The Say Hey Kid & Book Signings (Separate Topics)

The best thing that biographer James S. Hirsch has going for him in Willie Mays The Life, The Legend is . . . Willie Mays, the Birmingham kid who walked timidly onto the Polo Grounds only months after graduating high school and strolled boldly into the Hall of Fame more than two decades later.

Mays, the Say Hey Kid, who played baseball as we have seldom see the game played. He brought to the game an intensity and an intelligence and all encompassing skill that has earned him a place in that argument baseball fans love to have about who was the games greatest player.

Ruth? DiMaggio? Musial? Mantle? Aaron? Mays?

Maybe. If not the greatest, certainly one of the greatest. And Hirsch's biography, written with Mays' approval, makes a strong case for the long-time Giant. Hirsch emphasizes that Mays was a five-tool player -- he could hit for average, hit for power and run, catch and throw. And certainly, at times, do all those things with a flair that no one had seen before.

More importantly, Hirsch writes, "The 'five-tool' designation understates his skills by ignoring his intelligence, preparation, and guile. Mays was always better than the box score."

Mays brought a joy to the game. Hirsch captures that joy, and more. Any great biography of a baseball player must do many things. It must establish the player's "place" in the game. It must establish the game at the time the player played within the context of society. And it must be laced with lively anecdotes from this greatest of sports.

Hirsch does all those things. A bit of a "five-tool" performance from the author of Willie Mays The Life, The Legend.

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I haven't had the opportunity to have many books signed in 2010, but March has been an exception.

Peter Matthiessen was the National Geographic this week. He gave an impassioned speech about the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and signed three books for me, including his prize-winning Shadow Country.

Elizabeth Strout signed her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge last night and Colum McCann signed his National Book Award winner, Let the Great World Spin. Both appeared at Virginia's Festival of the Book.

Chang-rae Lee was at Politics & Prose early this month. He signed The Surrendered (which I am reading now).

And let's see, Helen Simonson signed her terrific Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, William Ferris signed his first book Blues From the Delta, David Corbett's Do They Know I'm Running came in the mail as did Blackout by Connie Willis and Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler and Jim Harrison's Warlock and a signed copy of the 20th anniversary of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is on its way.

Yeah, it was a good month.

The Blues Is A Deep Study

The blues, says author and scholar William Ferris, is a deep study.

Ferris brought some of that "deep study" to Charlottesville, Virginia, today in an hour-long presentation that was part of the annual Festival of the Book.

Ferris, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, spoke before a crowd of about 60 people at the Southern Cafe and Music Hall, a below-street-level venue just around the corner from Charlottesville's historic downtown. Ferris talked about his new book, Give My Poor Heart Ease, before tracing his journey through the South in a captivating talk accompanied by a powerful series of black and white photographs that he had taken.

James "Son Ford" Thomas first characterized the blues as a deep study. Ferris that Thomas, a black blues musician that he views as his guru, said, "Women is what gives me the blues." Ferris said the blues often deals with pain, especially lost love.

"The central theme of the music is solace," he said. "Not just to the musicians, but to all of us."

Ferris said his first book, Blues From the Delta, was a scholarly approach to the blues. It was a white man's approach to black music. In Give My Poor Heart Ease Ferris decided that he wanted the voices of the people he had met on his travels through the South to be heard.

People, he said, are living libraries.

The value of Ferris' work is two-fold. He has preserved the voices of the people he met in his research. Those voices can be heard, not only in his book, but literally in the DVD and CD that are included with it. Ferris noted that except for blues legend B.B. King all of the people featured in Give My Poor Heart Ease are now dead.

The second value of his work is that Ferris helps us to understand that the blues are a part of the fabric of the land and of the people from which it comes. He said the blues are a music of freedom.

Simonson's Grand Last Stand

An utterly charming comedy of manners, Helen Simonson's accomplished debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, recalls no one so much as fellow Brit Jane Austen.

The novel is a warm, wise and witty look at a beleaguered couple, courting in that staid and stately British manner, despite the disapproval of family and friends, who are smugly confident in their judgments.

The Major Pettigrew of the title is a widower living in the village of Edgecombe St. Mary. The Major doesn't realize how lonely he is until Mrs. Ali comes knocking at his door, collecting for the newspaper, as the novel opens.

The success of a comedy of manner lies in its ability to turn convention on its head. Simonson does this with the skill of an experienced novelist. And it is surprising how much material she has to work with: There's not only small-minded family members and snooty villagers, but the local aristocracy who is scheming with an American to subdivide his estate and grasping children who mistake text messages for genuine communication in affairs of the heart.

Neither the Major nor Mrs. Ali are quite what we'd expect. In his late sixties, the Major believes in his gun and golf, duty and decorum, but he's no stuffed shirt. He's a sensitive and observant man who truly wants to do what's right. Mrs. Ali is a shopkeeper of Pakistani origin and that's two strikes against her as far as Pettigrew's family and friends are concerned.

Here is a wonderful passage:

"Now, Mrs. Ali, we were wondering whether we could prevail on you to attend the dance."

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Ali. A sudden, shy pleasure lit her face."

"My aunt will not engage in public dancing," said Abdul Wahid. The Major could tell that his voice bubbled with rage, but Daisy only peered at him with condescension suitable for shop assistants who might unwittingly forget their manners.

"We were not expecting her to dance," she said.

"We wanted kind of a welcoming goddess, station in the niche where we keep the hat stand," said Alma. "And Mrs. Ali is so quintessentially Indian, or at least quintessentially Pakistani, in the best sense."

"Actually, I'm from Cambridge," said Mrs. Ali, in a mild voice. "The municipal hospital, ward three. Never been further abroad than the Isle of Wight."

"But no one would know that," said Alma.

If everyone in this novel doesn't live happily ever after, at least the people we care most about are off to a promising start as the book closes. Major Pettigrew does indeed make a last stand and, like all heroic Brits, he wins the day.

As does the reader of this absolutely engaging first novel.

Is The Blue Horse the future of publishing?

Do I have the future of book publishing lying near me on my dining room table?

The book is The Blue Horse by Rick Bass. Its a thin paperback book of 50 pages. The novella by the Montana writer was originally "published" on-line last year by Narrative Magazine, which exists entirely on the Internet.

Narrative later issued The Blue Horse in paperback. To my knowledge, it is only available for purchase via the Narrative website. On the back of the book, Narrative indicates that the book "is the first of a series of new Rick Bass novellas to be published by Narrative Library."

It would make sense that The Blue Horse is a model for future books. The on-line venue offers the opportunity to attract new readers, while testing a writer's strength with existing markets. Sufficient on-line interest would figure in the decision to publish a physical book and, because orders are only filled on-line, there would be no need for a huge print run, storage or distribution.

The book design is attractive and the printed product itself highly professional. The story shows Bass at his best: scenes of hunting, vivid descriptions of nature and an undercurrent of tension between the characters that leads to a surprising, yet satisfying, conclusion.

March reading

Three books read to this point in March: Rebel Yell by Alice Randall, The Possessed by Elif Batuman and The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell. And I'll confess that Cornwell's yarn is my favorite.

The Burning Land is the fifth book in Cornwell's Saxon series. Think of Robert E. Howard's Conan books only with impeccable historical research, superb pacing and unrivaled story-telling ability. Cornwell is the foremost practitioner of the historical novel, assuming the mantle from the late Patrick O'Brian.

The Saxon series features Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a fearless fighter and brilliant tactician. Uhtred straddles two worlds. He identifies closely with the Danes, brave pagan warriors, yet he is a reluctant tool of the Christian king, Alfred of Wessex.

Like Uhtred, Cornwell's novels straddle two worlds -- they are literate works that manage to be hugely entertaining.

How I wish Rebel Yell had contained even some of that entertainment value found in The Burning Land. I wanted to like this book. I didn't. At times, the writing had an annoying staccato feel to it and the book seems to have been written in code.

The book is the story of Abel Jones Jr. When we first meet Abel, he is a child, in a car with his mother and father, en route to the funeral of one of the young girls murdered in the infamous Birmingham church bombing. Pages later, in his second appearance, Abel is an adult, married to a white woman, dining and then dying in the Rebel Yell, a dinner theater reenacting Confederate battles.

Through reminiscences by Abel's first wife and a few friends, we review Abel's life as he progresses from the child of a black civil rights activist in Memphis to a spy for the CIA to minor figure in the Pentagon, where he has a hand in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Rebel Yell falls far short of its promise as a novel that will illuminate the fears and desires and hopes of black Americans growing up in the Civil Rights era.

The Possessed is subtitled "Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them."

I've been in Russian twice; once for three weeks and a second time for two weeks. Each time, prior to my departure, I read works of Russian literature -- Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol. That gives me some grounding for understanding The Possessed, but only a little.

Batuman was a graduate student studying Russian literature. Her understanding of these works is profoundly deeper than mine. The result is that, at times, I am somewhat at sea when reading The Possessed. But only sometimes, because what makes this book so entertaining is Batuman's great eye for detail and her inherent sense of the comic. These qualities drive the success of The Possessed and guarantee that Batuman's writing career will be long and profitable.

And the cover illustration by Roz Chast is worth the price of admission alone.

February Reading List

10. The Hidden Man, David Ellis
11. Gutshot Straight, Lou Berney

12. Give My Poor Heart Ease, Voices of the Mississippi Blues, William Ferris

13. The Godfather of Kathmandu, John Burdett

14. Food Rules, Michael Pollan

15. A Quiet Belief in Angels, R.J. Ellory

16. Doors Open, Ian Rankin

17. The Mexican Tree Duck, James Crumley

18. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

19. After the Sundown, Pat Jordan

20. The Price of Love and Other Stories, Peter Robinson

21. The Farmer’s Daughter, Jim Harrison

22. To Hell on a Fast Horse, Mark Lee Gardner

Pulitzer, National Book Award winners meet in Charlottesville

There's a rare and exciting opportunity later this month in Charlottesville to see the 2009 winners of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award together on the same stage.

Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin, and Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge, will appear together Saturday, March 20, at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

McCann and Strout will be joined by Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, and E. Ethelbert Miller, author of The Fifth Inning, to present a program on American Accents: An Evening with Four Distinguished Authors. The program is at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville.

The books by both McCann and Strout are terrific. While literary awards are not always indications of excellence, these two books are among the very best written in recent years.

Organizers of the Virginia Festival of the Book are to be commended for putting together an exceptional program. Take a look at the festival's website. If you're a reader, and you live nearby, you will find something -- perhaps many things -- of interest.

Book 22, 2010: To Hell On A Fast Horse

Billy the Kid had the good fortune to die young. Pat Garrett the misfortune to live many years beyond that fatal night at Fort Sumner when Sheriff and Outlaw clashed.

As Mark Lee Gardner notes in his meticulously researched To Hell On A Fast Horse, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West, the pair "are forever linked . . . in legend, but historically, in the memories of their friends, and enemies."

Sadly, for Garrett, Billy has all the glory. In film and fiction, and popular memory, Bill Bonney is a dashing young gunslinger, while Garrett is generally a footnote -- the man who gunned down Billy the Kid. Some even contend Garrett's action was less than heroic, that he took Billy by surprise and never gave the outlaw a chance to defend himself.

As Gardner notes, Garrett's misfortune extended far beyond such criticism or a lesser role in popular imagination, then or now. As the glory of his exploits faded, Garrett fell on hard times as a result of a series of poor business deals and was ultimately shot in the back while trying to sell some valuable New Mexico land. His murder was never solved.

Gardner's book is a fitting tribute to Garrett and the Kid, providing the reader with a history of this now legendary Western chase that is both edifying and entertaining.

Book 21, 2010: The Farmer's Daughter by Jim Harrison

" . . . and the three of them drove over to a stream a few miles away and went swimming. Marcia had a boom box that worked off the cigarette lighter, a couple of six-packs on ice, and some baloney sandwiches, a regular Montana picnic."

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The theme that links the three novellas in this newest work from Jim Harrison may well lie in the Patsy Cline song, The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.

References to the song, written by Roger Miller, appear in all three novellas collected in The Farmer's Daughter, which is the title of the book and the first and finest of this trio of stories.

Alienation, a craving for the solitary life and the restorative value of wilderness are attributes linked to the three main characters; that and a line from the song: "My heart is as lonely as a heart can be lonely. The last word in lonesome is me."

The farmer's daughter is Sarah Holcomb, who, according to the first line of the story, "was born peculiar, or so she thought." Peculiar, she may be. Certainly, Sarah is a fiercely independent young woman, who cares deeply for her horse, her dog -- that she inherited from a grizzled old ranch hand -- and the ranch hand, whom she shamelessly flirts with, despite their difference in age. Sarah is also endearing and one of Harrison's most vivid characters.

Sarah is high school age through most of the story, which is largely concerned with her efforts at self-discovery, taking revenge for a rather clumsy sexual assault and finding a way to flee Montana, although she isn't going anywhere without her horse and dog.

Brown Dog Redux is the story of Brown Dog, a mixed race man who, to put it simply, is a mess. Brown Dog is a hound dog. He loves women. Fat or skinny. Tall or short. Young or old. When women are in his vicinity, Brown Dog has only one thing on his mind.

Despite this proclivity, Brown Dog manages to be a pretty good father to his adopted daughter Berry, who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. Brown Dog is wise enough to know that Berry does more good for him than he does for her; protecting him from the worst of his impulses, which -- if it's not women -- is booze.

Like Berry, the wilderness offers Brown Dog protection from himself. He literally flees to the wilds of the Upper Peninsula to fish and meditate, although that is not a concept known to Brown Dog.


The Games of Night is the oddest of the three stories. Harrison suggests that the protagonist, who is attacked by a wolf cub and carnivorous hummingbirds while a child, is some sort of werewolf, transformed by the viruses dancing in his blood.

It is this transformation, brought on by the full moon, that leads to the games of the night. The character has only a hazy memory of these "games," but they include lust as well as excessive physical appetite and exertion.

The Games of the Night contains a surprise appearance by novelist Louise Erdrich and her sister, Lise. Our werewolf is camping along the Bois de Sioux River near Wapheton, North Dakota, where the sisters grew up.

"Heard chattering on small gravel road. Two girls bird-watching on their old bikes. They looked Indiana or at least half-breed, from local Chippewa reserve. Said their names were Lise and Louise . . . I was sideways to them and when I turned they screamed, "Rougarou, rougarou, rougarou' and raced off on their bikes."

Harrison, now in his early 70s, has written some marvelous stuff in recent years. First, there was the The English Major and now The Farmer's Daughter. Each subsequent book is a literary treat that may not come our way again.

New Aquisitions

The Possessed, Elif Batuman
The Devil's Redhead, David Corbett
The Girl With The Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Rebel Yell, Alice Randall

Two Banks' novellas highlight The Price of Love

The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson collects two novellas -- both featuring Inspector Banks -- and an assortment of short stories. Banks figures in some of the stories, in others he does not.

Robinson is principally a novelist so this collection does not show him at his best. My sense is that if you are a fan of his work, and Inspector Banks, you will enjoy this collection. If you are unfamiliar with Robinson, I'd give it a pass.

After A False Spring, The Sundown

The failure of Pat Jordan's career as a professional baseball pitcher gave us one of the best baseball books ever written. A False Spring, Jordan's affecting account of his abortive pitching career, appeared in 1975 and quickly secured status as a sports classic. A few years ago, Sports Illustrated ranked it 37th among the 100 best sports books.

After the Sundown -- written four years after A False Spring -- is no classic. A minor work by a major player, it is a pleasing diversion. Its the difference between a sunny, Sunday afternoon and a pitcher with the good stuff rather than the great stuff. Yet what's important to remember -- it's still a sunny Sunday afternoon and someone is working carefully and competently for our pleasure.

After the Sundown is a series of profiles of former athletes: a pitcher (naturally), a race car driver, a football player. The game, if you will, has left each of these men behind, but they have not always been ready to leave it. Perhaps no writer is better equipped than Jordan -- a pitcher of great promise who never once stepped to the mound in the major leagues -- to tell these stories with empathy and understanding and grace.

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Still reading: The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson
Next up: To Hell on a Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner

New Acquisition

To Hell On A Fast Horse, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner.

Blurbs on the rear jacket are by Hampton Sides, David Dary and Robert Utley -- that's an impressive collection of Western writers/historians.

Book 18, 2010: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The best non-fiction books have a strong narrative thread.

Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin are all superb examples of how non-fiction can be far more enthralling and entertaining than anything found in fiction.

We can now add The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot to that list.

Released earlier this year to critical acclaim, Skloot's book -- years in the preparation -- is part science, part biography and part horror story. At its most basic it is the story of HeLa, a line of cells commonly used in medical research around the world. The cells were taken from a Baltimore woman, Henrietta Lacks, in the 1950s without her knowledge or consent while she was being treated for cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The cells proved to be "immortal." Prior to the HeLa cells, all cells removed from a human and placed in culture had quickly died. The cancerous cells removed from Henrietta Lacks did not die.

But Henrietta's cells weren't merely surviving, they were growing with mythological intensity . . . They kept growing like nothing anyone had seen, doubling their numbers every twenty-four hours, stacking hundreds on tops of hundreds, accumulating by the millions . . . As long as they had food and warmth, Henriett's cancer cells seemed unstoppable.

Soon Henriett's cells had been shipped to medical laboratories around the world and were widely used in a variety of research. They were flown into space and exposed to nuclear explosions, and ultimately contributed to enormous scientific advances.

But the story of HeLa cells is not merely that of scientific progress. It is also the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Her children did not learn that their mother's cells had been taken and had survived or that they were widely used in medical research until decades after Henrietta's death.

The success of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks lies in Skloot's decision to tell the compelling life story of this poor Southern black woman as well as that of her descendants. In many respects, the book is as much about Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, as it is about her mother or the doctors and scientist who appear in these pages.

The horror surfaces in two respects. As an adult, Deborah discovers that she had an older sister who was confined to a mental institution not long before her mother's death. The cruel treatment afforded her sister emerges late in the book and is a haunting and sobering reminder of how poorly people suffering from mental illness or retardation can be treated in America.

Another horrifying aspect of the book is how indifferent science is to the Lacks family and how slow scientists and doctors were -- and continue to be -- in recognizing that the HeLa line of cells came from a fellow human being. Millions of dollars were made through the sale of the HeLa cells, yet Henrietta Lacks' children could not afford health insurance.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an important book that performs many valuable services. For example, Skloot's afterword explores the use of human tissue in medical research today, indicating that it is still largely unregulated. She has brought a measure of pride and comfort to the Lacks family. But her most valuable contribution is in revealing that the HeLa cells once belonged to a vibrant young woman, who loved to dance and to laugh and who loved her family.

Henrietta Lacks is the silent hero of this story and we all owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for her enduring contribution to medical science.

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Skloot will appear at 10 a.m. Friday, March 19 at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. She will join Jason Vuic, author of The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History, and Bethanne Patrick, author of An Uncommon History of Common Things, in a panel presentation, The Uncommon History of Many Things--from Cars to Human Cells.

Book 17, 2010: The Mexican Tree Duck

I still don't know exactly what James Crumley's The Mexican Tree Duck was about.

There's a kidnapping and drugs are being smuggled into the country. Somehow the beginnings of the dispute that is being played out traces back to the Vietnam War, but that is the extent of my understanding.

This is the second book by Crumley that I've read and I have concluded that his books are about attitude and atmosphere, rather than any coherent narrative. There is a lot of violence and heavy weapons and drug use.

I wish the the sum of the parts added up to something greater, but it doesn't. And I wish that I liked Crumley's writing better than I do, but I don't.

Doors Open cements Rankin's reputation

Books 15 and 16 comprise the range of reading experience, from fast-paced pleasure to a slog through a messy fraud of a book.

The pleasurable read belonged to Ian Rankin. Doors Open was issued in 2008 in Great Britain, but it was just released here last month.

Doors Open is the story of a dot.com millionaire who has grown bored. His boredom leads him into planning an art heist with a banker and an art professor. The heist goes well, but -- as you would expect -- nothing else does in this thoroughly entertaining thriller.

Rankin is one of the leading writers in the popular thriller/crime/mystery genre and Doors Opens only serves to solidify his street cred among readers.


A Quiet Belief in Angels is the first book from R.J. Ellory. Frankly, I hope it is his last. It's a misogynistic, disturbing mess; over-written from the standpoint of content and style. Obstensibly set in Georgia before WW II, the characters don't sound like crackers. This is one of those novels where every adult in well spoken and far wiser than almost anyone you've met in real life.

And then there are the errors of chronology. Early in the book, when a particular event takes place, it's 1943 and our narrator is 15. One hundred pages later, recalling the same event, it was 1942 and he was 14. I could let errors of commission like that slide if the entire book weren't so bad.

Every woman in this novel -- every woman -- dies a horrible and disturbing death. Yes, this book does have something to do with a serial killer, but the fate of some of these woman goes beyond that.

The writing, stylistically, is turgid. It might be accepted as elegant by some with its nascent dawns, but try reading it. This is the first book in a long, long time that I considered abandoning before I was midway through. I stayed to the end and now I'm wondering why.

Borders 1, Customer Service 0

I'm not the type given to rants. Not normally. Well, OK, once in a while maybe, but not on these pages. Not until now, not until returning from a failed shopping expedition to my local Borders.

Let's go back to Tuesday to set this up. Tuesday I went to Borders expecting to buy a book. It was just released that day and I had every reasonable expectation of finding it on the store shelves. Except it wasn't to be found. The computers said it was in the store, but I couldn't find it and a rare helpful employee couldn't locate it either.

I went back today. It wasn't on the table where the computer indicated it should be. I walked up to the checkout and asked for help. Essentially the woman blew me off. There was no one waiting in line, no one eagerly waiting to buy a book, but she gave a cursory glance to the sheet of paper with the book listed on it and said I'd have to go to the Information Desk. She'd have someone meet me there.

But no one did. I waited a while, looked a little longer and left.

I know Borders has experienced difficulties in the past. I know they are struggling to generate a respectable stream of revenue. Look at their music section, it's a shadow of its former self. I know that its employees labor under two expectations 1) get the books on the shelves and 2) take the customers money. But is a little basic customer service too much to ask?

This kind of experience is exactly the sort of thing that sends people to the computer to shop online or buy an ebook.

I can't say that I won't go back. I want books more than I want to stay angry, but I'm not going back any time soon. And there are multiple bookstores within easy distance of my workplace, so I can take my custom elsewhere for a while.

And while I am on the subject, is it too much to ask that bookstore employees know a little bit about books? I tried to buy Wolf Hall at this same Borders a few months ago and no one had heard of it. Presumably, they hadn't heard of the Booker Prize either.

Computers are handy things, and its especially nice to be able to look up an obscure title or two. But wouldn't you think Borders employees might know where to find certain titles, certain authors without resorting to electronic help?

I still like to browse, to hold books, to study the cover and the contents, so this isn't enough to send me online -- and sure as hell won't drive me to an ebook (but that's a rant for another day) -- but it is going to send me elsewhere. And I hope for a good long time.

This also seems like a good time to say something about independent bookstores. I buy from several -- Politics & Prose, Murder by the Book, the Mystery Bookshop in Seattle, Mysterious Galaxy -- and I often pay full price plus shipping. I do this because of the customer service I receive.

Independent bookstores live in a world of small profit margins that are largely made possible because they know books and they know their customers. Customer service ranges from book recommendations to signed books to books shipped with dust jacket covers and to occasionally throwing in those little extra promotional items that collectors love.

Suddenly I understand why people use their blogs to rant and rave. I have run out of choler much as I ran out of Borders this morning. Trust me, I plan to keep running.

New acquisitions

• The Savannah, Rivers of America series by Thomas L. Stokes
• Willie Mays The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch
• Phil Gordon's Little Black Book by Phil Gordon and Jonathan Grotenstein
• Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book by Phil Gordon

Food Rules and The Godfather of Kathmandu

The value of Food Rules by Michael Pollan far exceeds its slender size.

The book is 139 pages long. There may be more words in the introduction than in the entire text that follows. Some pages contain only an illustration; those with text may have only a sentence or a paragraph at the most.

This condensed approach is not without purpose. Pollan is interested in results. In Food Rules (more on that title later) he takes the seven-word guiding principle from In Defense of Food -- Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. -- and expands it to 64 rules. Pollan understands people will be more like to read the rules, and put them to work in their lives, if they are packaged in a way they can be easily consumed. He's stealing a page from the industrial food complex he dislikes so much.

Despite its small size, Food Rules is brimming with common sense and sound advice. The book is divided into three categories based on that seven-word principle listed above. The first section: Eat Food. The second: Not too much. And the third: Mostly plants.

In his introduction, Pollan recommends adopting at least one rule from each section. I found that's not so difficult to do. For example, in the first section one rule is to buy snacks from a farmer's market (16). I do. My favorite rule is found in that section: It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car (20). I don't have a lot of trouble following that guidance.

I do struggle with section two. I could eat more plants. But I do well with rule 32 -- don't overlook the oily little fishes -- because I am fond of sardines.

Among the rules in section three, I need to take the recommendation to eat more slowly (49) to heart. I have two brothers and we learned to bolt our food or you might leave the dinner table hungry. But, again, I find rules here I can live with: Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does (57) and Cook (63)

Food Rules is meant to be taken seriously, yet there is an element of fun here that shouldn't be overlooked. It's enjoyable to flip through the book -- it can be read in one brief sitting -- and identify the rules you follow now, the rules you'd like to follow and those that will really, really give you trouble.

Some of that fun is also found in the title. Food Rules can be taken literally. It is a set of rules to guide our selection, preparation and consumption of food. But it is also a declaration -- food rules!

If Food Rules whets your appetite for more try these earlier books by Pollan: In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. Both are exceptionally good books.

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My enthusiasm for John Burdett's Thai thrillers slipped a notch with his newest novel, The Godfather of Kathmandu.

Many of the ingredients that I enjoyed in the past books are present in this one: the exotic deaths, the descent into the Oriental drug and sex trade and the catty running commentary on our Western culture.

The exotic death is represented by a Hollywood filmmaker who is found eviscerated, the top of his skull removed and a small portion of his brains scooped out.

Even as detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep sets out to determine if this strange death is a murder or some eerie, intricate suicide, he is also caught up brokering a massive drug deal between a police colonel, an army general and a Tibetan mystic who intends to use the drug money to fund an invasion of China.

The Tibetan mystic is more distracting than diverting. Sonchai falls under his spell and sets out to seek spiritual development. This doesn't take up much of the novel, but it does slow it down. Burdett's three earlier Bangkok novels are better.

Blurbed Again!

Biblio's Bloggins was blurbed again! This one has been up a while, but I just noticed it. It's a blurb from my blog on Will Beall's L.A. Rex.