through old links, one of which told tales of this place?

Now it's gone (possibly to be phoenix'd ... some day ...).

The pics remind me of Woodruff & Thush, a used bookstore down by San Jose State, a used bookstore my older brother and I used to love. (And hate ... Case had a lovely rant about the time he found a great book at a terrific price and brought it to the cash register only to have Craig Thush tell him that he hadn't repriced the book in a very long time and he was repricing the book on the spot. Couldn't argue with Thush. ...)

I would've bought Woodruff & Thush out lock, stock & barrel when Craig Thush decided to retire in 2003 if I could've. I still have plenty of books I bought there in my impoverished young adulthood, including a Difco manual I got for cheaps when I was taking Microbiology 101.

Here's hoping McDonald's reopens and I get a crack at browsing the stacks some day soon.

Labels: books, bookstores, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:46 PM|| |

Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and 10 Legs [NYTimes article]

Great story of Alfa and Beto, the biblio burros, Luis Soriano, their keeper, and the mission they've devoted ten years' of weekends to.

Labels: books, goodworks, libraries, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:09 AM|| |

[you have an ad clickthrough before salon.com feeds you the content]

Stephen King's God trip

On the 30th anniversary of "The Stand," the novelist confesses what haunts him about religion and today's politics.

By John Marks

Oct. 23, 2008 | In 1927, a little-known writer of horror stories named H.P. Lovecraft tried to put into words the secret of his diabolical craft. "The one test of the really weird is simply this," Lovecraft wrote in the introduction to "Supernatural Horror in Literature," "whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes or entities on the known universe's utmost rim."

That's a mouthful, and yet I swear, two decades or so ago, I had the very experience that Lovecraft describes while on an overnight bus trip from Dallas to a Christian youth camp in northern Minnesota. Most of the other teen campers flirted or gossiped or joked around. Some endured the long hours by reading Scripture, and in their own way, may have been grappling with "the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities." I was mesmerized by a less prescriptive but equally god-smitten work: Stephen King's epic of apocalypse, "The Stand."

This year, the novel "The Stand" turns 30, and far from fading into the dustbin of bygone bestsellers, King's great tale of plague seems more prescient than ever.

[more]

Labels: books, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:34 PM|| |

'Jurassic Park' author, 'ER' creator Crichton dies - CNN.com

RIP, Michael Crichton.

Crichton drove me nuts some times. His skepticism of global climate change and global warning encourage the nutcases.

STATE OF FEAR (2005) was lecturing and personal lobbying at its worse. The science wasn't true and Crichton based his story on "information" that wasn't.

Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist and co-founder of wunderground.com* reviewed the book and the science. Read it and see why my teeth grind when I think of that book.

That said, Crichton entertained me over the years. His tales were gripping. He was a smart guy who knew a lot and knew how to weave what he had into intriguing, page-turning books. He helped pay his way through college writing novels, medical thrillers. In 1969, Crichton won an Edgar for A CASE OF NEED, written under the pseudonym Jeffrey Hudson, probably because of its subject matter: abortion. (We're talking 1968 here.)

ANDROMEDA STRAIN, JURASSIC PARK and ER are fitting legacies.

RIP.




*(Weather Underground, a weather service of which our uphill neighbor, not William Ayers, is president of the BoD.)

Labels: books, environmentalism, people, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:10 PM|| |

Tony Hillerman has died at age 83.

My favorite memory of him was his appearance as guest at the first fundraiser dinner for (what now is known as) the Foundation for Monterey County Free Libraries back in the early nineties. The Foundation had originally asked Robert Campbell to be guest speaker but Campbell answered (hashhish remembering here) something to the effect that Campbell really wasn't so hot with the public speaking thing. If he had been good at it, Campbell said, he probably would've chosen a vocation other than writing. But he knew this guy. ...

Hillerman signed one of my hardback first editions before the dinner and kept the audience laughing during dinner with his dry wit and self deprecating stories of bloopers he'd made and his life as a writer. Hillerman all-in-all proved to be a generous, charming, raconteur sort of a guy.

Hillerman did a lot for the mystery-writing community and writers in general, a lot for libraries and readers. He earned the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Talking mysteries : a conversation with Tony Hillerman and Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir are excellent introductions to Hillerman the writer and his writing.

Hillerman's writing evoked the Southwest. His mysteries were appreciated by the Navajo nation because of his depictions of and respect for the native culture. The Navajo Tribal Council honored him with its Special Friend of the Dineh award in 1987.

He was one of a kind.

RIP.

Labels: biography, books, damn, mystery, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:58 AM|| |

A toast to the late crime writer Jim Crumley - Eddie Muller in today's Chron

Labels: books, mystery, news, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:14 PM|| |

Just realized when checking the program schedule for Bouchercon that although I (rightly) booked Oct 8 - 13 for the hotel -- and booked early enough this year to actually get in the convention hotel -- my frequent-flyer tickets are for the 9th and I'm arriving late afternoon, so I'll miss the first day. Don't know how that mixup happened.

Drat.

Double drat because I'd already begun ratcheting up my "maybe I don't want to go after all" "who really will I know" misgivings and this almost completely derailed me.

I've recovered. I'll call the hotel and tell them I won't be there until the 9th.

But drat anyway.

Update: His nibs, being the sweet feller he is, called Delta and asked how much it would cost to change my tickets from Thursday 7A to Wednesday and they said, $100. So, his nibs, being the sweet feller he is, changed the tickets. Bless his heart. Plane leaves at 6A Wednesday and xfers through Atlanta, then on to Baltimore.

Labels: books, life, mystery, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:50 PM|| |

Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker's Library

Everything from an original Sputnik 1 satellite to a Kelmscott Chaucer.

Oh. My.

Labels: books, libraries

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:39 PM|| |

After meeting with two flooring contractors for bids (and calling a third to meet up with tomorrow), we headed over to Book Bay at Fort Mason (the Friends of the San Francisco Library used book store) to look for a copy of Gibbons' DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE -- a special request from the younger niblet.

Couldn't find a copy, but did find several other books I wanted as well as fourteen books on the $.50 (3/$1) table. Couldn't find a fifteenth, but the staff gave me a deal.

With my Friends of the Library discount and one of the "extra 25% off" coupons they give you when you renew your annual membership, I got 35% off my purchase: eighteen books for $15.60.

But not a DECLINE AND FALL.

Talking it over with his nibs, I realized I should just rummage through the book boxes labeled HISTORY and pick one of the duplicates that isn't an old, old copy. His nibs remembers having a copy his Aunt Burta bought used back in the first quarter of the last century. I know I had a 2v. copy when I was in my late teens and we probably have other editions as well. I'll find a good -- but not valuable -- copy to send. I'm assuming that any book I send to Ukraine will not be coming home in 2010, and I'd hate to have the younger niblet worry about damaging a book I held dear.

Nice trip to Book Bay, though.

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:13 PM|| |

How to Smell Like a Used Bookstore from Dwight Garner's PAPER CUTS blog about books for the NYT.

Review is of Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. Garner quotes from a perfume review in the book.

DZING! (L’Artisan Parfumeur) ***** vanilla cardboard

Olivia Giacobetti is here at her imaginative, humorous best, and Dzing! is a masterpiece. Dzing! smells of paper, and you can spend a good while trying to figure out whether it is packing cardboard, kraft wrapping paper, envelopes while you lick the glue, old books, or something else. I have no idea whether this was the objective, but I have few clues as to why it happened. Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good-quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us. L’Artisan Parfumeur is, for reasons unknown, planning to discontinue this marvel, so stock up.

Sounds nice to me.

Labels: books, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:03 PM|| |

Unfit for Publication [PDF] - the Obama campaign's 40pp rebuttal to the "facts" in Jerome Corsi's book.

Reminds me a bit of Usenet. If someone spouts a bunch of stuff and you can see there's at least 30% of it that's wrong right off the bat, you go looking to see what other "facts" might be wrong.

Loads.

Corsi seems an odd duck.

Perhaps, though, I should volunteer as copy editor when the campaign is writing up these lengthy, smear-fighting essays.

e.g.
p2 As you might expect from the book's shoddy foundation, many of its claims are also completely false. The Obama's never gave a million dollars to a Kenyan politician.

misplaced apostrophe Maybe it started out as "Obama's campaign" and morphed into "The Obama's" without needed tweaking of punctuation.

p5 Obama Writes That His Father's Third Wife Refused To Life With His First Wife

live

And so forth and on. I tuckered out about page nineteen, but I've saved the PDF and I'll continue reading later.

Labels: books, politics

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:19 PM|| |

First Monday's book for discussion in August, as I think I mentioned a while back, is Gabriel Garcia Marquez' LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

I went over to Book Bay this afternoon looking for a copy, thinking I could take it with me when we're away and read the book way ahead of time instead of during the last few days before First Monday.

I looked under /Marquez/ in the FIC section. Nada. I wandered over to the back of the store and got distracted by the $0.50/item table (3/$1) What is this? Gazillions of first edition mysteries, some in dust jackets, some in dust jackets with plastic covers.

Wah?

Science fiction classics too. Watty Piper's THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD (with Sanrio stickers front and back and pencil scribbles inside but the ILLUSTRATIONS are there and I [heart] Watty Piper.

I stack stack here and stack stack there. ...

(Excuse me. Could I stash these books somewhere? I haven't finished shopping but there are too many for me to carry around with me. Oh, thanks.)

I took my stashes from the $0.50 or 3/$1 over and stacked them on the counter. I also had a "full price" $5 copy of Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY. We already have a copy of TALES, but maybe I'd like to take a copy along with us on our next trip. (We are looking for lightweight books we can take along with us and abandon along the way. Our next trip requires us for a major portion of the trip to have a combined checked/carryon luggage weight of 26 lbs. ...) Before then we have layovers in London and other long stretches.

I wander over to the "new additions" still looking for LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. Nada. I do find another $5 book I want.

I check the shelves and displays. Surely there's GGM somewhere in this room.

*FLICK* the light comes on.

I go back to FICTION and look for GARCIA MARQUEZ. Two copies of CHOLERA, one HB, one PB. I choose the PB for weight reasons. (That and the price of the HB, which is the first NAm edition. ...) PB cost $5.

I go back to the front counter and start counting through my $0.50 or 3/$1 books three-by-three and discover I am one book shy of a number that divides by three. I go back to the tables and find an African travel book (how ŕ propos, eh?).

Back to the front counter. The clerk, a volunteer, is counting. xx yy zz aa bb ... and forty-seven. I hand over the African travel book, making it forty-eight. She rummages around with what that all may mean and I say, "$16 plus $5 for TALES OF THE CITY and $5 for LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA."

She adds it all up.

AND! I tell her, I have a Friends of the Library card (10% off) and a one-time extra discount (25% off).

Forty-eight books plus this and that and my total (with tax) is sixteen dollars.

Plus ... that Watty Piper LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD? I plan to sell a human interest/slice of life commentary about cleaning up the childhood classic to pass it on to my grandchildren.

Article ideas/commentary plucked from the aether.

Labels: books, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:01 PM|| |

Finished PopCo while I was away.

Like The End of Mr. Y, this Scarlett Thomas book had a to-me sympathetic main female character who roamed around in her head and jumped from subject to subject and landing pad to leaping-off-point in a manner I'm quite familiar with. Thomas' heroines remind me strongly of Cayce Pollard, the heroine in Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

The books are filled with consumer culture, philosophy, and weird, quirky bits of trivia. PopCo specifically has enough code breaking arcana to keep you going for a while. Alice Butler, the main character, creates sleuth kits for kids for a megacorp called PopCo (#3 in the world after Mattel and Hasbro) and finds herself stashed away in a corporate getaway with other PopCo creatives, tasked with finding a brilliant product for the teengirl market, which is notoriously hard for toy companies to crack.

I took pages and pages of notes of clever phraseology and references I had no clue to (the Riemann Hypothesis, the Voynich Manuscript), book titles I need to check our bookstash for (and buy if we don't have a copy) (Secret and Urgent: The Story of Codes and Ciphers by Fletcher Pratt) and more.

Thomas even gave a brief explanation to another character of how public key encryption works, an explanation my aunt Ethel would be able to understand!

Is this really the way toy companies are run? Is marketing really as cynical about tapping into the pocketbooks of teens and pre-teens as the book suggests? Could be.

I try not to buy stuff I don't =need=. This book made me even more aware of how you, me, and Mr. McGee are sold to.

Witness: Uncrate | The Buyer's Guide For Men Talk about cool stuff you don't really need!

We won't even begin to explore Archie McPhee and Things You Never Knew Existed.

I received an offer in the mail the other day. Because I'm a special person (because of my W subscription? because of my ZIPcode? because of the stylish, fashionable things I buy at the Goodwill?), ELLE offered me a year's subscription (normally $48! or something close thereto) for only $8!

Well, hey, yes! Of course, they'd love to have me on their subscription rolls.

But we talked about our dear mailman and all the mail he has to bring down the steps and then up our stairs to our front door. And then we talked about the bags of recycle we have to take down our stairs and up the steps to the recycle bin on Montgomery. And we decided that I didn't really need ELLE that much.

We aren't getting a stimulus check from the government. No manna from heaven $$ for stuff. I guess they figure we stimulate the economy as much as we ever will.

The younger niblet, who is doing his Peace Corps stint until June 2010, got his check, though. We'll put it in his bank account and maybe he'll be able to tap it at some point if he is in desperate need for something while he's there. At least it will still be available when he comes home.

Somehow I think his check would go a lot further there than it would in San Francisco. Be more appreciated too. Somehow I think there's less "stuff" where he is and more "Do we have enough food for dinner and breakfast tomorrow?"

Labels: books, culture, life, shopshopshop

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:45 PM|| |

Anne Seddon Kinsolving Brown, On Collecting

Labels: books, life, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:58 PM|| |

Organizing the Attic - Week Four wherein our intrepid columnist attacks the books in the attic.

Well, numero uno. Books in the attic are never a good idea as Carter Anne Seddon Kinsolving Brown found out decades ago. (She'd put her library at the top of her old house and found that the top was sinking down and the walls were bulging out. ... She had to take all the books out of the upstairs library and rehab the house and then reorganize the library somewhere other than the top floor. ...)

________________________________

Update: ASKBrown bio. The next mail will bring an intriguing query that puts you on your mettle. Or the parlour-maid may come up some morning and announce that your husband's 18th century dwelling is beginning to buckle under the weight of your books. This actually happened to us last Holy Week [1967], whereupon the Blessed Season was passed in moving 5 tons of books out of the house to the stacks at Brown University. It was a traumatic experience, believe me, with architects clambering about measuring bulges, and carpenters boring holes in the walls from cellar to garret, while Mama tearfully or cheerfully went about designating the books she consulted the least, and movers packed cartons it might well have been termed the Second Battle of the Bulge.
________________________________

I read the Week Four column and thought, oh, poor baby:

Ever since then, I have been skittish about the size of our book collection, which peaked at about 600 when we moved into our house in the District seven years ago.

So after going through the books in the attic, our intrepid columnist and her husband wound up donating 25 hardcover and 42 paperback books to their local branch library. 10% of the collection? No big wow there.

The hints from the professional organizer the columnist has on tap?

First, check the condition of the book. "Are the pages so brittle and yellow that you're never going to read them?" If so, she says, donate. And second, "be realistic about the format you like to read them in." Most people never re-read paperbacks they've kept for a while, especially the smaller ones, she says.

Would she faint if she saw what I need to get a handle on?

Labels: books, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:24 AM|| |

Carnival of the Criminal Minds

A rotating editorship collecting the best of the best crime fiction blogging.

Labels: blog, books, mystery, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:16 PM|| |

comment on the cookbooks post:

Mainly, though, I don't use cookbooks for meals any more. Everything we eat seems to be variations on about ten themes. Gordon Ramsay always advises his victims on Kitchen Nightmares to simplify, and it's good advice.

Of course cookbooks are not only, or sometimes hardly at all, for cooking. From the pure book POV I love David, and Claudia Roden. I have a fat tome of classic techniques in Italian cooking by Antonio Bugialli, which is only for thumbing through.

We pretty much stopped cooking from cookbooks when the youngsters were in the house. No time for browsing through cookbooks when you are working and raising, and it's disappointing to spend time prepping something that's downed in ten minutes and appreciated just as much as if you'd made them their favorite meatloaf. We had dishes we knew they liked that we varied in one way or another but yeah, ten themes is probably accurate for our cooking repertoire then too.

I like cookbooks, whether I'm cooking from them or not. I sit and read them and I'm in another world, a world with cuttlefish on the table or an endless number of cabbage recipes, or no eggs-milk-butter. You can tell a lot about how people live by looking at the cookbooks written for them.

A friend once asked, "But really. How many cookbooks do you need?" What can I answer to something like that?

Cookbooks aren't just something for checking out a recipe for mu-shu pork or Char Siu Bao or gingersnaps. No, when I need a recipe, it's usually not a specific cookbook I head for. I pull out five cookbooks and find five recipes and mix them up, or I go to the Web and do something similar with Google.

Cookbooks are for dreaming over, for sitting curled up in a chair with a breeze coming in off the Bay with a pad of sticky notes, marking pages with possibilities for future dishes or snacks or desserts.

Dinner the other night (and last night as leftovers) was a variant on shrimp ŕ la king, made without recipes. Simple, ready?

Olive oil. A small red onion. Garlic.
Bell pepper strips from Trader Joe's, mélange ŕ trois green/yellow/red: frozen. (16oz bag)
Medium-sized shrimp from Trader Joe's: cleaned, cooked, frozen. (16oz? bag)

Butter. Flour. Heavy whipping cream.
Parmesan cheese. Pale dry sherry.

Olive oil in pan. Heat. Add garlic and sliced onion. Cook until browned. Add red-yellow-green pepper strips. Cook some more. Add shrimp and stir until shrimp is hot. Set aside.

Butter in pan. Add flour for roux. Add cream for Béchamel sauce. Toss in shredded Parmesan cheese and sherry and then fiddle with cream and cheese/sherry until you have a nice thick not-too-cheesy sauce. Grind of pepper. Stir sherry sauce into shrimp/pepper medley. Serve with rice.

Total cost ~ $10, if that. From that we had two dinners, or four meals. It was delicious.

Would I have known to toss those things together if I hadn't already made seafood enchiladas =and= chicken with the sherry Parmesan sauce? Would I have tossed the melange ŕ trois peppers with the shrimps if there hadn't been a shrimp ŕ la king in my past? I don't know. I think, like many things, it's easier to cook without recipes, once you have enough time booked using someone's tried and true directions.

Natural cooks do not spring from Zeus' brow.

Oh, how I love cookbooks.

Update: "So, what are you planning for dinner?"
"I dunno. Haven't decided yet. Have any preferences?"
"I'd like meatloaf."

Meatloaf for dinner tonight -- "Cottage Cheese Meat Loaf," to be exact.

Labels: books, food, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:15 PM|| |

Mark Bitten is asking for help updating his "50 Cookbooks I'd Rather Not Live Without" cookbooks list.

417 comments so far.

I don't know what I'd do if I had to choose my fifty favorite cookbooks. I have bookcases filled with cookbooks elsewhere and maybe a foot-plus of cookbooks above the bar sink here. Are the cookbooks here the ones I'd rather not live without? Are there fifty of them?

On the shelf above the bar sink:
[* means that this blog post accomplished its purpose of making me think about the cookbooks I have here and I'm taking this book elsewhere and freeing up some shelf room ...]

• The Microwave Guide and Cookbook (no author given) *
  
  
• Eliason, Harward, Westover - Make-A-Mix Cookery - a classic used constantly while raising my family. I still pull it out to make cream cheese swirls, a coffee roll with cream cheese filling sort of like a cheese Danish, which I make for Easter brunch and other special occasions.
  
  
• More Make-A-Mix Cookery ... vol 2. of the classic
  
  
• Sunset Chinese Cook Book - this book falls open to the kung pao chicken recipe page, now stained and splattered and no longer attached to the binding it's been used so much
  
  
• Sunset Cooking Bold & Fearless: a cook book for men *
  
  
• Sunset Cook Book of Favorite Recipes *
  
  
• Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cookbook * - used constantly while raising kids. I'd make the biscuit mix from Make-A-Mix Cookery and use the Bisquick recipes from this book
  
  
• Shinojima - Authentic Japanese Cuisine for Beginners - picked up on our trip to Japan last year. [or not. When I was going through it, I noticed the price information on the back was in $$$. Picked up where, then?] I need to sit down with it to see if it deserves to be kept in the limited space here. [Made the cut. Keeping here.]
  
  
• Mabel C. Lai - Chinese Cuisine Made Easy - "Hot & Spicy Soup" (p32) 'nuff said. I always need to check how many golden needles, wooden ears and bamboo shoots the recipe takes. Gee, I haven't made the soup in a long time. Need to get some fresh tofu and check the cupboards for golden needles, wooden ears and bamboo shoots. The "Ginger Broccoli Beef" recipe is exceptional too.
  
  
• Ranck, Good - Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: feasting with your slow cooker - another classic.
  
  
• Shirley - Wonderful ways to prepare chicken - bought for $1.95 at some Gemco/KMart-like store more years ago than I can remember. (c1979). "Piquant Chicken" (made with honey, lemon juice and ginger) is a favorite. "Chicken Diva" (with a sherry-Parmesan white sauce and broccoli) is another. "Sherry Creamed Chicken." Maybe chicken tonight. Hm.
  
  
• Sunset Recipes for Ground Beef - falls open to the splattered page showing "Cottage Cheese Meat Loaf." The recipe not only includes cottage cheese but also uses rolled oats instead of bread cubes. Delish. When the young ones were MUCH younger, I'd cook the meatloaf with carrots, beans and/or peas mixed in as the accompanying vegetable. I tend not to look at the other recipes for meatloaf (24 variations ...) but say, "Almond Studded Curry Loaf" using Major Grey's chutney sounds not half bad. Am I in a rut?
  
  
• Killeen - 101 Secrets of Gourmet Chefs: unusual recipes from great California restaurants *
  
  
• Goldstein - From Our House to Yours: comfort food to give and share - provenance unknown. I need to sit down with this one. I really liked Joyce Goldstein's cooking at Square One decades back and enjoy her articles in the Chron food section. [Made the cut. Keeping here.]
  
  
• Duchess of Devonshire - Chatsworth Cookery Book. Signed. Picked this book up when we were back visiting the relatives last fall. Need to sit down with this book too. Should it be taking up space here? [Made the cut. Keeping here.]
  
  
• America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook - a new classic. I love this stuff.
  
  
• Rombauer, Becker - Joy of Cooking. 'nuff said. I love the nitty gritty detail but don't much love the "see White Sauce 111, 341" and "Please read About Doughnuts, 244" sorts of forward and back references in practically every recipe. Still. If you've never quite got the hang of preparing sweetbreads, the Rombauer clan will set you straight. Superb indexing.
  
  
• The Best of Bon Appetit (1979) - Ginger Cream Chicken (p69) (madeira, ginger, chopped up candied ginger, cream -- what's not to like?)
  
  
• Cooking Light 5 Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook - Goodwill purchase. I don't know if I've ever cooked from this book. I need to sit down with this book.
  
  
• America's Best Lost Recipes - I adore Christopher Kimball and his crew at Cook's Magazine and America's Test Kitchen and all the affiliated incarnations.
  
  
• Betty Crocker's Cookbook - the classic. The cookbook I used most after I moved out on my own. Splattered. Marked. Oooh. Here's a piece of folded paper with a recipe for "Rasa Malaysia Portuguese Egg Tarts" Those were exceptionally tasty. BCC is my go-to book when I can't remember how long to cook a roast because it's been so long since we had one.
  
  
• The Silver Spoon from Phaidon Press. 1263pp. Can't remember where this one came from either, but like the America's Test Kitchen books, it's just a fun read. Perch: four recipes. Octopus: six recipes Catfish and tench: four recipes. Cuttlefish: six recipes. How can you not like a cookbook with recipes for "Heart Kabobs" and "Cream of Fennel Soup with Smoked Salmon"?
  
  
• Eichelbaum - Cooking for Heart & Soul: 100 delicious lowfat recipes from San Francisco's top chefs * a cookbook to benefit the San Francisco Food Bank - this was a prize from a drawing at a Food Bank event. I need to sit down with this one. [Made the cut. Keeping here.]
  
  
• Bon Appetit - Too Busy to Cook? Also kept (it seems ... page falls open) for the Ginger Cream Chicken recipe. That is one delicious recipe. I make it these days with boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts, but then I make most of my chicken recipes with thighs instead of breasts. I don't hack up whole chickens like I did back when now that there are only two of us to feed so we have neither chicken breasts nor chicken livers as much as we did then. A large bag of chicken thighs from Costco is in the freezer and we take what we need for whatever we're cooking. Buy a new bag when the current bag is getting near gone.
  
  
• seven different editions of the Presto pressure cooker recipe book and a Wards Cooker (pressure cooker) recipe book from 1947 and a Wards Magic Seal Pressure Saucepan recipe book. How many books do I need to look up how long to cook artichokes or beets or pot roast in a pressure cooker? I think I need to re-think this stash.
  
  
• Royal Cook Book (from the Royal Baking Powder Co)(1925) - classics like "Eggless, Milkless, Butterless Cake" "Lady Baltimore Cake" "Royal Sponge Cake" but also a bunch of recipes that don't use baking powder at all. I'm assuming the Royal Baking Powder company wanted a free giveaway that the fickle homemaker would hold on to, that would keep their name front and center even if she didn't =yet= use their baking powder..
  
  
• Recipe Finder Index - a critical item back in the days before I could find a recipe for just about anything on the Web. Once the number of cookbooks in the house reached a certain point, there were times when I was all,"Oh, I'd like to make that sausage pie thing with spinach and basil again but which cookbook has the recipe?" The Finder Index is broken into categories (Appetizers & Snacks, Beverages, Desserts -- Pies). Space for recipe name, source & page#, date tried, and notes. I'd forgotten about most of these: "Nanking Liver" from the New Poor Poet Cookbook, "German style Kidneys" from Sunset Cooking with Wine, "Migg's Fish" from the Southern Junior League Cookbook, "Sherried Chicken Livers" from Sumptuous Indulgence on a Shoestring.
  
  
• Law - Pacific Light Cooking. Another Goodwill purchase. Need to look at this one.
  
  
• Child, Bertholle, Beck - Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A classic. I have no idea why it falls open to the section with onion recipes. Looks like something spilt there once upon a time. Heavily stained page: "Navarin Printanier" [Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables] I love this cookbook for its sense and its recipes and the way they laid out the pages. Its sequel is over with the other cookbooks,as is Simca's Cuisine and two and a half shelves of books on French cooking: Beck, Child, Pepin, others.
  
  
• Dailey - The Best Pressure Cookbook Ever - so why all the Presto recipe books? Oh, look! There's yet another Presto recipe book inside! That settles it. The batch listed earlier is going elsewhere.
  
  
• McLaren - Pan-Pacific Cook Book: savory bits from the world's fare (1915) e.g. #63 Tchi - a Russian national soup. "Chop fine half of a small cabbage and a large onion and fry in dripping for a few moments; stir in two tablespoons of flour. Cook for three minutes, then add slowly two quarts of beef stock. Simmer for half an hour, add a few forcemeat or sausage balls and a wineglass of white wine. Simmer twenty minutes more and serve." Fun. His nibs' great great aunt was involved with committee work for the 1915 Fair so we pick up books and whatever we can find about it, if they can be had for a reasonable price. This cookbook was $15.
  
  
• The Daily Echo (Halifax) - Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book. Very beat up. Of uncertain age. Falling to bits. First six pages gone, which is probably where the date information was. Recipes provided by the Daily Echo, plus handwritten recipes inside in various hands and pasted-in recipes cut from papers or magazines. A look into the past.
  
  
• Small-ish book with many pages, separated by alpha dividers. May have been intended as an address book but used instead for recipes. Recipes written in different hands. Provenance? Recipes assigned to letters higgly-piggly. "Pots de creme" recipe under "P" and a different "Pot de Creme" recipe under "D" for "dessert" Also under "D" "Iced Tea" ... "drinks," I suppose. Also in "D" "Daiquiri" with a note, "Edie, Ethel and Emily liked"
  
  
• Robertson, Flinders, Godfrey - Laurel's Kitchen. (1976). This book was my second go-to book after Betty Crocker. Vegetarian. The younger ones consider "Chillaquillas" (or ChileeKillees, as we called them) comfort food. Cheap, tasty, good.
  
  
• Ayer y Hoy de la Cocina Navarra - with a handy dandy translation of the recipes into English. A goodie gift from the Kingdom of Navarra during a meet the winemakers of Navarre event. I need to check out the recipes. This book probably belongs elsewhere.
  
  and last but not least
  
  
• Stewart - The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook. 1200 recipes. Tasty.

What does that add up to? Thirty-plus. I'll weed through the ones I set aside and take them elsewhere, opening up space for other cookbooks I'd be happier to have close by. For now, here's what the shelves above the bar sink look like.

Labels: books, food, life, photographs

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:46 PM|| |

Daily Kos: Steering into the skid: Books for the End of the World.

Be sure to read the comments.

Labels: blog, books

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:24 PM|| |

Over at Grapes 2.0 the Sour One is taking a poll asking what we think is the "Most beautiful children's book".

I've answered, have you?

In my answer I mentioned both Chris Van Allsburg and Clare T (Turlay) Newberry as favorite author/illustrators (although beautiful illustration doesn't seem to be the ultimate intent of the Flemish poll that triggered all this yakyak).

I first encountered Newberry's books when I was a page at the San Jose Public Library back in the early 70s. Shelving books in the Children's Room one day, I came across Newberry's book Smudge and promptly fell in love with her cat/kitten sketches.

Check out what I'm talking about. I love the way she was able to convey the cat-ness of the cats and kittens and the texture of their fur.

Labels: art, books, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:26 PM|| |

Better late than never.

Last May, in honor of its one-year anniversary, The Rap Sheet organized The Rap Sheet's ONE BOOK PROJECT.

We invited more than 100 crime novelists, book critics, and bloggers from all over the English-speaking world to choose the one crime/mystery/thriller novel that they thought had been "most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years."

Interesting list. Steve Hockensmith, author of Holmes on the Range and On the Wrong Track, nominates THE DOORBELL RANG (1965) by Rex Stout and explains why. J.D. Rhoades, lawyer, blogger, and author of Safe and Sound nominates Katy Munger's MONEY TO BURN [1999]. Linda Fairstein, author of Bad Blood, chose Robert Traver's ANATOMY OF A MURDER.

... and the list goes on.

If you're a crime fiction fan, this list will keep you in reading material for a long, long time.

[via The Rap Sheet]

Labels: blog, books, mystery, people

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:18 PM|| |

Check out Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures.

A plethora of goodies.

Geoff Manaugh has a book (BLDGBLOG) out from Chronicle Books in Spring 2009 and moved to this fair ville in September to become a senior editor at Dwell.

More about Manaugh here.

Labels: architecture, blog, books, people, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:01 PM|| |

Talking with an old friend, well, exchanging e-mails and mentioned that I was feeling old.

His nibs and I'd had dinner a week or so ago with a friend who'd turned eighty in August. Eighty-year-old friend is looking good and, really, looks not that much different than he did when I met him thirty-two years ago. He's involved with crafting little technology whizbang solutions for folks at the VA hospital. He's a Maker. He hasn't slowed down much if any at all. He's just pretty darn cool.

I wrote to the e-mail friend, "I'm seven years older than he was when I first met him. Yikes, I'm feeling old."

Then I found this test: Are you a hippy?

which gave these stats on the folks who had taken the test:

54% of test takers are Male, while 46% are Female.
93% of test takers are under the age of forty, while 7% are over forty.
78% of test takers have hair shorter than 6", while 22% have hair that is longer.
7% of test takers were at Woodstock in 1969, while 93% were not.
[That in itself is astounding when you consider only 15% of the test takers were even =alive= in the 1960s. That means that ~50% of the people taking the test who were alive in the 1960s were at Woodstock. Is that even remotely possible?]
54% of test takers prefer John over George at 12% as their favorite Beatle.
15% of test takers were alive in the 1960's, while 85% were not.
21% of test takers are vegetarians, while 79% are not.
11% of test takers have lived in a commune, while 89% have not.
10% of test takers voted for Ronald Reagan, while 90% did not.
[They forgot to ask how many had even had an opportunity to vote for Ronald Reagan.]

The questions hit me with pangs of nostalgia: "Do you smell like patchouli?" "Do you own an incense burner?" "Do you have a brownie recipe with ingredients you can't find at the A&P?" "Do you think Bob Dylan has a good voice?"

Do you feel old?

Update> and the doorbell rings. By the time I get there, the doorbell ringer is gone, but there's an Amazon package under the doormat. "Thank you!" I call. "You're welcome," comes the reply from down the path. The package contained a couple books and Kristofferson's latest.

Earlier this month we'd been at the Fillmore for an AIM benefit. I was reminded again how much I like his words and his voice. A few days ago I put an order in and here it was. I put my new purchase into the CD player. First song was the title song, This Old Road.

Yeah, feeling old. And that's okay. Kristofferson, after all, is only ten years younger than our eighty-year-old friend and he's still kickin'.

Labels: books, culture, music, timewaster

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:41 PM|| |

Word out in today's SFChronicle that Sara Zarr -- whom I met many many moons ago at a WTQ gathering of misc.writers, back when she lived in this fair city, before she moved to Utah -- is a finalist for the National Book Award for The Story of a Girl in the Young People's Literature division.

Yippee! Yahoo! for Sara!!!!!

Sara's Web presence: The Stories of a Girl

Sara is published. Sara is a finalist for a National Book Award.

Sara no longer engages with folks on misc.writing.

Hmmm. Is there a connection?

(A slight one, perhaps. Her success is primarily due to ... Sara is talented, and determined, and focussed and ...)

Yay, hooray for Sara!

Labels: blog, books, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:04 AM|| |

In comments on "Stuff," SourGrapes wrote

TA with all that, but I'd include books too. What are ya keeping them for? In most cases it's not to refer to. They're intellectual bling. It's very very unusual to have a couple thousand books, but that guy forgot to say "in our class of people".

I keep books I want to look at again. And the rest go off to subsequent readers. Books are made to be read, not to be shelved.

Ouch, pal.

There's something about books and not just as intellectual bling. I'm happiest in a nest full of books, all that unrealized and unread or waiting to be reread potential.

Yesterday I was rummaging through my stash of travel books, looking for old books on London for someone who's working on the animation for (don't spew) A CHRISTMAS CAROL, due out in 2009. (Jim Carrey will be voicing Ebenezer Scrooge/Ghost of Christmas Past/Ghost of Christmas Present/Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. I told you not to spew!)

Didn't find any, but found some early 20thc. Baedekers covering London and GB, found some old books covering places we'd been walking in N Wales, got sidetracked by a book on Mount Athos. ... All that roaming around and a very cozy afternoon reading wouldn't have happened if I gave away my stash of books. (I am giving away some of the books, ones I know I'll never need/read/want to see again. But ...)

I just love the potential of masses of books, love libraries. I was absolutely blissed out this trip by the Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin.

I was || this close to settling in to help them keep track of the 200K books they have stashed away there. (And Good Lord, they should join the 21st century and start scanning that collection. If that room goes up in flames, a world of knowledge will be lost. Maybe Bill Gates would subsidize the project. I'd volunteer. ...)

What a place.

Heaven.

Labels: books, libraries, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:07 PM|| |

His nibs is relieved that I'm not doing my usual last minute thing.

Everything's packed except the notebooks, pens and reading material. I always pack too many notebooks (well, I need a blank notebook for trip notes, one for note-notes, one for to-do thoughts and lists, one for what-will-I-do-with-myself-when-we-get-home plans).

And I tend to pack too many books 'cause I don't know if I'll be wanting to read mysteries or history or Middlemarch or self-awareness or Dalai Lama or ...

Auntie K shows up tomorrow afternoon and the plan is for his nibs to help her lug all her stuff down here and then for them to meet up with me and we'll swop tools for her boyz (picked up from my dad's workshop yesterday) from my Mini to her car trunk. Following that chore, she gets the grande tour of the book stacks. Then she comes back here and settles in.

A walk down hill to dinner at Firenze By Night (a first for all of us) and then we'll tuck under the covers while visions of sugar plums and all that.

Thursday morning we kiss the cat (if we can drag her out from under the bed), wave bye-bye and head off to the airport in the shuttle.

When we get back, The Book pops up to the top of the priority list.

My clear-the-house sort-the-books organize-the-bookmarks procrastinating projects will be hobbled and put out to pasture.

Onward and upward.

Really.

Labels: books, food, life, San Francisco, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:23 PM|| |

Today is the sixteenth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee posting the first Web pages about his hypertext project that eventually evolved into the World Wide Web.

I mentioned that I'd come across my copy of WEAVING THE WEB yesterday, inscribed "To Sal" by Tim B-L, my hero.

PJ Parks, who used to have a very readable blog but now no longer does, wrote that she has a copy too and talked about ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING, a Victorian factoid book and the motivation for TB-L to name his proto-WWW project ENQUIRE.

Today, while sorting books and packing up boxes, I found a copy -- well, not the Brit version, mine is the American version: INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, or Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts WORTH KNOWING. Particularly intended as a book for Family Reference on Subjects connected with Domestic Economy, and containing the Largest and most Valuable Collection of Useful Information that has ever yet been published. INQUIRERS ARE REFERRED TO THE INDEX. (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, No. 18 Ann Street. 1858 [maybe 1856, the numeral didn't print clearly])

The book has all =sorts= of useful (and quaint and dated and sometimes flat out wrong) stuff.

e.g.

794. YULECAKE -- Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon. Melt the butter to a cream, and put in the sugar. Stir it till quite light, adding the allspice and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour, take the yolks of the eggs, and work them two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow, quite ready to work in. As the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the whites gradually, then add the orange-peel, lemon, and citron, cut in fine stripes [sic], and currants which must be mixed in well with the sweet almonds; then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop, in a hot oven, for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.

795. TO WASH CHINA CRAPE SCARFS, &c. -- ...

2004. Why does a lamp smoke, when the wick is cut unevenly? -- Because the points of the jagged edge (being very easily separated from the wick) load the flame with more carbon that [sic] it can consume; and as the heat of the flame is greatly diminished by these little bits of wicks, it is unable to consume even the usual quantity of smoke. The same applies when the wick is turned up too high.

Some of the stuff in INQUIRE WITHIN is word-for-word what's in ENQUIRE WITHIN. The scarf washing article above, f'rex, is word-for-word except that the title is "To Wash China Crępe Scarves, &c." in ENQUIRE.

Other bits of information (the one about lamp smoke, f'rex) are not covered by ENQUIRE WITHIN at all.

All-in-all fun stuff. You can see why TB-L called his project ENQUIRE -- there's more than a bit of resemblance to the random collection of stuff on the Web.

How prescient of him.

Project Gutenberg has made a copy of ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING available. Did TB-L even dream sixteen years ago that his nifty little project would some day offer up ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING for anyone with Web access?

Thanks, TB-L!

Labels: books, factoid, history

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:41 PM|| |

(1) Who wrote

• Elizabeth & her German Garden
• The Caravaners
• Christopher and Columbus

I had to know -- see? -- because I'm sorting books by author and these 19thc. anonymous books were driving me nuts. Who was the author? Were they fiction or memoir?

Answer: Marie Annette Beauchamp, cousin to writer Katherine Mansfield (nee Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp). Fiction.

(2) Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Paul and Virginia. Ltd ed. 800c. 450 GB 350 USA. London. Routledge. 1888. #639.

cracking hinges. foldup box in good shape. worth?

(3) Vicar of Wakefield - Goldsmith. Rackham illustrations. Philadelphia. McKay. Printed in GB by Riverside Press. in box w/ illustration on cover. worth?

(4) War&Peace. Heritage Press. Limited Editions Club. 1938. 2 v. boxed. worth?

(5) signed prints. flowers (3) birds (2) . G. Juniga. (Zuniga?)

Oh, yes. I have a swell and marvelous time sorting books. And again. Tomorrow!

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:33 AM|| |

Book shifting. So here's the problem. The bookcases are, for the most part, filled with the books I intend to stay where they are.

That leaves hundreds of boxes of books to go through on my quest to let go ("Finally!" sez his nibs) of some of the books. You can't see into boxes without opening them. All the boxes of books on a given subject aren't necessarily together.

We already have twenty boxes of books or so packed up for the Coast Community Library. The older younger one will come by with his partner maybe the first weekend in August to see if any of the books in the additional nine boxes of SFF titles intended for CCL are ones they want. Let's call it thirty boxes of books boxed up and ready to shift out. ... and more than ten times that many still here, most unsorted.

I have four main areas where books in boxes (and loose now, due to the sorting) are stashed. I have too many boxes whose contents aren't easily identifiable because I didn't, back when we were packing the boxes up, always remember to label the boxes (as I do now) so that the contents labels are visible from all sides.

I have other boxes that might be labeled but are hidden by other boxes so I can't determine the content. In all I have over thirty boxes that are "unknown." I have another twenty or so that are labeled "nonfic" which need to be sorted through. I have eight that are labeled "misc" which need to be sorted through. I need to get to the "unknown" boxes and see what they might be. And I have the added twist that, due to the vagaries of the move, what is in the boxes is not necessarily as is labeled, if the box is even labeled.

Yesterday I decided that I had to get a grip on what we had, where. I spent some time counting boxes in the four areas and today I created an Excel spreadsheet (and I am so not a believer in spreadsheets) so I can get a handle on which boxes are where and what I can do to shift books around, always remembering that I don't want to end up with too many books in any one place because even though the space was built with a live load req of 40 lbs/sq foot average, you just don't want to push it and, like J Carter Brown, I think it was, have your walls started spreading out because of the load of books on the upper floors.

The purpose of this first pass is to get the nonfic and misc and whatever books rough-sorted into categories so that I can then take each category and sort it more definitively and then take those sub-sorts and figure out what stays, what goes.

So ... my box count yesterday. After feeding the data into Excel I find I have over seventy "subject" sorts of labels for the boxes, and that's even with me throwing physics and biology into a greater superset of science when I was making the book count.

Seventy subjects is about fifty too many. I'm having a problem though with sorting some titles. Are they "essay" or "memoir"? When does "memoir" segue into "autobiography"? Would "Letters" be autobiography or memoir or essay? How about if they're Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son? When do memoirs belong in history?

So I sort and sort and resort. My "reference" boxes had contained all sorts of things. My "facts" boxes had started out as trivia/factoid Uncle John's and Cecil Adams sorts of books but had wound up also including flags of the world and Amos, Amas, Amat. And around and around and around.

The gross decision is that Area 1 will contain fiction, which still needs sorting. Fiction is all that fiction stuff that isn't SFF or MYS. Area 2 will contain history & biography & autobiography & memoirs? essays? Area 3 will have SCI-related for now and JUV. Area 4 (the largest area and where I've been sorting) will get liberal arts (except history and biography) and all the stuff that needs sorting.

My kludgey spreadsheet tells me how many of what are where so I can wrap my head around how many non-fiction things are in the fiction area (24 boxes! that's not bad) and how many fiction things are elsewhere (2 ... okay).

The sheet also tells me that I have about 400 boxes of books, which (take out the thirty destined for CCL or the older younger one) means (hurray!) over half of the books moved in are either on shelves or headed out the door soon.

When I was making my notes, I didn't note how many of those 400+ boxes have already been through the primary sort, but there have been loads. Heck, I probably missed some boxes anyway, but close enough is close enough.

A light's glimmering at the end of the tunnel.

One thing, no, two things, I found day before yesterday were two identical copies of Kipfer's THE ORDER OF THINGS, an interesting book but don't ask me why I have two copies. The table of contents may help me with some of the "How do I sort out the science-related books into subcategories that will make it easy for me to see what I have?" sorts of decisions.

Does Feynman go in "essays" or in "physics" or in just what?

How do I make sure when I'm sorting through for dups that I have all the Feynmans in one place?

Odd, isn't it, that I haven't been buying many books at used bookstores or thrift shops lately?

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:17 AM|| |

I'm tired.

There are boxloads of books to go through.

Still.

So, what's taking so long, Sal?

Let's recap.

We moved ~ 800 boxes of books up here. I have no clue how many are left to sort through. We moved a bunch of shelves as well, but most of those shelves are full so the sorting is taking a long while, while I move boxes from this end of the space to that.

The cookbooks are out of boxes (for the most part) and against the wall in the eastmost room. The travel books (pure travel and travelogue) are in two banks of bookcases perpendicular to the cookbook bank.

The SFF books take up three banks of book shelves to the west of the two banks of travel books (and, yes, perpendicular to the cookbook bank).

There are no more shelves in this room, which is the room where I've been sorting books out of boxes and into other boxes since last week or so when I finished sorting the SFF books. (The SFF books wound up with four boxes of books with no space on the shelves and another five boxes of SFF short stories that didn't fit on the shelves.)

The hall between the eastmost room and the westmost room has stacks of book boxes, mostly boxes marked HIST or PHYSICS or SCI plus boxes with several Harvard Classics sets. Oh, and my SUNSET Magazine going back to forever, and a box of Christmas craft/recipe magazines and books, and ...

I have all the crime fiction (six+ bookcases) on shelves in the westmost room along with a couple shelves of writing books. That room also has a bunch of art (pictures, posters, paintings) and music (78s, LPs, tape, CDs and the occasional 45RPM) that need sorting through eventually (not now) and another twenty-five boxes or so of a motley collection of books, which will be sorted in the current go through.

The alcove outside the westmost room has the SUNSET magazines mentioned up there plus a bookcase full of assorted Tightwad Gazettes and how-to-make-it and FIX YOUR PLUMBING sorts of books that need sorting. Oh, and there's probably 25 boxes labeled HIST and S/W DEV and TECH and what-not.

The hall leading out from the alcove outside the westmost room to the door on that level has a few bookshelves that I may use for sorting the books in that area. Mostly the area has boxes of adult fiction books and (currently) seventeen+ boxes of books destined for the library and nine boxes of SFF books waiting for the older younger one to poke through plus some NF and some MISCNF and ... oh, it goes on and on.

My pal came through today to pick up some cookbooks I'd offered. She took a few. Offered me some of hers that she was getting rid of.

The books she didn't take were reboxed for the library.

I found a box or two of duplicates and things I didn't want/need today. I brought home a list of titles to check in alibris.com and abebooks.com to make sure I don't accidentally give away a first edition of Sue Grafton's KEZIAH DANE.

What did I find? Well, here are some examples.

I found TWO sets of the 2vol. THE PIMA BAJO OF CENTRAL SONORA, MEXICO. by Pennington. 1980. Univ of Utah

I found a selection of slim pamphlets with dust covers by David Starr Jordan and printed roundabouts 1912 by Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin in San Francisco. Titles:
KNOWING REAL MEN
THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION
THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY

Google /"David Starr Jordan"/ if you don't know who he is.

I found a slim, HB, blue jacket with gilt SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN REFERENCE BOOK. 1891. Munn & Co, Office of the Scientific American.

I found MASTERING MAGIC CARDS by George H. Baxter and Larry W. Smith. Wordware Publ. 1995.

And I found everything in between and to both sides.

My method is thus: rather than go through just once and decide toss/save, I'm going through once, sorting out the dups and things I know I really have no need of and repacking the boxes, relabeling, if necessary. (Thanks be for masking tape. Rip off the old, on with the new.)

I relabel boxes which had been NF or MISC or VERY MISC as FIC REF FACT phil/psych/soc HIST SCI or whatever and sort the books into them with a gross sort of sort.

The next pass will be another pass for duplicates and "do I want to keep this?" and an opportunity to sort the general (SCI, f'rex) boxes into a finer sort so that I can wrap my head around what I have instead of just thinking, I think I saw that title or one like that about five boxes ago. I'll have a chance to pull everything out of the FUN & GAMES boxes, f'rex, and see just how many copies of 150 WAYS TO PLAY SOLITAIRE I have. (I found three today.)

Then there'll be a third level sort ... then ...

Come 2009, I may have things under control.

Update: The library all the boxes of books are intended for is the Coast Community Library in Point Arena, which serves the northern Mendocino coast communities.

An old friend is heavily involved with book hugger issues up there and showed us around the library when we were up visiting him in Gualala last May. What a neat library. Great community support. What a story that library and its Friends group have.

When the library was moving from their dinky digs into the old Mercantile building (which the Friends raised money to buy and restore), over a hundred locals lined up along Highway One through town for a "book worm" bucket brigade and moved the books across Highway One and down the road a piece to the new digs, hand to hand until the books were all moved and settled on their shelves in the restored building.

How many places have that kind of community support for the library?

We told Don that he can come down here to get books and if they all don't fit in his van (and they won't, it's now apparent), we'll take books up and the library can take what they want of the books and sell the rest to make money for the library. That offer to Don last May is what precipitated all this sorting activity. That and the fact that books in boxes do you no good when you're looking for your copy of Watts' THE WAY OF ZEN and all you know is that it's here somewhere in one of these boxes ...

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:55 PM|| |

I did not spend midnight at a bookstore.

I spent the hours before midnight wending my way home from the lobster feed at the Bankers Club and chatting with our 2-unit-condo partner-in-crime at our front doorstep until the new parents next door asked us to pipe down.

Today, when we were at Costco buying greens and tequila and Bisquick and whatever, I considered buying the latest HP but because I'm not all caught up with the first six, I decided it wasn't critical to buy a first-edition (one of 12 million) today.

We got to Costco late -- too late for his nibs to nab a 2 lb. loaf of Acme Bread's sour batard. We'll have to go down to the Ferry Building and pick up a 1 lb. loaf. Seems the bakery at the Ferry Building doesn't do 2 lb. loafs, alas.

We'd left our place in the early afternoon. Spent some time at the preview for Bonham's SOMA auction. Went over to the loft and sorted through books. Headed off to Costco and then home.

One of the guys in an adjacent line was a tough-enough guy there with his one-maybe-two-year-old. He chatted up an even tougher looking guy in another lane, a buddy, who came over and chatted up the young 'un.

What surprised, and pleased me, was that all our tough-enough guy had in his cart were three Harry Potters.

I imagined him telling the kids that he would =not= hang out at Barnes&Noble with them at midnight, but he =would= promise to go to Costco today and buy a copy for each of the reading kids so they wouldn't have to share.

We came home plus white t-shirts for his nibs but sans Harry Potter.

As I'm sorting through the boxes of books, I will set aside the Harry Potters and then spend a few days of serious reading to get me through the series.

Harry Potter. Who he?

Labels: books, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:58 PM|| |

A delightful collection of Book Collecting information from a former antiquarian bookseller, DJ McAdam.

Be sure to read DJ McAdam's essay Things Found in Books and check out his literature links.

DJMcAdam's site promises hours of exploration. ...

Labels: books

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:54 PM|| |

Interview with Elizabeth George in the June 2007 WRITER Magazine. [Caution: PDF!]

[snippet]

You talk a great deal about the craft of writing. What do you mean?

It's important for beginning writers to learn the craft, the basics, of writing. You can't teach somebody to be a creative artist, to have talent or passion, but you can teach somebody craft. Whether they can apply it in an artistic fashion, well, that's in the hands of the gods. But they can certainly learn what the craft of writing is.

Labels: books, people, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:36 PM|| |

We spent four hours or so yesterday perched at a table in front of Rogue Ale at Powell and Union, with a stack full of flyers for the San Francisco Climate Challenge and coupons for inexpensive cf lightbulbs for people who sign up for the Challenge. Most of the people we talked to were ineligible for the Challenge, being new to their digs (you have to have lived where you're living last year in October) or being tourists.

Lots of tourists.

We wound up answering questions from, f'rex, a pair of Englishwomen of a certain age who were looking for the Abercrombie and Fitch store.

"Not here," we said. "Up and over that hill."

"This isn't Union Square?" they asked.

"No, this is Washington Square Park, on Union Street. Union Square is blocks and blocks that way and nowhere near Union Street."

So we wrote out where the A&F store was (at Powell and Market) and his nibs walked them up to the corner of Columbus and pointed out where they could catch the 30 and take a ride through Chinatown ("Oh! Chinatown!") and on to the Westfield Shopping Centre on Market Street.

Another question came from a harried father who asked if we knew where there was decent Italian food that was kid-friendly. We looked at his kids, three boys between the ages of nine and fifteen, and pointed him to North Beach Pizza, a few blocks up Union at the corner of Grant. "Good pizza," we told him, plus there'd be an assortment of Italian food that he might like if he wasn't into pizza.

And so it went. We had nice conversations with a lot of people, including a woman with her camera who was on a fieldtrip to San Francisco with her photography class at West Valley College. She began to explain where WVC was and we told her we used to live less than a mile from the college before we pulled up stakes and moved up to this little 7x7 town.

We also spent time talking with each other, noshing down on one of Rogue's delish Reuben sandwiches and swilling some delish beers, enjoying the fresh air and the passing scene.

I also watched the clouds come and go and come and go again and noticed something interesting.

Watch this!

Exhibit One: a view (shoddy picture, sorry. taken with my cell) looking west from our table perch up Union Street toward Russian Hill. Note the cloud cover scudding toward us -- big huge thick clouds, pouring over the top of Russian Hill.

 

Exhibit Two: a view (another shoddy picture) looking east from our table up Union Street on the other side, toward Telegraph Hill.

 

Blue skies, eh?

The clouds would come barreling down off Russian Hill and reach the small flat space between the hills, away from the cool ocean breezes and warm up and d-i-s-a-p-p-e-a-r.

Fascinating to watch.

The microclimates of our fair ville are an endless surprise to visitors and to locals who don't get out much.

Heading down to another microclimate down at Potrero Point to sort through the tale end of the SFF collection, removing duplicates and alphabetizing by author/title. So far I have nine boxes of duplicate SFF titles set aside.

I'm all the way up to "R" with only two bookcases and not enough room to shelve the rest of the collection. Back into boxes for the excess. Question is, should I keep going and stop mid-letter (at "Scheckley," for example) or should I start working back from "Zelazny" and just box up all the R's and S's and T's.

Decisions, decisions.

Labels: books, life, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:30 PM|| |

Dashiell Hammett's old studio apartment is up for sale.

(That would be me that socketsite.com refers to as their "plugged-in reader.")

307 sq ft. *only* $249K

Labels: books, real estate, San Francisco, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:58 PM|| |

... of sorts.

Doesn't help to be tied down here because the solar guys were supposed to put the panels back up on the new roof today but never showed. Maybe tomorrow his nibs will work from home and set me free to sort some more ...

Sour Grapes offers in comments re Barchester Towers If I win you can have it. I've got it already.

Thanks. I was just feeling left out because I wanted to enter the contest too! I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere -- probably in a box marked "classics" or "misc" or "fiction" or ...

The book sorting goes apace. Well, "at a pace" anyway.

All travel books (except for USA travel) are out of their boxes and shifted over to adjacent bookcases, sorted by continent and country. The BENELUX titles and others of the ilk are a problem. I found multiple copies of some titles, which seems always the case, but not that many multiples. Even with the travel books settled, I get sidetracked thumbing through old travel books about Venice and travel memoirs and ... well, I get sidetracked a lot.

After I shifted and sorted the travel books, I moved the cookbooks that were in the shelves over there over thataway to fill in the empty shelves where the travel books had been (adjacent to the bulk of the cookbooks) so now all the cookbooks are in one bank of shelves instead of scattered around. There are still boxes (six or so) that are boxed up because there's no shelf space plus an additional box with a set of "Grande Diplome" cookbooks that I picked up used somewhere and two boxes that are filled with the Time-Life cookbook series that I picked up used here and there over time. A friend asked if I'd be willing to give her a set of Time-Life cookbooks and I said sure, but she's got to get herself over and pick them up.

Most of the cookbooks still in boxes are "community cookbook" sorts of titles. I've sorted the titles on the shelves into "baking" "country-specific" "barbecue" "old" "San Francisco" "California" sorts of categories.

On the shelves after sorting, I discovered multiple editions of the Household Searchlight Recipe Book: three from different years in the '30s, two from the '40s and a couple from the '50s. (The name changed to the Searchlight Recipe Book in 1942.) Different editions! Keep them all! Well, no. Turns out even though the books have different edition numbers and different publication dates, the contents of the 1st-14th editions are the same, according to this site.

I have multiple editions of Fannie Farmer's cookbook, two copies of Larousse Gastronomique, multiple copies of James Beard books, two copies of Rene Verdon's The White House Chef Cookbook (and tell me, should that be a general USA cookbook or should I put it in "San Francisco" because Verdon ran Le Trianon here for years?) There are, of course, multiple copies of some Sunset cookbooks, multiple copies of other titles. I filled up two boxes worth of duplicates for the library. The weirdest, though, was the duplicate copy of Madame Chang's Long Life Chinese Cookbook. Two copies? How did that ever happen?

The cookbooks are pretty well sorted now, although I may find that I have a French dessert cookbook in with dessert cookbooks and another copy in with French cookbooks. Those will sort out in time.

Next up is to start getting the SFF in order. My SFF books are the most likely to have duplicates because my brother and I had copies of the same books in our collections and those collections combined after he died. The most egregious example of too many copies of a title is a Heinlein title for which I wound up with two paperback copies, two hardbacks and one mass market paperback.

I'll take the empty bookcases that had held cookbooks and setup a rough sort (A-Z by author, 'natch) of the SFF books and winnow out the duplicates. I won't be able to get all of them on the empty shelves I have remaining, but I can at least sort through them in alphabetic shifts. Thanks be that I had the SFF boxed separately from the fiction, and labeled so I could find them in amongst all the piles.

After the pass through the SFF is complete, I'll start sorting through all the boxes labeled MISC and VERY MISC and NFIC and, of course, those boxes that are somehow unlabeled. I'll get the books organized in some sort of fashion so I can easily see that I have two copies of How to Build Your Dream House for Less Than $3500 and get rid of duplicates. (Yes, I know I have two copies, maybe three of that book. I'd bought one for myself, you see, because I'd loved my parents' copy. I gave a copy to my brother because I knew he'd love it. I may have bought a spare at some time too. ...)

I'll rough-sort the misc and pull out the fiction titles and the juv and sort the rest into some broad categories: science, essays/memoirs, biography/autobiography, history, reference, gardening, computers ... I don't know. I need to think out the sort before I get seriously into it or I'll wind up sorting and resorting and ...

I also have all the boxes of books that are already labeled "science" and "physics" and "law" and "reference" and whatever that I needs must go through because there was some higglety-pigglety-ness in the boxing up before the move and who knows what may have been tucked into an almost-full box at the last minute.

Once I can lay out all the PHYSICS or GEOLOGY or SOFTWARE DESIGN books in one place I can get a handle on duplicates and other titles that I don't need to save shelf space for.

Maybe along the way I'll find my copy of Barchester Towers and Vanity Fair and Morrison & Boyd's Organic Chemistry. Why own a book if I can't find it?

Yes, I am being unduly obsessive/compulsive about this (Why do you ask?) but I'm also using the exercise as one enormous procrastination project while I mull over the rewrite on the great American crime novel.

Productive procrastination, I call it. (The dupes and discards will be given to the library to use or sell! It's for the library! Think of the public libraries!)

(And I have visions of my darlings having to sort through all of Mom's old books after I take my dirt nap, looking for those of value. Better that I weed the collection now and save them at least some of the effort.)

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:03 PM|| |