A leisurely stroll with a knowledgeable but unpretentious companion through some very interesting aisles.
A proud and unrepentant biblio-addict explains how he got that way—and how books and bookstores have evolved, as well.
Reading this gentle memoir/history is itself a bit like browsing in a friendly bookshop. Buzbee, who began his long tenure in the book business as a teenaged clerk at a now-defunct shop called the Upstart Crow, and who has subsequently published fiction (Fliegelman’s Desire, 1990, not reviewed), is an amiable guide. The author came from a family with only mild interest in books (Reader’s Digest Condensed Books lined some of the shelves), and it was not until he read The Grapes of Wrath in high school that his addiction began. The early pages are principally memoir, but about halfway through, Buzbee begins to interweave lengthy sections on the history of books and bookselling. He rehearses the story of the great library at Alexandria, the invention and modifications of the printing press, the rise of the bookshop and its frequent neighbor, the coffeehouse. (We learn that books used to be displayed horizontally, not vertically, on shelves.) The author teaches us, as well, about the emergence of the superstore (both B. Dalton and Waldenbooks arrived in 1969), the meaning of the ISBN, the importance of used-book dealers, the rise of online bookselling. He acknowledges that Amazon, et al., have wounded the bricks-and-mortar stores, but he does not foresee a time when there are no traditional shops. Nor does he think e-books or print-on-demand texts will ever replace the familiar paperback. Buzbee offers a strong chapter in praise of free-speech-loving booksellers, with special attention to the Salman Rushdie case and the publication of Ulysses. He fires some shots at the Patriot Act and takes us on a tour of his favorite shops, among them Square Books in Oxford, Miss., and City Lights in San Francisco.
A leisurely stroll with a knowledgeable but unpretentious companion through some very interesting aisles.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-55597-450-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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