Buy All The Books!

December 29, 2013 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I could be trolling the Lands’ End website, looking for the perfect grey, pink and green cardigans to add to the rainbow of Lands’ End fine gauge classic cardigans in my closet. Or I could be ordering a tiny bottle of Demeter’s Paperback because few things are sexier than smelling like books. Instead I’m on a mad hunt to replace wonderful, charming, enchanting and most delightful cozy reads that are disappearing from the local libraries. And the saddest thing? I know I’m not the only person reading these vanishing books because half the time I’m waiting for the books to be returned by another patron before I can get my little undead raccoon hands on them!

Perhaps I should have know something was up when I was in Canton and decided to check out Jacqueline Susann’s very first book Every Night, Josephine! Sometimes you just need to read about a glamorous poodle girl and her equally funny and glamorous owner (who was a few years away from Valley of the Dolls mega literary stardom). But when I went to the dog section, no Every Night, Josephine! for me. I shrugged my shoulders (it’s a small library and I can’t imagine Every Night, Josephine! was a huge checkout hit) and got a collection of James Herriot stories instead.

And then the E.M. Delafield Virago Classics disappeared from the stacks. And yesterday, well the Deaccession Squad, they got Faith Addis and Wendy Holden…

A little back story. On my commute to Company X, I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I’m not listening to NPR. Which is fine and dandy except my dear Mr Honda doesn’t have a CD player or fancy USB port like my brother’s Honda. Mr Honda has a cassette player. And yes, technology and library resources have changed and everyone, I mean everyone has CD players and cassette audiobooks take up so much space and who checks out cassette books anymore and all those wonderful cassette audiobooks are gone.

But the library in the same town as Company X, a picture perfect Connecticut town you fully expect to see Lorelai Gilmore pop out of a shop clutching a to-go cup of coffee the size of the Titanic as she chats a mile a minute, this town, heck let’s call it Stars Hollow, had tons of space and money and cassette audiobooks. And not just any cassette audiobooks but Clipper Audio cassette audiobooks. I had never heard of Faith Addis until I stumbled across Year of the Cornflake, Green Behind the Ears and Down to Earth. Sure I had read and loved Wendy Holden’s Gossip Hound (I love me some Wendy Holden!) but I had no idea how many of Belinda Black’s adventures had been removed from the US release until I found the Fame Fatale (UK title of Gossip Hound) cassette audiobook and laughed myself silly on my commute for a most glorious week.

But the Deaccession Squads are busy at work combing the stacks. If I had any idea that some of my favorite books/cassette audiobooks had been on the chopping block I would have been first in line at the library book sales to snap them up. Any wonder I’m on Mr Couch, tracking my Awesome Book UK order for E.M. Delafield Provincial Lady omnibus and searching for Faith Addis? Who will be next? Monica Dickens? Miss Read? Winifred Watson? Joyce Dennys? D.E. Stevenson? Helene Hanff? Barbara Pym? Elizabeth von Armin? Maybe I should just book a ticket to the UK and raid the used bookshops…

I Have A Sad (And A Mission)

May 13, 2012 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

With a long waited for and most blessed vacation upon me this week, I flung aside my Kindle stuffed to the gills with free (i.e. public domain) books and went to the New Britain Public Library to scoop up some inter-library loans and get an armload of magazines (which my brain will always hear as “Madga seens” a la The Gunslinger in The Drawing of The Three). So Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Issue stashed in my book bag I wandered over to The National Review to check out the latest The Bent Pin. And whimpered and dug through the pile until I found the farewell column. Once again, Florence King is retiring. And she’s sick. And I may just turn on the TV or see online one day soon that she’s passed.

Florence King is one of the very few authors I can tell you exactly what libraries have which copies. Or the places and circumstances I found and bought her works.

He: An Irreverent Look at the American Male? Noah Webster Library (the main branch of the West Hartford, CT library), three rows from the left of the Teen Room, very bottom shelf, about four books in. Amazing to even find copy in CT. Had only read excerpt in The Florence King Reader due to rarity and cost of used copies online.

When Sisterhood was in Flower? Fiction sections of both the New Britain Public Library and Southbury Public Library.

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye? Southbury Public Library. Could find in three minutes at old library location. Would need about 15 minutes to find at the new, huge, shiny building near the other middle school/Heritage Village.

WASP, Where is Thy Sting? New Britain Public Library. Must handle with care because cover is separating from spine in the front. Section on the WASP who goes all rustic with his wife Faith is falling out and needs re-binding. Think might be the only person who has checked out this book over the last 10 years.

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady? UMO (University of Maine, Orono to the average bloke) library, fiction stacks. Read to pieces.

The Barbarian Princess ? Her one and only bodice ripper under the pen name Laura Buchanan, mass market paperback from the 1970s found in an Old Town, Maine junk shop during a visit from my parents in the spring of 1993 for 50 cents right next to an ancient RCA proto-laser disc player just like the one my dad bought years ago.

With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy? Purchased at hip, independent New Haven bookstore after a trip to the Peabody Museum in 1992 with my mother and one of her friends.

The Florence King Reader? Purchased at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble on my first, ALL BY SELF NYC adventure and devoured on the Metro-North train back to Danbury.

STET, Damnit! Purchased three times, twice on Amazon, third and last time in late March at the Book Barn Downtown for $4 for the hardcover because am certain will never get back from co-worker loaned copy to. Which is okay, because it means Miss Florence King has another rabid reader in “Commander” Reynolds.

That’s just select titles off the top of my head. So my mission this lovely vacation week, (besides eat my own weight in Gummi Bears) is to photocopy all The Bent Pins in the back issues of The National Review.

Because Florence King is worth it.

Unwrapped: American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee

January 23, 2011 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Each biographer reveals another layer of it’s subject. But when your subject is the Queen of Strippers how can there be anything else to reveal? Karen (Sin in the Second City) Abbott rises to the challenge and slips under Gypsy Rose Lee’s body paint and lace bows. American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee is tells the intertwining stories of four immigrant brothers who created an empire and the unlovely, lumpy child vaudevillian from a damaged family who grew up to become one of their biggest stars and a household name for most of the 20th century.

American Rose works as a standalone biography, but if you’ve read any other Gypsy Rose Lee biographies (Gypsy, Gypsy & Me, Stripping Gyspy) any suspicions you may have had about Gypsy Rose Lee and her family are supported. Not a member of the extended Hovick clan emerged from childhood without scars, seen and unseen.

Sister June briefly talks about her mother Rose’s boyfriends who crept into her bed at night on the road, a revelation that chills the spine just as much as the descriptions of her battered body after each performance. And you’re left wondering which left the more lasting scars and strengths as young June moves onto to marathon dancing and the legitimate theater world. The sense that everyone was nothing more than things to Gypsy? What sister would send her younger sibling to a backroom “circus” party to try and get her break into the theater world? Or use her only child as a prop to negotiate everything from car repairs to contracts?

And as the Hovick family acts out it’s drama of damaged generations, the Minsky brothers break free of their respectable retail background and trade in a much more alluring trade, the female form, helping create the DNA of the strip tease that still lingers today. When Minsky meets Hovick, the fireworks that ensue change the very burlesque world.

Fast moving and full of tiny comments and scenes that tear at your heart, American Rose is a must read for the burlesque fan and the curious. The price you pay at the bookstore is nothing compared to the prices the brother Minsky and the Hovick clan paid…

Once Upon A Time At Massive Book Store: Steve Alten

December 9, 2010 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Whenever I read Marian Keyes SUSHI FOR BEGINNERS, I always envy the Colleen staffers when swag flutters into their office. Imagine having a boss ballsy enough to tear into a crate of champagne meant for a readers giveaway. The only time I ever had anything like that happen to me was once upon a time when I was a very young Gwendy working at MASSIVE BOOK STORE. Only the box didn’t have lovely champers or even a year’s supply of Rembrandt toothpaste…

A few weeks earlier an advanced reader copy of a new novel was in the back room for anyone to read. And even though it was a shiny, thick thing instead of the usual very plain advanced reader copies the publishers usually sent barely anyone read it. I was one of the few brave souls who actually made it to the end.

My verdict? How long before we would be putting 50% off stickers on this thing because obviously the publishers were hoping the author was the next Michael Critchton. I mean come on? “Jurassic Shark” in big letters on the back? That’s pretty much the only thing the booksellers read before laughing themselves silly and sticking the advanced reader copy back on the shelf.

So the box with it’s win free stuff was a no go. The book was awful. And just where we suppose to stick the display in our tiny store? Into the trash the entry forms went. And the water bottle, beach ball, towel and the like were dived up among the managers. Trust me, this wasn’t exactly a feeding frenzy. It was more, “B you like the gym” <store manager tosses water bottle to B> and “Gwendy you go to Block Island with your parents” <hands over beach towel>

And when the book finally came out? Oh my. Despite the publisher hype, it didn’t sell well at all. <cut to Gwendy at the information desk with the roll of 50% stickers on her wrist like a bracelet> Remember this is an author who got $2.1 million/2 book deal. Watch out Peter Benchley and Michael Critchton there’s a new boss in town. <cut to Gwendy on her couch 0ver 10 years later laughing and getting peanut butter toast crumbs EVERYWHERE!> And then there was the breach of contract lawsuit when the publisher decided not to release the sequel. Poor baby…<insert eye roll on behalf of awesome writers who deserve book deals>

But don’t weep for Steve Alten yet. Because ten plus years later I’m still using the MEG beach towel (complete with hair dye stains) while getting weird looks from people at the beach/Y pool/laundry room and he’s cranking out best selling books. Sighhhhh…