February 2024 | Rooted in Community | |
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Tsundoku, Stack One (New Books)
Tsundoku is Japanese for the act of acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up in one’s home. We thought it a perfect heading, so much so that we have two stacks, one for new books and one for used. If you’re like us, tsundoku is a constant state of being.
OMFG, BEES!, Matt Kracht, $15.95
From the author who gave us The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America comes this delightful homage to our pollinating lifesavers. It's more novelty than guidebook, but there are still plenty of fascinating facts, and the humor is sweet and endearing. My personal favorite is the section titled Great Paintings, If They Had Put Bees in Them; there's just something beautiful about taking a renowned Degas painting and introducing a tiny, tiny element of chaos. Makes you wanna say, You go, Bee.
Y/N, Ester Yi $26.00
Esther Yi is the bee to her own painting in this debut novel about a Korean American woman who becomes obsessed with a K-pop idol. Yi's writing is confident and snide, teetering on an unknown precipice; you feel at any moment she may drop you off the edge, but that's what's so compelling: she makes the drop enticing. The absurd twists and turns this book takes are so wonderfully, thoughtfully done, and her meditations on the human body and human desire are raw, fresh, and exhilarating.
On Shedding an Obsolete Past, Andrew Bacevich $24.95
Bacevich is a graduate of West Point and Princeton, a professor emeritus of history and international relations, and president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; he's a little educated. Such lofty credentials often lead to lofty, impenetrable writing, but Bacevich's writing is clear and accessible. This collection of essays takes a hard look at the closing of the American Century. Sharp and thought-provoking.
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Tsundoku, Stack Two (Used Books)
This portion of our Tsundoku section plays by different rules, since it deals in used books rather than new. With new books, we have a general sense of what we order and stock, but our used books are totally free range, flowing in and out of the store on their own mysterious tides. So while a book may get mentioned here, it could be gone in a heartbeat. But maybe you'll get curious...
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse, $4.00
This is one of our team members favorite books, so it caught my eye on the "To be cleaned" shelf. Originally published in German in 1927 and translated to English in 1929, this edition was printed in 1963, and Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, so those are the dates to remember for the quiz that will never come. Kurt Vonnegut called Steppenwolf "the most profound book about homesickness ever written," and since it's about a man half-human half-wolf, you have to wonder at the depths of that homesickness.
Kill 'em and Leave, Searching for James Brown and the American Soul, James McBride, $8.50
If that subtitle isn't compelling enough, how about this, from the intro: "...that would mean we've figured out James Brown. And that's impossible. Because to figure him out, we'd have to figure ourselves out. And that's like giving an aspirin to a two-headed baby." McBride seems the perfect inquisitor for this particular search--one distinct voice tracking another. Side note: the woman who donated this book has great taste.
Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, Translated by Peter Wortsman, $8.50
Books published by archipelago books (Brooklyn, NY) follow a consistent format: square shape, matte cover, neutral color tones; this makes them easy to spot once you've identified them. Plus they publish wonderful, often obscure works in translation. To find a used one is a real treat, so if you spot this one, check it out. The original text was written over 200 years ago, and the translation sings.
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald, $10
I read this book years ago, but the wild grief in the gorgeous prose still flickers up from memory whenever I see the sharp face of the hawk gazing out from our birding section. The book comes in every now and then, never staying long, sort of like a hawk, coming and going, coming and going.
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February: Black History Month & Blind Date with a Book | Every month we try to showcase Black/African American authors at Pearl Street Books. This month, we want to make it a bit easier for you to find some of our favorites. We have placed an olive green tag in some of our favorite books to help make it easier for you to celebrate Black History Month by reading Black authors. | |
Our Blind Date with a Book is back by popular demand. Stop in to select a date that will never stand you up or talk over you.
This year our wrapped books offer the first line of each novel to entice you for a date. Will it be love at first page?
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I’m Roxanne and I’m a 10-year resident of La Crosse. I do graphic design work for various non-profits in the Driftless. I also dabble in the cobbling arts, mostly for the fun of it. It gets me away from my computer and there really isn’t much that isn’t satisfying about fixing somebody’s stuff. About four years ago, I started a small publishing company with my friend Rachel called Ope! Publishing (ope.pub). Maybe you’ve heard of us! We make small books and zines (small, often handmade booklets that deal in art, activism, literature) and it’s been a blast. Really. We started out with art and literature and now we’re all about showing people how the city works and how they can better engage with it.
As for what I read, I lean towards non-fiction. My favorite books this year were The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami and The Physics of God by Joseph Selbie. Both books tweaked my geek nerve because they talk about quantum physics—one of my favorite topics on the planet—and how the new science is revealing things about our reality that has been talked about as far back as the Vedas. Another one of my favorite reads this year was The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. I don’t really cotton to the Malthusian or Hobbsian view that humans are the bad guys so reading Graeber and Wengrow’s book was uplifting to say the least.
I’m not a complete nerd. I do read fiction every now and again. I read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
OK. Fine. There’s a running theme.
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