Sad News About Another Indie Bookstore

Vertigo Books is closing. The name may not mean anything to those outside the Washington, DC area, but I attended some of their signings back when they were in the Dupont Circle section of town.

Then they packed up and moved to College Park, MD. I was thrilled to see a bookstore of Vertigo's caliber relocate to the 'burbs. It's always been a store that promoted good books by intelligent authors. The store always had a nice mix of different titles. And it was independent, so back when Book Sense had gift certificates you could use at any indie bookstore, I always bought mine there and gave them out as Christmas presents.

Those gift certificates are gone now, though I see they've been replaced by ABA gift cards. But this store won't be replaced.

Such a shame.

Story on a Spreadsheet?

Okay, when I heard about the concept of texting novels, I thought that was pretty wild. But how many of you would read a story on a spreadsheet?

And how many of you would try to write one that way?

What's next? Twitter novels? (If I'm just thinking about it now, someone's probably already doing it.)

Prayers for Pixies, Singleton Hippie Art

Prayers for Pixies(c) Singleton 2009SOLDI heard the morning breezecrinklelike sheets blowing in the wind,and the sun raised her spindly arms upover her head and stretched....lazy,but ready to touch the sky....And there she was...Hidden in the kudzu vines and the fallen oaks,Wide eyed and cheeks flushed with blueberry blush...the little woodland pixieI always knew existed,but perhaps only in my

Little White Lies, Singleton Hippie Art

Little White Lies(c) Singleton 2009SOLDStanding over melike an aging rock star,wearing his crystal blue eyes likebling...he muttered"Silly little girlwith all your peace~love hoo~hah,who do you think believes you?"And I never lifted my head,never let go of the colors,the lines,the flow...Never let go of the spirit..."I do"....Drawn on reclaimed cardstock....colored markers, pencils, ink, peace,

'Flashback' Explores Memory in Page-Turning Fashion

FLASHBACK (Henry Holt and Co. 2004)
Author, Jenny Siler

FLASHBACK starts off with a nun performing an evening ritual in a chapel at a French Benedictine convent. But any notions that this book will start slowly and quietly are swiftly put to rest when the nun gets grabbed by a man--one of a band of armed thugs who creep up on the chapel in the gathering gloom and massacre all the nuns (all except the nun who's grabbed, but breaks free and gets away). While he has her, the man briefly questions the nun about a woman the convent took in--an American who's lost her memory, who they refer to as Eve.

Fortunately, Eve's with her shrink at the time, trying to deal with her memory loss issues and strange dreams that suggest she's perhaps not the nicest person, that she may have a sordid past that's possibly too painful for her to want to recall. Her memory loss was caused by a bullet shot through her brain. (That's a bad sign of some sort.) She can recall language skills, rudimentary tasks and other practical things. She just can't remember who she is or how she ended up in a field in France, with a bullet in her head.

Eve returns to the convent and is horrified to learn of the massacre. She talks to the sole surviving nun, who tells her, They came for you. These words send Eve off and running, with the reader happily following along. She can't stay at the convent, but must find out who she is. Her only clue is a Moroccan ferry ticket (scribbled with strange Arabic letters) in her pocket. So, Eve grabs a dead nun's passport, dyes her hair to match the photo and it's off to Morocco she goes. Where she meets a number of interesting, but not always friendly, people, including another American named Brian, who's . . . well, really interesting.

Jenny Siler, who also writes as Alex Carr, has an uncanny knack for capturing the feel--the sights, sounds and smells--of the exotic locales where Eve ends up. Her evocative descriptions of each place from Morocco to Bratislava are sometimes so thick with foreign place names, you may find it mentally tongue-twisting. But she can nail a scene with a single well-crafted phrase. Her sardonic sense of humor also stands her in good stead--especially when she writes about the American expatriate crowd. And the plot takes so many twists and turns, I thought I'd get mental whiplash. It's a story that keeps you guessing and turning the pages. Keeps raising the question: who can Eve trust? Can she trust herself? Her dreams? Her flashbacks? And what about Brian? He's so . . . interesting. (I shall say no more on that subject.)

Meanwhile, there's Eve herself. (Or is it Hannah Boyle? Or Leila Brightman? Or someone else entirely?) Eve, who's feeling insecure and plagued with strange dreams that may or may not be memories. She also has an uncanny ability to handle a gun, to apply aggressive force and an instinct to scan a room for the closest exit. Hmm . . . sounds an awful lot like she was . . . a criminal? A spy? An assassin? You really feel the pain and confusion of Eve's not knowing--as well as the pain of her knowledge that somewhere, at sometime, she had a child, who she can't remember either. (She has occasional flashbacks about an infant, but her only hard evidence is an episiotomy scar.)

And as Eve puts the bits and pieces to the puzzle of her past together (which may or may not come together seamlessly--but who cares? just enjoy the ride), her doing so not only comprises a riveting story, but leads the reader to ponder the bigger issues of memory and identity. Such as, how much can we trust our memories? How much do we really know about ourselves? Or anyone else?

Fun Stuff

Here's an interesting idea: literary tattoos. (Thanks to The Reader's Advisor Online for this.)

And what's this? A book club on Twitter? Makes for pithy discussion, I'd think.

Plus, if you were wondering which book recently won the prize for the oddest title--well, here it is.

'Life of Pi' is Weird Form of Mystery

Review of LIFE OF PI (Highbridge Audio 2003)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, Yann Martel; read by Jeff Woodman with Alexander Marshall

LIFE OF PI is not a who-dunnit, but a did-it-happen. I am way behind the power curve on this one—people recommended it to me way back when I could read books with pages. Silly me, I judged by the cover—a folk art pic of a tiger in a rowboat. Maybe not, I kept thinking haughtily, eyes sliding to the next book on the shelf.

Finally, I got LIFE OF PI on CD—even then it sat alone on my dresser—all the other tapes came first.

Boy, was I a dope. Pi is not the mathematical constant, but a 16-year-old Indian lad’s first name (he’s named after a swimming pool, as he will tell you in the somewhat sleepy introduction to this adventure—bear with it, it’s worth it). His dad is a zookeeper and the family moves from Pondicherry to Montreal, sailing with some animals that have been sold to zoos in Canada and America.

A storm arises, and Pi can’t sleep and goes on deck. What happens next—well, that’s the mystery. He ends up in a lifeboat with some of the animals, including a 450-lb Bengal tiger, a hyena, an orangutan, a rat and a zebra.

No, this isn’t some cheesy Noah riff. The hyena attacks the zebra and tears off chunks. Pi is afraid of the tiger and suspends himself on an oar sticking out of the bow to stay safe. At this point, the ship gurgles beneath the ocean.

Pi is at sea with the tiger for seven months—or was he? How does he survive? Can he intimidate the beast enough to live? They finally come to a weirdly undulating island made of delicious algae and swarming with meerkats. But I will leave that part for your delectation.

In an Epilogue, officials of the Japanese shipping company approach Pi and ask what happened. He tells them what we already know. They don’t buy it. Okey-dokey. He tells them another story, weirdly paralleling the first. Is this the truth?

Or is a tiger roaming the jungles of Mexico?

Your call.

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and authors the blog Do the Hopey Copey, a humorous how-to guide to handling the recession.