The Reader’s Room by Antoine Laurain

Mr. Laurain is a French author who wrote The President’s Hat which I enjoyed very much. Turns out The Reader’s Room is just as clever and fun.

This short novel tells a big story. With a tragic past, Violaine, has transformed herself into a senior literary agent at a Paris publishing house. Her career is full — finding new literary talent, feting existing authors, and attending glamorous cocktail parties.

On her way back from a visit to a U.S. author (Stephen King, no less) her plane crashes. When she awakes from being in a coma after the crash, things begin getting strange.

She has lost much of her memory, she sees and can hold conversations with Marcel Proust, and one of her debut crime novels “Sugar Flowers” is up for France’s highest literary prize, but the author can’t be found. Even more concerning, people are getting murdered directly copying this crime novel and the police are investigating.

As Violaine’s memory starts to return, she discovers she has some very strange secrets including an uncomfortable link to the book. Is there a connection between Violaine, the author, and the crimes?

This short mystery book is just 176 pages and is beautifully translated so the sly humor and acerbic French wit are not lost. Mr. Laurain brings his characters alive with just a few elegant lines and tells their stories in just a few pages — concise with not a word wasted

I enjoyed this well crafted novel and its literary mystery — and hey, wouldn’t it be lovely to converse with Marcel Proust?

An advanced readers copy was kindly provided (a few years ago) by Gallic Books Ltd.

And look at this – I just checked out another of his novels from the library…already enjoying it. A group go wine tasting and get transported back to 1954 Paris – should be really fun.

Rare Book Collecting

Fair warning here’s yet another post about books-about-books, if you’re not into that sort of thing, (despite the Book Barmy name of this blog) please feel free to skip this.

I am a book hoarder accumulator, not a book collector in the literal and rare sense. But I have, over the years, very much enjoyed reading about book collectors, their collections, and especially how they find their books. Two of my favorites authors in this genre are the the husband and wife team of Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. I own all three of their books about books and recently revisited them while dusting.

(Side note: Dusting my books takes several days as I get down the books and have to remind myself – Did I read this? Will I read this? Yes, I read this and will keep it. Often I find myself reading away the time I should be dusting and sorting — such was the case with these three books.)

Their first book is titled Used and Rare – Travels in the Book World

A book for anyone who loves books, the Goldstones didn’t know anything about rare books when they started visiting antiquarian book shops — all they wanted were nice hardback copies of the authors they loved. It all started when Ms. Goldstone tracked down a ten-dollar copy of War and Peace as a birthday gift for her husband, this set the couple onto an unexpected, delightful and expensive journey of book collecting.

Used and Rare was written in 1997, before Amazon or Goodreads took off, so most of the book shopping is done the old fashioned way — the Yellow Pages and a full tank of gas. Over the next three years they haunted used and rare bookshops between New York and Boston — from dark, dust-filled barns to elegant Park Avenue galleries. Starting with cheap, out-of-print used books, their addiction soon graduated to first editions and, finally, to three-quarter morocco, custom-bound antiquarian classics that they could not afford. Along the way, they gained an education in books—and in people—that we can all savor. This warm and witty story is filled with eccentric characters, from a punk book dealer peddling fifty-thousand-dollar modern firsts to a golf-obsessed Shakespearean scholar with books on demonic possession in his basement. Part travel story, part love story, and part memoir. If you’re looking for a very gentle introduction to the art and business of used, rare, and fine book dealership, Goldstone’s humorous book is an absorbing place to start, a delightful journey, and a love letter to book lovers everywhere.

The squeal is titled Slightly Chipped – Footnotes in Booklore

This follow up is different – a collection of essays which detail the couple’s further explorations into the curious world of book collecting.

They get hooked on the correspondence of the Bloomsbury group (especially their romantic liaisons), they track down Bram Stoker’s early notes for Dracula, and puzzle over the incredible markup of hypermoderns. (Recently published books that prove very collectable. A first edition of Sue Grafton’s “A Is for Alibi” sold for $1,250 in 1998. Yes I checked my shelves, just in case…but no.)

The Goldstones chronicle their visits to bibliophile’s dream places such as the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia and the Pequot Library in Connecticut. They are fascinated by the reading habits of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and attend the auction of the contents of their library at Sothebys. This auction ultimately brought approximately $24 million and included a number of collectible books.

Slightly Chipped was published in 1999 at the dawn of the Internet era, and therefore touches only lightly on impact to booksellers.

Again, unlike their first book, Slightly Chipped is written as separate essays and I missed learning more about their story and their book collecting. I had to laugh when Nancy says to her husband:
“Do they really think people are going to use a computer to buy books they’ve never seen from a dealer they’ve never heard of and give him a credit-card number to boot?”

Again Slightly Chipped is different from the first book, and while I enjoyed the various essays I did miss the couple’s story of their own book adventures and collecting. Don’t get me wrong, this book is another delight for both the general reader and book collectors alike.

Warmly Inscribed is the third and last of Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone’s books about rare book collecting.

This book finds them once again visiting book fairs and many antique book sellers. Written in 2001, the authors once again write about the internet and how it was starting to change the way people buy and sell books and the devastating effect on brick and mortar bookstores.

There is a chapter devoted to the New England Forger, Kenneth Anderson, with the details of his forgery of signatures on books and the difficulty in getting law enforcement to prosecute him.

The Goldstones treat us to a great tour of the Library of Congress Rare Book Section led by one of the library’s rare book specialists — an insider’s look most people will never experience. (Okay on my bucket list…)

As always, the writing is easy, personable and inviting. The stories are engaging, the gossip is juicy. I found it a great book to read a few chapters at a time while cuddled up in bed on a cold night.

Gardening for Love by Elizabeth Lawrence

I’m lucky to stumble across books in a myriad of ways. A Book Barmy follower from England, has become an email pal over the years. She lives in a picturesque area of England, is an avid reader (natch), and a gardener. A subscriber to Slightly Foxed quarterly, she read about an American book, Gardening for Love and wrote me about it. I searched and found this nice used copy on Ebay.

Eudora Welty put Ms. Lawrence’s name the mailing list of The Mississippi Market Bulletin, a twice-monthly collection of classified advertisements founded in 1928. Our author soon discovered market bulletins from the other Southern states, as well as similar bulletins published privately in the North. She began ordering heirloom plants from the bulletins, and started a lively exchange of letters with the gardeners who sold them, took trips to acquire plants, and met a cast of fun and interesting characters.

Thus sparked Ms. Lawrence’s interest in this fascinating topic and the compilation of this book filled with gardening lore and snapshots of the gardeners she befriended in the 1950s and 60s.

Before the internet, avid gardeners sold seed and plants through classified ads in state agricultural bulletins. Tiny, small print classified ads that farmers and gardeners would pore over. Often the ads did not involve money, but merely the trading of seeds and plants.

These ads were posted by gardeners who had something to offer or wanted something. The only expense involved was postage.

Here’s a sample:

“Anything I have for three wandering Jews.”

“Come to my place for pretty flowers cheap, have so many.”

Then there is this farmer’s ad seeking a family to work his cotton and help milk forty cows. He offers a comfortable home to a small family of good workers but, he says, “People who live here must be happy. A beekeeper is needed who must not be afraid of bees or work; wages will be determined on worth.”

I found the correspondence back and forth most interesting – especially when it digs into the southern regional folk names of various plants and the lore behind the species.

Some of my favorite tidbits:

The dogtooth violet is called wild peanut because the bulbs are edible and have a taste of green peanuts. Bluets are the southern name for forget-me-nots. Grape hyacinths are known as blue bottles or blue jugs.

And this one made me giggle — a shrub, which is normally called a butterfly bush, but if anyone asks the name, the custom is to answer kiss-me-and-I’ll-tell-you.

As you can probably ascertain, Gardening for Love is a quirky, charming, and admittingly, a very niche gardening chronicle that celebrates the bond between gardeners of any sort and the simpler times in American gardening.

I found it’s not a book to read in order or even in one sitting. I kept it out to dip into when I had a few moments here and there.

Best enjoyed in snippets throughout a long winter.

.

Pinch Me by Barbara Doyle

It was a cold, rainy day when a small publishing house sent an email requesting a review of this memoir about a couple who find and restore a 300-year old Italian farmhouse. As nothing had grabbed me recently, book wise, I was still in much pain with my knee, and craving a warm escape — I replied ‘why yes, yes please’.

Pinch Me takes place in a part of Italy that really appeals to me – the Piemonte region. Now, unlike our friends who moved to France, I would prefer Italy, specifically this area of Piedmont, bordering France and Switzerland — and (sigh) at the foot of the Alps.

At first, this memoir seemed typical of this genre — a couple discovers a crumbling old stone farmhouse and face the challenges of purchasing it and then setting about to rebuild. But soon, I was transported with the author deeper into the beautiful area, exploring the village, looking over the landscape, sipping coffee in the little cafe, and being introduced to the neighbors in their new community. I especially liked getting to know Biagio and Angela who live on the same property and let the author and her husband rent a separate apartment in their home (while their property is in construction) — they soon become family.

Ms. Doyle relates how she and her husband struggled with the language, the endless Italian paper work, wrestling with builders, and their own long hours of hard labor, including hauling heavy stone away from the foundation. She also waxes on the zen-like calm found in doing dishes by hand and the joy of shopping at the village street markets where the produce is so fresh it comes with dirt attached.

The couple have kept their apartment in San Francisco, and are able to go back and forth once they found a trusted and reliable contractor to keep the house renovations moving. But, as their new home nears completion, the call of Italy is soon too irresistible and they make the permanent move, with heart break at leaving friends and family, but also excitement.

As they settle into their new life, Ms. Doyle’s writes beautifully of their piece of paradise — the beautiful landscapes, dinners with neighbors, trips into the alps, spending hot afternoons napping, and refreshing dips in their pool.

There’s a very funny (okay maybe not for our intrepid couple) tale of trying to get their American car licensed – which perfectly captures the long drawn out and confusing frustrations of Italian bureaucracy.

As a good cook and self-acknowledged foodie, Ms. Boyle shines with her descriptions of the good food, long meals in Italian restaurants, and even shares her favorite recipes learned from local home cooks–Bagnetto Verde and Risotto Milanese – as well as, her mom’s southern pecan pie.

A delightful new experience for me — Ms. Doyle has included her photographs via QR codes at the end of each chapter. Here’s photographic evidence of the before and after – just incredible.

A short read, Pinch Me is a warm, wonderful escape. Sit back and immerse yourself in a couple’s dream come true, and the home they created. Enjoy the warm evenings, gracious neighbors, and the food (oh the food!) of this beautiful region. Maybe like me, as soon as you close the book, you’ll be researching this area as a possible future destination.

Many thanks to She Writes Press and Books Forward for an advanced readers copy.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

You might have heard about this book, but I think I was the only bibliophile on the planet who didn’t care for this novel centered around a bookseller and his bookstore in Cape Cod.

A. J. Fikry, the bookseller, has lost his wife, drinks to excess, and is falling apart. The plot introduces two characters — a publisher’s rep who challenges his state of affairs and then an abandoned child, who A. J. Fikry, takes in and eventually adopts – so contrived, I shook my head.

The story then ventures into romantic melodrama and the writing seemed aimed to a young adult reader. By the time I turned the last page, I needed a walk to clear my head from the cutesy schmaltz, and that’s when I dropped my copy off at a little free library for someone else to try.

I never bothered you all with a thumbs down review of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry but now there’s a Netflix film adaption on Netflix — so I think attention must be paid and a warning must be issued.

The other night I decided maybe, just maybe, the film will be an improvement on the book, and so settled in to give it a try.

All I can say is I will never get back that hour and three-quarters of my life I wasted watching the film (not forgetting the hours spent reading the book) – it was terrible. The bookshop was digitally rendered, the characters were so one-dimensional, they could have been artificially created, and the dialog was even worse than the book.

So fair warning – spend your time elsewhere. So many better books and films out there.

Luckily, I’m reading these two books (yes, I often read two books at once).

They are very different, but both excellent so far.