Recently in Books Category

A thin e-reader designed to display newspapers and magazines? Sign me up! Especially if they start making the New Yorker available this way, so I can switch my dead-tree subscription over.

I have just finished reading one of the most un-put-downable reads I've come across in the last few years, and it comes from an unlikely source: Aaron Cometbus of Cometbus zine fame. He devoted issue #51 to a history of bookstores on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Doesn't sound all that interesting, you say? Well, when you consider the story encompasses the Free Speech Movement, the Summer of Love, the People's Park protests, riots, teargas, the SLA and Patty Hearst, cigar-chomping bookstore managers who yell at their customer base, a journey to Cuba to volunteer for the Revolution, urban planning gone horribly wrong, and musings on the tension between the hippie old guard and Generation X, plus more wonderfully insider stories and bitchy comments by the author (a cranky fellow, he calls Salman Rushdie a "total ass" and complains of hippies that "they can't live with themselves when the lights are out,") than you can throw a latte at, it turns out to be one hell of a read.

You can find "Loneliness of the Electric Menorah" at independent bookstores and magazine shops around the Bay Area — I found my copy at Issues on Glen in Oakland, but it's also available online. Strongly recommended.

A couple of years ago I mentioned the closing of Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue. At the time, there was still the other location on Fourth Street in Berkeley. Not quite the same, but it was still a pleasant place to go buy books. It had parking nearby, and the Cody's aura still clung to it somehow.

Despite the parking, things did not go well for that store either. When I went shopping there over Christmas, I noticed that the selection somehow seemed diminished and spotty. So when the owners announced that they were shuttering this location and moving to a smaller space, I wasn't totally surprised.

But their choice of location — a storefront in downtown Berkeley with no dedicated parking, which had seen more of its fair share of failed businesses over the years, and which wasn't going to have a computer/technical books section, despite being near the U.C. Berkeley campus — seemed bizarre from the outset.

And sure enough, as of June 20, Cody's is no more.

Yesterday I drove to Border's Books in Emeryville to pick up a couple of design/computer books. There are basically no independent alternatives in the East Bay now for technical books. Stacey's Books is still in the city, but not convenient for me to get to most days. Border's is HUGE, but definitely lacks soul.

I don't think all independent bookstores are in danger, necessarily. There's a fabulous one, Spectator Books, just down the street from us. I do a lot of gift and impulse buying there. But the super-stores are now left to the chains, or online...

So we belong to this club that sends a Jewish-themed children's book to our house every month. It's a not-for-profit effort, funded by a generous grant aimed at keeping the "people of the book" in the fold.

Some of the books are great. The first one we received, Before You Were Born, has the loveliest illustrations. There are Jewish folk tales, board books about the various holidays, and even the odd music CD.

And then there is the odd clunker.

Exhibit A: God Must Really Love... Numbers!

Check out a typical page spread.

Is it my imagination, or does the caterpillar on the left seem to have... a Hitler mustache?

And what's with the "Good job, God!" Does he really need positive affirmation that badly? Is he a two-year-old?

And then there's this spread:

The weird circles on the frogs? Not a disfiguring skin condition, but rather, shiny gold foil... which for some reason, the illustrator/author/publisher, in their God-given wisdom, decided to apply there rather than to... the flashing fireflies, where it would make more sense.

Anyway, there was really nothing particularly Jewish about this book, honestly. (If there were, wouldn't it say instead, "Nu, God, good effort, but next time make the frogs a little more hoppy"?) Looking at the publisher's website, I find it suspiciously evangelical in tone ("Keep growing in faith and joy through Little Simon Inspirations books for your child!")

So, we're not so into this particular book around our household.

However, I have great hopes for this month's offering...

I used to love Mark Helprin. Yes, he's a Republican, yes, he was a speechwriter for Bush I... but he could write like nobody else. Winter's Tale remains one of my favorite books. Such a blend of whimsy and humor and tragedy and fantasy and romance and the big city... so when I saw that he had a new one out in paperback, Freddy and Fredericka, I picked it up.

I haven't been so annoyed by a book in I don't know how long.

The whimsy and fantasy is still there, and the romance, and the humor... well, maybe the humor is part of the problem. Some passages are hysterically funny, and some are just witlessly dumb (a dog named Pha-Kew is involved in one scene, and misunderstandings oh-so-predictably ensue.)

The story? Well, it's a thinly veiled satire of Charles and Diana. Why now? I have no idea. Anyway, they're sent packing off to America on a kind of "Outward Bound" crash course in roughing it for royals. You can imagine.

The last straw has come about three-fifths of the way in, where a hapless politician enters the story. His name is Dewey Knott (more bad puns! Oh boy!), the GOP nominee for president, running against the slick, helmet-haired President Self (I give you one guess who that's supposed to be).

Anyway, the result is I have to endure passages like this:

What was the point of fighting when you were forty points behind? The point was in the fight itself. He refused to give up, he was so dogged, because he was an honest man who had chosen a dishonest way of life, and, out of a sense of honour, patriotism, and obligation, he had slogged through that life, hating its every falsity, and hating himself when it overtook him. Losing was, therefore, the kind of punishment that purified him and restored the balance of honour that he needed to survive. He was grateful, then, that for every form of distress. President Self had no idea of anything except that he had to be powerful and adored. Dewey understood that having power and being adored was, as Dewey himself would have put it, " a bucket of shit." He was in it for the suffering.

I've checked the copyright on the book. It was published in 2005. At that date — even a year or two before, when Helprin might still have been writing the book — such a Republican character seems like a stretch at best. The author would have to have been clasping his hands over his ears and chanting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" to be able to pull that one off with any sincerity. (In which case, I'm not sure how he managed to reach the keyboard at the same time.)

Anyway, I'm going to keep going, but this is not one I'm planning to keep or reread when I'm done.

Oh, and the New York Times has two reviews of it, one favorable, and one not (though the latter didn't seem to be as offended as I was — just unimpressed.)

Not a huge surprise, since he was 94, but I was sad to read that Naguib Mahfouz had passed away. My grandmother introduced me to his novels about 15 years ago — the Cairo Trilogy is great. (I should reread it...)

Nooooo!

Cody's Books, the venerable independent bookstore that has served generations of UC Berkeley students, has announced that it will close its flagship store on the south side of campus because of declining sales and competition from chain stores and the Internet.

The store, on Telegraph Avenue, will close its doors on July 10 after 43 years.

"We have lost over $1 million attempting to keep the store open,'' said owner Andy Ross. "As a family business, we cannot continue to afford these ruinous losses.''

Ross said the store had been losing money for 15 years and that pressure from chain stores and the Internet had contributed to an "economic concentration in bookselling'' that was forcing out independent stores like Cody's.

"We leave Telegraph with great sadness but with a sense of honor that we have served our customers and community with distinction,'' Ross said.

Cody's two other, smaller stores -- on Fourth Street in Berkeley and on Stockton Street in San Francisco -- will remain open.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said he was "saddened but not surprised'' by the closure.

"It's a terrible blow for us,'' Bates said. "Cody's is an institution. But they've been struggling for years. It's just part of the changing times we live in. With the Internet and all the other innovations, these (stores) have all taken a hit.''

I have to admit I haven't been to Cody's much lately. I live in Oakland and work in San Francisco, so it's not easy for me to get over to Telegraph Avenue. But it's such a fabulous place. I generally buy books at Stacey's in the city, and while I like them a lot (and they are also independent!), they don't have the same atmosphere. I can wander into Cody's and spend half an hour browing the tables in the front of the store. I've gone to book readings there, like David Sedaris's a few years back (he brought a tip jar and told us that if we gave him $50 in change, he'd sing the "Oscar Meier Weiner" song for us. And he did!) When I was in graduate school, I was in that store all the time. Their computer book section was great at the time, not so great now, but generally, anything I've been looking for, they've carried.

I heard for years that the Internet was killing local independent bookstores, but it seemed in recent years that things had improved; that local stores had learned to fight back, with the BookSense website, loyalty programs, and just plain old being better. But it's difficult running a business on Telegraph; crime has gone up everywhere, and the Avenue is a scary place to be at night sometimes, especially since you have to park wherever you can and then walk to the store, often several blocks away. That probably didn't help.

So, farewell to Cody's this summer. Sure, Moe's Books is next door, and they're great too, but Telegraph has now become even less appealing a place to go than it was before...