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Editor’s Note: This is a wonderful post by a brand new writer to The Bookshop Blog. Rachel Jagareski owns Old Saratoga Books and has her own blog called Book Trout. It’s a great blog; I highly recommend a visit (and subscribe while you’re there).

Cabin Fever Cured with Armchair Travel

Our corner of upstate New York has been peppered all winter with the
nuisance of mixed precipitation. The dreaded wintry mix has fueled
school cancellations, traffic accidents, sore backs (all that
shoveling heavy slush), household arguments and a heaping helping of
cabin fever. The cure-all? Armchair travel.

Join me now in stoking up the fire, filling the tea kettle and
hammering back at the foul weather with a blanket, optional lap cat
and one of the following books:

Let’s warm our bones in sunny Spain with writer Tim Moore in “Travels
with my Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago” (NY:
St. Martin’s Press, 2005). The hapless Tim took on the 500-mile walk
from St. Jean Pied-de-Port just over the border in France to the
Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, as have religious pilgrims since
medieval times. Moore, neither stoic nor ascetic, has the perfect
comedic partner in his ass, Shinto, who daily confounds the author by
refusing to cross any sort of bridge and slows to an inexorable crawl
after his midday meal.

Meeting up with his compadres at the hostels each night is not always
solace for the parched and irritable donkey-master. Moore must often
out-maneuver his fellow pilgrims for the last open bunk and sometimes
this means he must forego his motivational dinner and glass (or
carafe) of red wine and attend to Shinto’s feet and other anatomy.
Even when he does secure a bed, rest is not always easy. There are
the champion snorers, night-mumblers, petty thieves and worse yet, the
“Pilsener-bellied” nudist who bedevils Moore in the communal
lavatory: “A good man, a kind man, but a man whose wrinkled pilgrim
parts rested on the rim of the sink I was waiting to clean my teeth
in.”

Moore is a witty and literate tour guide in his other books; if you
enjoy travel writing in the vein of Bill Bryson or Tim Cahill, you may
enjoy a trip with Moore to Norway and the island of Spitzbergen in
“Frost on My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer”,
“French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France” or on the European
Grand Tour in “Continental Drifter: Taking the Low Road with the First
Grand Tourist”.

American ex-pat J.R. Daeschner is an equally entertaining tour leader
in his book “True Brits: A Tour of Britain In All Its Bog-Snorkeling, Shin-Kicking and Cheese-Rolling Glory” (Woodstock,
NY: The Overlook Press, 2004). The sheer gooniness of some of these
annual events makes you want to gurn, or pull a funny face, as in the
World Gurning Championships held each September in Egremont.
Daeschner, a strapping 6′4″ young man gamely tries out most of these
oddball events, from shin-kicking (padded shins, but still a painful
remnant from old-time boxing), to bog-snorkeling and dancing with 25
pounds of 1,000-year-old extinct reindeer horns.

Cheese Rolling in Chipping Campden sounds like a tame, bucolic
activity, something that young tots might engage in, but no:
paramedics line the flanks of Cooper’s Hill to attend to the injuries
of athletes and bystanders from 70 mph dairy products in this extreme
sport. Cheese Rollers fling themselves down the steep slope (a 50 to
70-degree angle along its height) in pursuit of the their Double
Gloucester, usually fueled by a snootful of farmhouse scrumpy, the
pre-game alcoholic anaesthetic of choice.

If the truly weird is what you’re after in a folk festival, then
Daeschner offers up a tour of two other bizarre traditions that just
don’t show up in the British Tourism literature. Just outside
Edinburgh, in the Scottish town of South Queensferry, the locals
somehow persuade one of their own to don a head-to-toe outfit of
prickly green burrs. This is done in August, so that the
uncomfortable costume can be made even more so in the heat and with
its bumblebee and other insect companions. The Burry Man then marches
around town, arms held out straight at the sides for extra discomfort,
nipping into pubs and downing many a beverage to bless the
establishment.

The Burry Man spectacle, however, is topped in my mind, by the Padstow
tradition of Darkie Day. A handful of clueless Cornish residents
celebrate Boxing Day and New Year’s Day by blacking up their faces and
having a moving minstrel show up and down the streets. Of course,
multiple booze pit stops are involved, kids included. I know that
minstrel shows were a popular American entertainment in the late 19th
and early 20th century, but I can’t imagine how anyone could be so
socially unaware as to attempt this sort of merriment in a
post-colonial age. Daeschner interviews various Padstowians about the
whole affair, which stirred up some national tabloid outrage a few
years ago. He even tracks down an audience with the lone black
resident, Ziggy, and his reportage is illuminating.

For the final leg of our armchair journey, I recommend “Sound Bites:
Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand”, by Alex Kapranos (NY: Penguin,
2006). The lead singer and guitarist of the rock band dishes up
impressionist portraits of his daring dining around the globe. He
previously worked in a restaurant kitchen, so he brings an
appreciation for well-prepared meals, no matter whether he’s shoveling
in kluski pasta in a Polish Minneapolis polka restaurant or smashing
open freshwater mud crabs in Sydney.

Kapranos writes vibrantly, bringing out out sensual descriptions of
the aromas, visuals, music and background noises in each dining arena,
and there are the inevitable weird dainties that he and the rest of
the Franz Ferdinand crew dare each other to eat. Criadilla, or Bull’s
Balls in Buenos Aires apparently taste like a bag of green pennies.
Band mate Andrew Knowles illustrates the book with edgy, humorous
drawings, any one of which would make an interesting T-shirt, and
these all help transport you into each travel vignette.

I hope you have enjoyed our armchair journey. It was so pleasant to
experience northern Spain without being parched and foot sore; to
travel to Great Britain without being pelted by high-speed cheese and
to sample an international smorgasbord without having to chomp on
something that certainly did not taste like chicken. Here’s hoping
your armchair travel brings you to many interesting places over the years.

Rachel Jagareski
Old Saratoga Books, has been around since 1996 at 94 Broad Street,
Schuylerville, NY 12871, store hours: Wednesday through Saturday 10 am
to 5 pm EST and Sundays noon to 5pm, and open all hours online at
www.oldsaratogabooks.com. The Book Trout is at:
http://booktrout.blogspot.com.

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editor’s note: Dana Richardson is one of our Featured Writers. More of her writing on can be seen here. She is the proprietor of Windy Hill Books.

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Dana Richardson – Bookseller?

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Niels Bohr

I guess that if you use the definition above, I can consider myself very close to being the Grand High Poobah expert bookseller in the field of modern, out-of-print and collectible children’s books. I honestly think I’ve made every mistake possible while still managing to call my self a business person with a mostly a straight face.

I officially made my transition from fanatic book reader to bookselling fanatic in 1993 when I was in my late thirties. I’ve always been a slow learner and it took me that long to figure out that I did not fit in either the academic or government environments. Unfortunately, the time I finally determined that there was a direct correlation between my happiness and the number of books by which I surrounded myself, was also the time, due to multiple moves and a farmhouse remodel, that I owned the fewest number of books in my adult life. So on behalf of another bookseller, I spent about 6 months sending quote cards to listings in the old AB Bookman Weekly magazine, haunted the out-of- print dealers in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, discovered to my endless fascination, the Auction Price realized section in the Cedar Rapids Library, bought my first copy of Pat and Allen Ahearn’s Collected Books: A Guide to Values…and declared myself a bookseller.

The reasons I decided to specialize in children’s books were very pragmatic. There was no possibility of any sort of long term internship with any out of print bookstores, (for that matter there were not many out of print stores in Eastern Iowa at that time) and no money or time to attend the Book Seminar in Colorado, so I needed a genre narrow enough that I could get up to speed relatively quickly. (Remember this is all pre-internet). I had been a rabid reader since 3rd grade, when, 3 hours past my bedtime on a school night, (It was a Thursday!) I finished reading The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle. So I knew a little something about children’s books, or at least I knew what I had liked in my younger years. I also was familiar with the books my own children were currently reading, which helped me keep abreast of what was currently being published. Also, very fortuitously; in 1993 there were no other dealers specializing in out of print children’s book ANYWHERE in eastern Iowa. This fact alone let me corner the market for a short time and resulted in my being offered some truly wonderful books.

Since all my sales were mail order and I was completely terrified of mis-describing a book’s condition, I decided I would only deal with books in the nicest possible condition, therefore I decided I would not purchase book club editions or library discard copies. With that very stringent condition requirement in place my purchasing decisions were relatively easy; If it was an award winning book I would buy it, if it was a book I remembered from my childhood, I would buy it, if it was a book that I had wished I had read as a child I would buy it…

By the time we relocated from Iowa to Maryland in 2003 my inventory had grown from a couple of hundred books to over 15,000. (About 12,000 currently online). And along the way I’ve probably made every possible mistake a bookseller can make. So in short, the following is some advice from my personal school of oopsies, goof ups and foobars, and is definitely to be filed under the do as I say, NOT as I did category…

• Intern with an out of print dealer or AT LEAST spend some time working in an in print bookstore.
• ALWAYS keep a cash reserve (yes, I mean separate from the book buying budget!)
• Also keep a reserve for buying the really special books, (when economic times are difficult some really wonderful books become available)
• Whether you chose to use the traditional bookseller description terminology or not, at least know what the terms mean. If you are going to walk the walk at least be able to talk the talk…
• If you think of books in terms of “units” moved you are probably in the wrong business, but conversely if you don’t have any business or accounting experience, hire it or marry it!
• and finally, - Don’t get so busy that you don’t take the time to READ!

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One of my favorite type of books to read are memoirs of other dealers and books by folks that just love being surrounded by them (the books and the dealers). I’ve loved most of Basbane’s books as well as those by the Goldstones. I was happy to come across this review and recommendation of Seeing Shelley Plain (by Robert Wilson) from Book Trout, I think I’ll order one for myself. Book Trout themselves often have great posts, I suggest you subscribe to them.

Wilson started his bookseller career in his forties, having served as an Army soldier during World War II, a diplomat in Poland and South Africa, a Broadway actor wannabe and a cuckoo clock factory office manager. A long-time book collecting passion (he collects Gertrude Stein and various poets’ works) led him to become the fifth owner of the Phoenix Book Shop in New York’s Greenwich Village. full story here…

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In January I asked some of our writers what their best business moves were for 2007.
George from Fairs Fair Books mentioned improving methods and procedures. With that comment came a recommendation to read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. I took him up on it and was very happy with his recommendation. This book got me thinking about how I can run my business more efficiently. As most book dealers will attest, this is a difficult (but rewarding) business. Mr. Gerber shows you how to focus on procedures but doesn’t bore you with complex systems. I also recommend this book to all those who run Brick and Mortar businesses of any kind.

Related Posts: Best Business Moves of 2007

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Summary: Scholarly, intelligent Anna Comnena is the firstborn of Emporer Alexius I Comnenus and heir to the throne. She is learning the subtleties of statecraft from her father’s mother, her grandmother, Anna Dalessena, a conniving woman who is the Emporer’s most trusted advisor. However, Anna learns the woman she is named after is not as trustworthy as her father believes. When Anna’s grandmother uses Anna’s little brother, John, to betray her, Anna’s father bestows the throne upon his son. Anna determines that, whatever the cost, she will regain what is hers and rule the Byzantine empire.

If you enjoy historical fiction, especially stories set in the middle ages, you will enjoy Anna of Byzantium. The story is based on real people and real events from the Byzantine era and the real Anna Comnena, who lived from 1083 to 1153. The story is rich with details of the time and it’s not hard to find yourself within the walls of the cold stone palace where Anna lives.

The author, Tracy Barrett, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to research medieval women writers, and Anna Comnena was one of the writers she studied. Tracy teaches Italian at Vanderbilt and has written several children’s books. I’ve read two of Tracy’s other novels, Cold in Summer (set in modern-day Tennessee) and On Etruscan Time (a sequel to the former, in which the brother of the main character is involved in a time-travel adventure which takes him to the ancient civilization of the Etruscans). Both were good reads, but with its strong female character, medieval setting and an intriging climactic twist, Anna of Byzantium is my favorite.

My recommendation? This book rocks!

Tracy will have a new book out in 2008 — the first in a series about some young descendants of Sherlock Holmes who end up following in the footsteps of their famous ancestor.

I’ve finished reading True Friends, a middle-grade historical novel by Memphis author Grace E. Howell.

True Friends is the story of Annie, a young girl coming of age in Memphis during World War I. She’s the only girl in a family of boys and would rather play baseball or run barefoot in the streets than grow up and be a lady. When well-to-do Iris Elizabeth moves into the big house nearby, Annie wants to be her friend. She soon learns, however, that there is a price to be paid for being Iris Elizabeth’s friend — not only does Iris Elizabeth want to change the way Annie dresses and behaves around others, she wants Annie to give up all her other friends. Though Iris Elizabeth gives Annie many material gifts, Annie discovers Iris Elizabeth doesn’t give gifts unless she expects something in return, and whatever it is, it always ends up being for Iris Elizabeth’s benefit.

Grace Howell writes with a true southern voice. Her vivid descriptions of life in Memphis at the turn of the century, the characters’ speech, and their daily activities drew me in to the story. She also captures the intricacies of childhood friendships, from Iris Elizabeth’s spoiled, manipulative personality to the interactions Annie has with the neighborhood boys who see her as “one of them.”

The story takes a dramatic, unexpected turn when the Spanish influenza epidemic reaches Memphis. There is one scene in the book (and since I don’t want to be a spoiler I won’t reveal it here) that is a pivotal moment for Annie and I thought it was absolutely brilliant the way the author handled it. Suffice it to say that Annie learns who her true friends are, and that there are some people in the world who will tell you they are your true friends when they are really just using you to get what they want.

You can read more about Grace Howell and True Friends at her website. 

I’ll be starting a new book tomorrow, and it’s one I’m really excited to read. It’s Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett.

In case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to, well …

* I’ve been working on the edits and layout for our SCBWI regional newsletter, BorderLines.

* I’m still doing rewrites on my latest work-in-progress.

* My stories for the paper over the last few days have included an interview with the local farmer of the year, a feature on the Salvation Army’s Thanksgiving dinner preparations, an interview with a World War II veteran, coverage of a fitness challenge, and other odds and ends stuff.

* I have a new keychain! Well, actually, it’s not new — one of the photographers I work with brought it to me. He’d picked it up at one of the agriculture events we covered (one of those little freebie things companies give away for advertising). It’s a piece of wood cut in the shape of Kentucky, and it has one of those ball-chain things attached to it that you string your keys on.

* And, of course, I’m getting ready for Turkey day! Thanksgiving! Yeah! I’ve started the Thanksgiving Coconut Cake that we make every year. (Takes three days.) Plus I have sweet potatoes, ham, and other stuff to cook.

Last week I visited with the fourth-grade classes at Junction City Elementary School in Junction City, Kentucky. I spoke to the classes about writing feature articles. We had a great time and the students asked lots of excellent questions.

We discussed focus and how a reporter organizes information in an article. As the students and I talked, I realized how easy it can be to lose focus because we try to include too much information — whether it be in a story or a newspaper feature. And when we lose focus, so does the reader.

I think it can be hard to maintain focus when you’re writing a novel, just because of the length of the thing. One of my earliest lessons on focus came from a great editor. Christian was working with me on my second book, Funeral Home Evenings. After reading the manuscript, he called me on the phone and we had a long conversation. I also received a letter from him, detailing some of the problems of the manuscript. My big problem was focus.

Basically, I had too many plots. He made me pare it down. I ended up cutting huge chunks of material. It was actually fun, because the more I cut the more I began to see the “shape” of the story, sort of like a sculptor who keeps breaking away at the stone until the form he envisions in his mind begins to show up in the rock.

In other news …

One of the reporters I work with made a comment to me last week about feature articles. I shared it during the school visit because I thought it was important. He said, “If I’m in a room with 100 people, I can look around and see 100 feature stories. That’s because everyone has a story.”

Some of us (raising my hand here) lead pretty predictable, routine lives. I guess we can’t all be astronauts, famous scientists, or celebrities. But it’s kind of neat to think that someone could look at my life, see a story, and believe it’s worth telling.

And one more thing …

I got a sweet email today from Mary Ann Rodman, who is an awesome writer and totally rocks! If you are looking for a great historical fiction read, check out her book Yankee Girl. It’s about a young girl, Alice, whose family moves from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi in 1964, during the height of the Civil Rights era. Alice’s father is an FBI agent who has been assigned to protect the town’s African-Americans who have registered to vote. There is a surprising twist at the end and it’s a story you’ll think about long after you’ve read the last page.

You might recall that in a previous post, I declared my devotion to cats.

 Because I love cats, I love to read books about cats. When I discovered Whittington, a Newbery Honor Book by Alan Armstrong, I couldn’t resist.

Whittington is a tom cat with a floppy ear who makes himself at home in a barn where Lady, a sensible duck, rules the roost. The barn belongs to Bernie, who manages a service station and has a habit of taking in animals no one else wants. Bernie and his wife are raising their grandkids, Abby and Ben. Ben has trouble with reading and when it looks like he could be held back in school, Abby and the animals get to work.

Along with the reading lessons, Whittington shares the story of his ancestor and her owner, Dick Whittington, who he is named after. The book is based on the English folktales of Dick Whittington and his cat, and Armstrong provides authors notes about his research at the end of the book.

If you enjoy the works of E.B. White and stories such as Black Beauty, you’ll enjoy Whittington. The prose is warm and comforting, beautifully written, and would make a great read-aloud for a family or classroom. As the cat tells Dick Whittington’s story, it intertwines with Ben’s quest to learn to read and it’s really fun at the end how the two stories tie together.

All in all, Whittington is a satisfying book, one I highly recommend.

What I’m reading now: True Friends, the story of a young tomboy growing up in the turn-of-the-century South, written by one of my true SCBWI-Midsouth friends, Grace Howell. From what I’ve read so far, she has got the southern voice down pat!

I added a new page tonight with details on author visits and workshops.

Be sure to check the link on the side bar!

I read Lowry’s Number the Stars a few years back. It was a great book, but I have to say I’ve not read any middle-grade fiction like The Giver.

This is not a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, reading The Giver served as a reminder why I love children’s literature so much.

Twelve-year-old Jonas is destined to be burdened with memories. He will someday take the place of the Giver, the one who carries all the memories. The memories are not accessible to anyone else who lives in his dystopian world — a world where it’s against the law to offend, a world where everyone is forced by law to acknowledge everyone else’s feelings. In this world there is no such thing as uninhibited childhood play. Life is structured and people are assigned to jobs at an early age. Not even family units are left to chance. Residents are screened for compatibility and children are assigned to parents; one boy and one girl to each family.

Once he starts receiving them, the memories change Jonas. As he acquires the knowledge memory brings – once he sees what the lack of memory has done to society — he can never fit in to the structured world in which he has lived, nor can he return to his family.

The writing is superb, the story is chilling yet ends hopefully — at least this is my interpretation. The ending is not clear-cut; the outcome is determined in the mind of the individual reader.

It’s no wonder this book won the Newbery.

What am I reading now? I’m enjoying a delightful cat book, Whittington, by Alan Armstrong.

I love riding my recumbent exercise bike because I can get my workout and read at the same time. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately.

I just finished the first book in the Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Underachiever series, Niagara Falls, Or Does It? Hank Zipzer is a believeable fourth-grader and his frustrations with school are certain to resonate with young readers who struggle with ADD or ADHD. I thought it was interesting that Hank’s music teacher, Mr. Rock, was the one to explain Hank’s difficulty to his parents, and how Hank so readily took to music. I’d like to read a few more of the books in this series. I’d like to see what happens now that Hank’s parents are aware he learns differently. And Papa Pete’s pickle analogy was a great way to teach that every person’s style is different but just as valuable.

This book was especially fun to read since I had the chance to meet Lin Oliver at our SCBWI-Midsouth conference recently and she signed the copy I bought. (She co-authored the books with Henry Winkler).

I love getting books signed by the authors who wrote them! I’m building up a nice little collection.

I started Karen Hesse’s book, Out of the Dust, today. It is a breathlessly beautiful poetic novel. She is able to achieve in sparse free verse what some writers can’t in a 80,000-word story. Her characters are vivid and the novel’s sense of place — the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1930s — is so well-done, as I read I feel as if I’m reliving The Grapes of Wrath (one of my all-time favorite novels). It was very hard to tear myself away from the book this morning, but I had to get ready for work. I can’t wait to exercise again tomorrow so I can read more of this story!

I am the assistant regional advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Midsouth region. There are many, many talented authors and illustrators in the Kentucky-Tennessee area! I enjoy reading books by our members, and will occasionally highlight some for you on this blog.

The book I want to recommend today is Papa Fish’s Lullaby, illustrated by Susan Eaddy, one of our talented Midsouth artists. I absolutely adore Susan’s work with clay. It is so colorful and imaginative. I think this book is a perfect showcase for her talents and what she can accomplish.

The text is by Patricia Hubbell. The rhyme is pleasant, never forced, and has a nice flow when read aloud.

This is a gentle read-aloud with stunningly accurate illustrations. The textures and colors are extraordinary. I read the book recently to my baby granddaughter and she kept reaching out for the pictures, trying to grab the fish.

I highly recommend this book!

During the winter of 1811-1812 areas of Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri bordering the Mississippi River experienced a series of tumultuous earthquakes. The worst occurred in February 1812, and was so powerful the Mississippi ran backwards, the city of New Madrid, Missouri broke away and fell into the river, and a new lake – Reelfoot Lake — was formed in western Tennessee. It’s believed the quake would have been equal to what we would consider today an 8.8 on the Richter scale, indicating a major upheaval with catastrophic loss of life and extensive damage.

The Legend of Zoey by Candie Moonshower (Delacorte 2006) is the story of Zoey Saffron Lennon Smith-Jones, a modern young woman who is catapulted back in time to the winter of 1811. She finds herself in western Tennessee, which was known as Chickasaw country, at the time the tremors begin. She discovers she must help Prudence and her pregnant mother, Grace, trek north to escape the major quake that will turn their farm into a lake and drown an entire Indian settlement.

As Zoey helps her friend in the past, she learns to appreciate her Indian heritage and discovers she is stronger and can do things she never imagined possible.

If you enjoy reading historical fiction, especially American history-based novels, you will enjoy The Legend of Zoey.

Well, if you have to spend an entire day in an airplane (well,,,actually three airplanes), it's nice to fly first class.  Especially when you are feeling a little older than you did the day before.  (Yesterday, I picked up my first pair of PROGRESSIVE LENSES.)

tHE PERKS:

All the cookies you can eat.
Drinks, even before the plane takes off.
Room to stretch.
Time to read.  I've been saving K A Nuzum's A SMALL WHITE SCAR, for this flight.  By all accounts, it is wonderful.

If you need something wonderful to read this weekend, I just finished THE WEDNESDAY WARS, by Gary Schmidt.  It was one of those books I did not want to finish--it was a pleasure to read.  Great protag.  Lots of texture.  Vivid and meaningful sense of place.  I just found out that Gary is teaching at Hamline.  This week, I'll be selling many copies of a pb he wrote with Larry Kushner, IN GOD'S HANDS.  A wonderful retelling of an old tale.

And cross your fingers for good air conditioning in St Louis.....

Well, if you have to spend an entire day in an airplane (well,,,actually three airplanes), it's nice to fly first class.  Especially when you are feeling a little older than you did the day before.  (Yesterday, I picked up my first pair of PROGRESSIVE LENSES.)

tHE PERKS:

All the cookies you can eat.
Drinks, even before the plane takes off.
Room to stretch.
Time to read.  I've been saving K A Nuzum's A SMALL WHITE SCAR, for this flight.  By all accounts, it is wonderful.

If you need something wonderful to read this weekend, I just finished THE WEDNESDAY WARS, by Gary Schmidt.  It was one of those books I did not want to finish--it was a pleasure to read.  Great protag.  Lots of texture.  Vivid and meaningful sense of place.  I just found out that Gary is teaching at Hamline.  This weekend, I'll be selling many copies of a pb he wrote with Larry Kushner, IN GOD'S HANDS.  A wonderful retelling of an old tale.