On War

When your fight has purpose--to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent--it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling--when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event--there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.

--from The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

Inheritance

My grandfather sat beside me, drifting in and out of consciousness. Every so often, he would wake up with a start, and then take his right hand off his belly and pet the dog, who couldn't sleep, and was peering anxiously through the window. My grandfather would pet the dog, and, in a voice that made him sound like some kind of children's program puppet, he would say: "You're a dog! You're a dog! Where are you? You're a dog!" and the dog's tongue would drop out of its mouth and it would start keening.
      After a few hours of this, I said, "Jesus, Grandpa, I get it, he's a dog," not knowing that, just a few years later, I would be reminding every dog I met on the street that it was a dog, and asking it where it was.

--from The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

August Staff Picks

So, one of the perks of working in a new bookstore is the monthly "staff picks" where I get to tell everyone what I think they should read. My July staff picks were A Conservationist Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders, At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman, The Big Ass Book of Crafts by Mark Montano, and I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, all of which I've talked about on here.

This month I chose The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth, Peace by Richard Bausch, and Reality Hunger by David Shields.

I love love love nonfiction and read and lust for it more than fiction, but Erin tells me we can't fit another nonfiction book in the store. Alas, I need to choose contemporary fiction but don't know where to start. Help? What would be your staff picks if you were me?

in books

Nameless LeTTer.

I find ephemera all the time in the books I go through at The Dusty Bookshelf. We keep the cool things, the interesting things. I leave original receipts in the books for the new owner to delightfully (or annoyingly?) find. We've found, probably, thousands of bookmarks over the years. In Manhattan, there is a large shoebox full of these bookmarks. So now there's this site where you create a particular bookmark for a particular book and put it out there for someone to find. It's akin to the project where people put whole books in public places with notes for people to find and read and then put in another public place for someone else to find and read. It's sharing literary love.

Then there's another site: FOUND Magazine. Ephemera. Life left in books, in records, in life.