A Year in Reading: Recap

Notable Articles Year in Reading
December 23, 2006 | 3

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Year in Reading at The Millions. It was great fun. The Millions will be dark for a week or so while the holidays are celebrated. Hopefully, upon its return in early January, the blog will have a new and improved look. In the meantime, here is an index to all the great contributions we got this month:

Writers:

Bloggers:

Millions Contributors:

Readers:

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Carolyn Kellogg

Year in Reading
December 13, 2008

Carolyn Kellogg is a book critic and the lead blogger at the LA Times book blog Jacket Copy. She recently got www.carolynkellogg.com to call her very own.Dracula by Bram Stoker. There are Goths and there are Vampire Weekend fanatics, but I’m not among them; I wouldn’t have re-read Dracula if I hadn’t had to for a literature class in graduate school. But wow. Written in 1897, Dracula is a fractured, multifaceted narrative told in journals, letters, diaries and newspaper clippings, from the point of view of four different characters. If I’d turned in such a thing in workshop, I would have been accused of the crime of postmodernism. Anyway. It’s a terrific crime novel that chases the villain across Europe, and Mina Murray is one ballsy Victorian heroine.The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman he Loved by Judith Freeman. Judith Freeman tries to get to the heart of Raymond Chandler’s relationship with his wife Cissy – she was eighteen years his senior, a fact that was kept secret, even, for some time, from Chandler himself. During her research, Freeman begins to stalk his ghost: she goes from house to house across Southern California, trying to see how the couple’s many moves inflected what Chandler wrote. I did not always agree with her read of Los Angeles and its neighborhoods, but as a work of biography The Long Embrace is more honest than most. Freeman’s obsessions are a frame for her work; she exposes them where more formal biographies keep them under wraps. Yes, she loves reading Raymond Chandler; yes, she is entranced by his marriage; and no, she will never get close enough.More from A Year in Reading 2008

Year in Reading
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Literary Atlas Notable Articles

Islands in the Stream: Our “Walking Tour of New York’s Independent Bookstores,” Revised and Expanded

Literary Atlas Notable Articles
March 17, 2009 | 19 4 min read

**We’re doing a version of this tour in May. Click here to get all the details.I. IntroductionBy the time our original “Walking Tour of New York’s Independent Bookstores” hit the web in 2007, its first stop – the Gotham Book Mart – had closed its doors for good. As I type these words, stop number 5, Greenwich Village’s venerable Oscar Wilde Bookshop, looks likely to join the Gotham on the honor roll of bookstores past. The Strand Annex in lower Manhattan is, as of last summer, no more.It would be belaboring the obvious to say the last two years have been tough times for the bookmen and bookwomen. And yet, despite the vagaries of the business, independent bookstores continue to open, and to serve as hubs for communities real and imagined. I’ll spare you the exegesis on why I think this matters – we’ve covered that ground in the original post, and elsewhere. Instead, I’d like to offer you a new and improved edition of the Walking Tour.You can still find brief descriptions of many of the stops in our first “Islands in the Stream Post,” but the route we’ve charted has changed, and we’ve added new stops, with new descriptions below. In addition, through the magic of modern technology, we’ve created an information-rich online map of the tour.The full-size version of this map contains all of our capsule reviews, plus directions and website links. [Update: You can also now add your own edits to the tour at our Collaborative Atlas of Book Stores and Literary Places.] Below we offer the step-by-step itinerary, including capsule reviews for the newly added stops.II. The TourStop 1: St. Mark’s Bookshop (31 3rd Avenue at 9th Street).Stop 2: The Strand (828 Broadway at East 12th.)Stop 3: Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers (44 Greenwich Avenue at Charles Street)This well-stocked half-basement shop in the heart of Greenwich Village is one of several area bookstores that specialize in mystery books. The staff is steeped in the store’s chosen genre, making this an excellent place for suspense buffs to find new titles and old classics.Stop 4: Three Lives & Co. (154 West 10th Street at Waverly Place)The owners of Three Lives know that varnished wood and books go together like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and so the whole space has a uniquely warm atmosphere. The staff – one of the friendliest and most knowledgeable in the city – contributes to the sense of ease and comfort. Three Lives has also figured out how to maximize the number of titles placed face-up or face-out, which makes browsing easy. This is a particularly good spot to look for literature in translation; Ingo Schulze’s New Lives was prominently displayed on a recent visit.Stop 5: Housing Works Used Book Cafe (126 Crosby St. between Prince and Houston)Stop 6: McNally Jackson (formerly McNally Robinson) (52 Prince St. between Mulberry and Lafayette)Stop 7: Bluestockings (172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington)Bluestockings, the venerable, cooperatively run Lower East Side institution, puts the independent back in independent bookstore. Of New York’s many bibliophile haunts, this one boasts perhaps the most pronounced curatorial sensibility. Punk, feminist, progressive, culture-theoretical, and environmental sensibilities predominate, without domineering. With its extensive and esoteric periodical section, its frequent events, its adventurous front tables, and its terrific coffee, Bluestockings is a great place to make a discovery.Now, across the Brooklyn Bridge to Stop 8: Melville House Bookstore (145 Plymouth Street at Pearl Street, Brooklyn)Melville House HQ, as I like to think of it, is part publishing house, part bookstore. The daily operations of Dennis Loy Johnson’s stalwart independent press take place in Bat-Cave-like secrecy behind a nifty set of pivoting bookshelves. Up front, shelves and tables are stocked with the Melville House catalog, as well as the wares of other Brooklyn-based independents and literary magazines, including Akashic Books, Ugly Ducking Presse, N+1, and A Public Space.Stop 9: BookCourt (163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean)Stop 10: Freebird Books & Goods (123 Columbia St. between Kane & Degraw)Stop 11: WORD (126 Franklin Street at Milton Street, Brooklyn)WORD, a new Brooklyn bookstore, seeks to bring the Three-Lives/BookCourt model of the cosy neighborhood bookstore to the off-the-beaten-path precincts of Greenpoint. In this case, WORD combines top-shelf contemporary literature with a great selection of kids’ books. Frequent events and a terrific staff help cement the connection between store and neighborhood. With one of the more impressive internet efforts among NYC independents, WORD is doing online community-building, as well.III. The Future(s) of IndependentsNot just in the Big Apple, but all over America, the rapid technological and economic transformations of the last decade have profoundly altered the ecosystem in which independent bookstores exist. Far from solemnizing the end of an era, however, our Walking Tour seeks to illuminate some of the strategies that may help our favorite bookstores thrive in the 21st Century. A glance at our last three stops serves to illustrate the point.Since we first wrote about BookCourt (Stop 9), the store has expanded, nearly doubling its square-footage. This has allowed it to create a more generously apportioned area for children’s books – a growth genre in this baby-booming neighborhood, and a turf BookCourt can now vigorously compete for with the Barnes & Noble down the street. Another advantage of expansion: the store can now book readings for big names such as Richard Price without fear of running out of space.Freebird Books (Stop 10), under new ownership, has expanded in a more metaphorical sense, building up its events calendar. Readings and screenings, post-apocalyptic book clubs, and back porch barbecues help attract readers over to quiet Columbia Street. Owner Peter Miller also maintains a lively, involving blog detailing his discoveries in the used-book trade.WORD (Stop 11) has nudged the events-plus-online-presence strategy even further toward the latter. With a frequently updated blog, a Twitter account, a facebook following and a highly functional website, Word involves even those readers who can make it to the store only infrequently. Millions alum Patrick Brown, now blogging for L.A.’s Vroman’s Bookstore, has written perceptively and at length about how a bookstore’s online dimension can become more than window-dressing. I’ll be interested to see how aggressively, and how successfully, independent bookstores expand their online efforts in the coming years.More mapping fun: The Millions’ Collaborative Atlas of Book Stores and Literary Places

Literary Atlas Notable Articles
| 19 4 min read
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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Krin Gabbard

Year in Reading
December 11, 2008 | 1 2 min read

Krin Gabbard has written on jazz, cinema, and psychoanalysis. His most recent book is Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture, published this year by Faber and Faber. He is currently writing an interpretive biography of Charles Mingus.Few novels have grabbed me as much as Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was reluctant to read this author because of the Laura Ashley movie that his previous novel, The Remains of the Day, had been turned into. But one day a friend whose opinions I value handed me a copy, so I thought I’d give it a tumble. The novel takes its title from a beautiful song by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, recorded most memorably by the great jazz pianist Bill Evans. The narrator of the novel has special feelings about this particular song, so if you know it, the book has even more power.The premise of Never Let Me Go sneaks up on you as slowly as do the characters. Early on you realize that the narrator is recalling a childhood in an exclusive private school where none of the students seem to have parents. By the halfway mark, it is clear that they are all test-tube babies, produced solely for the purpose of providing organs for people deemed more worthy by British society. Ishiguro tells you that each clone makes four donations, but he inspires a measure of grim speculation because he never tells you what those donations actually are. He does tell you that after the fourth donation the donor is usually little more than a vegetable if he or she survives at all.The book takes place in the present, and because the sci-fi element is never played up, you mostly find yourself assessing the entirely reasonable thoughts of the main characters. I think that’s what most stays with me. How these perfectly normal people – who are capable of love, pettiness, and even cruelty – live in a world where they are regarded as utterly disposable. At the same time, I admire the book’s wide-open allegorical resonance. Is the reaping of organs from cloned humans actually about slavery, about the caste system, about late capitalism, about the fleeting nature of human existence? These and multiple other interpretations are readily available, and yet that’s not what the book is really about. Several months after reading it, I still think about the rich, inner lives that the doomed characters nevertheless lead.More from A Year in Reading 2008

Year in Reading
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3 comments:

  1. Hey, Max. I read the interview you and the other bloggers did, and I thought it was very informative and insightful. I felt some relief when you guys admitted to spending hours composing your posts; I thought I was the only one who spent that long writing my posts (and for the longer pieces, like my reviews or my criticism, it's not unusual for me spend several days writing them). But I also take pride in my blog, and it's obvious that you and the others do as well.

    And I'd like to wish you and your family happy holidays.

  2. It took me a while, but I just finished putting together a list of all the books I read in 2006: all 110 of them! This is more than double what I read in 2005, due to various factors (explained in more detail in the post). They're broken down into categories, and I denoted the ones that I liked the best. :)

    http://www.zandria.us/archives/000925.html

  3. Pingback: 8 Years in Reading: an Interview with C. Max Magee of The Millions | The Outlet: the Blog of Electric Literature

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Year in Reading

Return of The Gaviero

Year in Reading
December 8, 2004 | 2 min read

There are some books that just demand to be reread. For Emre, who I’m hoping will become a regular contributor to The Millions, the book he reread this year is also the best book he read this year.I never read a book twice until The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. When I finished reading the outlandish escapades of Maqroll in early November of ’03, I knew that I would read the book at least two more times. The seven novellas that Alvaro Mutis wrote over the past twenty years are now collected in one 700 page volume, which relates the wanderings of one Maqroll the Gaviero (the lookout). The stories of Mutis’ inconspicuous protagonist are presented by different narrators and in a random chronological order. The cleverly placed references in each novella help the reader discern the order of events, which unfortunately does little to dispel the mystery surrounding Maqroll and leaves the reader aching to know more about him. Mutis consoles the reader, albeit a little, each time a new character crosses paths with Maqroll. Presenting each person very skillfully and in great depth, Mutis ultimately paints a picture in which lifelong adventurers, crooks, lovers, sailors, miners, farmers, truckers, and dreamers cross paths by way of the most unimaginable, yet very possible, events. The Adventures and Misadventures is not just a modern day Don Quixote, as some termed it, but more a lyrical novel, a great ode to beautiful friendships, novel personas, and true emotions – joy and agony alike. It has been only one month since I finished reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll for the second time and I am already itching to read it again, this time in the chronological order that I discerned. It is a great novel that leaves the reader asking for more. The good thing is, you can go right back to page one. Enjoy.I should note here that I often cite Maqroll as the best book I have ever read (I, too, intend to reread it some time soon). If you care about fiction, I implore you to become acquainted with the Gaviero. You won’t regret it.

Year in Reading
| 2 min read
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