Book Report #04

the guys are reading!

Hi y’all,

Can someone make me a playlist? I can’t keep wandering around New York at night listening to “Bartender.”

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Spotted: The guys of New York are on the town in their 5” inseam shorts and branded baseball caps, and y’all, they are reading!

A skinny guy in a Picasso graphic tee reading Less is More by Jason Hickel. Leaning against a CVS on Park Ave, a guy reading Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. And the ultimate guy: wearing a New Yorker hat, clutching Summerland by Michael Chabon, while waiting in the bar line at Bushwick Beer Garden. House music thumping loudly in the background.

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At birth, every reader is assigned an indie bookstore to patronize, to cherish, to defend until death, and to loaf around in on a hot Saturday. Like soulmates in a dumb YA novel, a reader and her bookstore are sometimes cleft apart, separated by distance, perhaps even by time. In a just world, readers would be destined to reunite with their bookstore, but you’re not destined to do anything (I don’t believe in determinism. God loves you.)

So this week, I recommend that you undertake the noble quest to seek out your bookstore.

I’m #blessed to have found my bookstore at the tender age of 24. Spoonbill Books is not the first bookstore I’ve been to, nor will it be the last, but it is the ultimate, shining ideal of what a bookstore can be. A bookstore on a hill. The Platonic Form of a bookstore. I love it so much.

Spoonbill is a tiny shop in Brooklyn, with only a few tables for display, but the incredible finds they manage to cram in there! Their curation is unmatched. This is the true pleasure of a small bookstore. In chains like B&N, the books on display tables are often decided and paid for by publishers. At independent bookstores, the owner and employees decide what they’ll carry and how books are displayed. Spoonbill curates an incredible selection of literary fiction, art & design books, theory, and indie magazines. They don’t forget small presses. I always find something weird at Spoonbills.

There are a lot of good reasons to shop local, but y’all already know them. Publishers and book lovers talk in reverential tones about book “discovery,” how readers find new books they love. Online, everyone’s trying to mimic the experience of looking at the “staff recommends” shelf at your local indie. But nothing beats a handwritten blurb.

So stop buying books online. An algorithm might give your pathetic hamster brain dopamine drips in the form of 30 second videos, but it can’t tell you what book will reignite your curiosity and joie de vivre.¹

“Discovery” is the result of a quest. You have to leave your couch.

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DOJ v. PRH cont.:

John Maher @JohnHMaher

DOJvPRH Day 5: Govt (my paraphrase): Why is publishing LIKE this? Weisberg: “Some of it’s business, some of it’s history. It’s a business of gambling.... It's a business of passion.”

I’m not sure if the general reading public knows how much of a crap shoot publishing can be. To get an idea of the mystery of success in publishing, I really liked this essay by Anne Trubek, founder and publisher of Belt Publishing, a small press in Ohio (btw, they’re having a big sale right now!)

A tweet:

Candice Huber @nolafleurdelit

The New Yorker really released a whole article about how much we need bookstores and linked every book mentioned in it to Amazon. 😕

This went viral, and then The New Yorker removed the Amazon links from the article lol.

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This week, I asked Mike from Books on GIF what he’s reading! Books on GIF is “an animated alternative to boring book reviews” and a delight to receive in my inbox.

'Prey,' the cool new 'Predator' movie, poses an interesting question as its young heroine tangles with extraterrestrial and colonial threats: Who's more monstrous? An invader from outer space, or one from across the ocean? 'Blood Meridian,' my current read, affirms the latter. Like the film, Cormac McCarthy's novel is set centuries ago and depicts native people being hunted. It follows 'the Kid,' a teenage Tennesseean runaway who ends up in Mexico among mercenaries paid to stalk, murder and scalp the Apache. But the real protagonist is violence--dark, brutal and irredeemable behavior that would embarrass a cold-blooded killer alien. (Even Predators have a code!) I bought 'Blood Meridian' at Kaboom Books in Houston, Texas. McCarthy's writing is elegant and spartan, despite the sanguinary story. It's a riveting read so far, but I'm eager to leave its world.

Mike is going to post his full, gif-filled review on his Substack on Sunday. Subscribe now to Books on GIF so you don’t miss it!

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On Tuesday night, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a Mormon missionary who called this passage from Romans “super dope”:

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so it be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.

We’re gonna talk again next Tuesday, and he asked me to read 3 Nephi 11 in advance. Luckily I already have a copy of the Book of Mormon, but if I didn’t, I’d pick up this edition from Penguin Classics, which, incredibly, has Joseph Smith listed as the translator:²

The NYT is behind on the times—all the cool girls are converting to the Church of Latter-day Saints.

xoxoxo,
Book Notes

PS. I encourage you to plug your bookstore in the comments.

1. Blogs, on the other hand, are erudite fonts of knowledge run by girls with incredible taste.

2. For those who don’t know much about the LDS, they believe the Joseph Smith found a bunch of golden plates buried in the woods on which the text of the Book of Mormon was engraved in a strange, hieroglyphic text. Smith “translated” the plates by looking at a special “seer stone” placed in the bottom of his hat.

Also for the record, I told the missionaries I’m Catholic and don’t plan on converting any time soon, so I’m not leading anyone on.