The Week In Books: Going To Ashtabula Edition

Oh yes. Ashtabula, Ohio. You may recognize it as one of the towns Jack Kerouac mentions only by name, once, in his classic novel On The Road.

Or you may know it as a tragically depressed harbor town on Lake Erie, complete with decayed downtown and a lone bookstore. In any case I am off to Ashtabula in order to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday.

My grandfather was a lifelong carpenter and ran a respected home building company in Ohio first and later in Florida. When I was a youngster I used to pick up nails on some of the work sites (supposedly this was a job, though I still have my doubts).

My favorite story about him is one from World War II. He was in the artillery during the invasion of the Philippines and as a carpenter the notion of destroying buildings came to bear heavily on him.

After the battles had ended and some down time was at hand, he and a friend took time to build a house on the island they were stationed. It is a very noble and somewhat vain story, but I have always found a splendid attempt at harmony in it.

So anyone wanting to wish Carlos Vernon Capp (shortened form Capitana) a happy birthday can do so by raising an extra dry, slightly dirty, vodka martini and gobble a handful of peanuts. Because that's what Carlos will be doing.

Public service announcement complete, let's talk books.

Greenlight Bookstore = Super Colider?

Per Beatrice.com. The Brooklyn based bookstore is launching a new event series that is, in this humble blogger's imagining, a really cool thing.

In short they are pairing writer/bloggers (kind of like a liger only smaller, less dangerous) for intelligent discussions before an audience.

Now what I would like to see is a mere blogger take the stage with a writer and get get to facilitate a discussion. Basically have the blogger as a guest moderator. Maybe that's what they're doing here. Not 100% certain, but in either case it still seems clever to me.

Might have to take the train up to see exactly what's happening and report more later.

Ron Hogan & The Tao

One Beatrice story followed by another, sort of. Former GalleyCat editor Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com fame and who is now employed (or is it deployed) by Houghton Mifflin & Company as their director of digital marketing is auspiciously engaged in an independent book experiment.

His previously released edition of a paraphrased edition of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching online, for free, is the foundation of this experiment. Via ChannelVBooks, Hogan is releasing a print edition of the previously free Getting Right With Tao: A Contemporary Spin On The Tao Te Ching.

The experiment seeks to discover whether a previously free online text can be successfully sold in a print format. Whether or not it proves anything will be seen.

I really don't normally go in for these sort of "modernized" projects but anyone proselytizing for the Tao is fine with me. Wait... Something seems wrong here.

Speaking Of Mixed-Motives

From MobyLives there is this cruel story about a pernicious (I will make the value judgment) bookstore chain in the UK called Oxfam.

Here, let Oxfam explain who and what they are:

"Oxfam is the largest retailer of second-hand books in Europe, selling around 11 million books every year. Most of the 700+ Oxfam shops around the UK sell books, and more than 130 shops are specialist bookshops or book and music shops."

Sounds like a success story, right? Behind every fortune...

Books are donated direct to shops by the public, or through more than 700 Oxfam book and music banks in convenient locations around the country.

Somewhat akin to BetterWorldBooks here in the U.S., Oxfam has little to no operational costs because the books are...free.

There used to be a remainder store across the street from my old store Wolfgang Books. We all used to love fielding the question about why our books were so much more expensive than their "Everything $2.99" price-point.

Explaining remainders isn't easy and so instead we would just say that our books were new or collectible.

The reality is that it is very difficult to operate in competition against a retailer that has little to no overhead and gets its inventory for free. Check out why some independent bookstores are more than a little upset about the Oxfam spreading through the UK like Kudzu in South Florida.

More Whale Please! Philip Hoare's The Whale, that is.

I really can't say enough about this book. It is truly rare to find a mixture of science and literary investigation written so stunningly.

Here's a linke to Philip Hoare's website, in particular to a documentary done by the author with the BBC.

Enjoy.

Everyone have a great weekend.