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To walk into an indie bookstore is to walk into a world of discovery. The fruits of the products of humanity can be plucked from its shelves. Each store is different; each its own world. The books, diversity of thoughts and ideas, readings, events, and knowledge that indie bookstores bring to their communities are well worth celebrating. That’s why independent bookstores across the nation will host celebrations of the wild, woolly, and wonderful institution that is the independent bookstore on Saturday, April 27th.
This year Weller Book Works is proud to be listed along with our indie bookstore colleagues throughout Utah in the second edition of the state-wide Utah Independent Bookstore Map. Why a second edition? Because new indie bookstores have opened in the last year! You’ll want to visit them too. The Utah bookstore map is a beautiful piece, one you’ll be happy to have guide you in your explorations of the incredible landscape of indie bookstores in Utah. To help you in your journey, each store will stamp or mark your map when you visit it. Visit us all – not all on the same day of course! – and get a prize. On April 27, pick the free map up from any participating bookstore and let your fun begin!
Free audiobooks anyone? Find the Golden Ticket hidden in our store and our audiobook partners at LibroFM will give you 12 free audiobooks. There’s only one ticket hidden in WBW and it can only be found on Indie Bookstore Day, the 27th of April.
As always, we’ll have cool book related merch that can be purchased only on that day, only from indie bookstores. What will we offer this year? You’ll have to visit us on Bookstore Day to find out!
It’s going to be a lot of fun. And it wouldn’t be the same without you. Join us.
--Catherine Weller
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Tom Arnett bought books from Weller Book Works and other bookstores throughout his life. He practiced law and was a Commissioner in the Third District Court until his retirement. Tom died in his sleep in his home late last year. He owned a large library and was an avid reader of vanguard modern literature. His sizable collection contained smartly chosen, uncommon, and scarce counter culture titles from the 1960s through the 1990s. As happens to me on such occasions, I wished I had known the reader better. You will find Tom Arnett’s books in our stacks.
Weller Book Works is grateful to his family for making the decision to donate his books to our bookstore. Thank you to his brother Jeff and ex-wife Gail for making this generous decision. Tom’s obituary concluded with one of his favorite quotes from Arthur C. Clarke: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
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RECEIVE 20% OFF WHEN YOU PURCHASE DURING APRIL | |
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By Walter M. Miller
Harper Voyager
Paperback $18.99
Best Wellers' Price $16.37
Reviewed by Thomas Moore
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You should read A Canticle for Leibowitz if you'd like to ponder the cycles of humanity's conflicting agendas through the lens of science fiction. It is deceptively relevant to the struggles of our present society, as we contend with weapons turned upon the defenseless, declining environmental conditions, and the efforts of the ignorant to hinder both progress and decency. Miller presents an extreme global situation, where nuclear war has resulted not only in devastation, but in widespread distrust of the scientific understanding that led to such weapons being created in the first place. When the masses, labelled "simpletons", but proudly adopting the name, root out scientists, teachers, and officials deemed too dangerous on account of their intellect, civilization as we knew it enters a new dark age. Much like medieval times, it falls to the religious orders to doggedly preserve the books and documents of the past, despite not fully comprehending the relevance such information might hold for future re-discoveries. Amid this depressing backdrop, Miller unfolds his narrative in an awkwardly humorous and matter-of-fact tone that adds to the book's charm.
Miller's best known novel hits several points of interest for me, so it seems nearly inevitable I would have read it eventually. Most immediately, the setting of the southwestern United States (albeit after nuclear devastation) sets a somewhat familiar landscape. Brother Francis, the first central character to be introduced, is relatable, although in aspects unparallel to my own life. Like me, he is a young man raised in Utah, but the Utah of his time is a wasteland dominated by superstitious tribesmen. He is a defector from the tribes and a convert to Catholicism, while I was born-and-raised Catholic and am now estranged. His nervous and unsure behavior is reminiscent of the traits I believe, perhaps too hopefully, that I left behind in childhood. Finally, the book is a match for me because I'm a sucker for dystopian science fiction.
This book was originally written as three separate short stories, and it was not until writing the third that Miller decided his work constituted a novel. This means narratively that each of the three parts focuses on a different series of events, collectively covering a wide span of time without conventional continuity. The reader witnesses the transfer of information and the making of legends over generations. Within this format, the author also offers unforced worldbuilding, largely through character dialogue. The book presents many more thoughtful questions than answers, all the better to really make you think.
A theme that really resonated with me in the context of our work here at the bookstore is the preservation of knowledge. Here we store these items that contain so much of human history and the ideas of past generations, just waiting to be explored again by the very next person to take an interest. If I can recommend to anyone with even a slight interest in science fiction a work that gave me a greater appreciation of this task, then please consider Miller's timeless classic.
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By Maurice Sendak
HarperCollins
Hardcover $21.99
Review by Wade Brown
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That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew – and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.
I could write a book about Where the Wild Things Are and how much it means to me. What is it about this slim volume that captured my attention when I was very young and has continued to stay with me throughout my life as a tale I return to again and again?
Rambunctious Max, sent to his room without his supper by his mother after a tantrum of terror, uses a boat that appears in his room to sail to a distant continent where he finds a colony of monstrous creatures. The creatures try to frighten Max, but he tames them and they bow before him. Crowned King Of All Wild Things, Max begins the Wild Rumpus, a bacchanalian celebration of primal abandon wherein he and his creatures have what remains in my imagination the greatest party of all time. Then King Max sends the Wild Things to bed without their supper. Hungry and missing his mother, Max sets sail home, ignoring the creatures’ pleading to stay with them. When the boy returns to his room, he finds his supper waiting for him “…and it was still hot.”
This story, told with remarkably few but skillfully chosen words, electrified me as a child, and still does. I was (and am still!) often bored with mundane reality, and loved to escape into worlds of fantasy I discovered in books, music, theater, television, and movies. The home of the Wild Things is a particularly compelling place to visit. The author’s Caldecott Medal-winning illustrations are immersive and transcendent, seeming almost three-dimensional in their depth and detail.
Where The Wild Things Are lends itself to any number of interpretations, if that interests you. It can be read as a magical adventure story, or an archetypal children’s escapist fantasy. It can be read as a boy confronts his emotions and learns to control them, or that the lure of adventure is subdued by the safety of home and family. It is an external journey and an internal journey. It is all these things, and so much more. But no reader should feel compelled to adopt another reader’s take on it. Where The Wild Things Are is above all, personal, and everyone who goes on Max’s journey with him will have their own experience. For me, it is How The King Of All Wild Things Threw The Greatest Party Ever But Abdicated His Throne Because He Was Hungry For His Mother’s Cooking.
As an adult I’ve learned many fascinating things about this book. Like the fact that the author Maurice Sendak originally imagined the island Max travelled to was inhabited by wild horses, but then realized he didn’t know how to draw horses so changed them to non-specific creatures. That the appearance of the Wild Things are based on Sendak’s memories of his relatives as a child. That Sendak was gay and lived with the same man for 50 years. But none of these revelations diminishes the power of the book. In fact, they enhance and uplift it. I love this book and always will. Let the Wild Rumpus Start!
Note on the edition: This Fiftieth Anniversary edition of Where The Wild Things Are is the most faithful to the author’s intent ever published. Before his death in 2012, Sendak “enthusiastically approved” the remastering of his art that appears in this edition.
Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) ❤️
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Translated by Robert Dobbin
Penguin Group
Paperback $18.00
Review by Dylan Parry
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The Cynics are often considered a lesser school of Ancient Greek philosophy. And for decades, were considered little more than life-stylists parading around the streets of Athens, Thebes, and as far away as Alexandria in Egypt, as naked philosophers. Yet, their influence on the seemingly greater school, the Stoics, is unavoidable. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was the student of Crates, a renowned Cynic who with his wife Hipparchia (one of the few female philosophers in ancient records) are two of the most charming and interesting figures you’ll read about in this slim introduction to Ancient Cynicism.
Filled with bawdy humor, searing wit, and far from lacking in philosophical richness, Robert Dobbin gathers together one of the best collections of Cynic philosophy; recorded by the likes of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Cicero, and others through history– none of whom were Cynics.
No works by Ancient Cynics survive to the present day. It doesn’t help the Cynics that most people writing about them, did so with contempt or outright hatred. Did Diogenes of Sinope, who lived naked in a tub, talked back to an Emperor, and supposedly died eating raw octopus, write down any of his teachings? We will likely never know. The same goes, unfortunately, for all the other Cynics whose belittled philosophy was straightforward, yet enriching. A philosophy that many people today could take a lesson from.
A Cynic follows no set dogma. No two Cynics are exactly alike in dress or manner. None are too mighty to speak against, or too small to speak up, as a Cynic. So if after reading this wonderful book, you take Diogenes’s advice of “turning Cynic” or end up “writing on the Dog’s tail," just know there is no set path but the one set yourself, and to receive as good as you give.
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By Eoin Colfer
Disney Hyperion
Paperback $8.99
Review by Thomas Moore
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This series inspired me in my elementary school days, to the point that I can credit Colfer with fully derailing my attempt to read Harry Potter. I was meandering through Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when a friend recommended Artemis Fowl, which lead me to pause and try a few chapters. I promptly fell in love with this very different take on a modern magical world, and couldn't put it down. When I was finished, I found myself seeking the sequel rather than resuming Rowling. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty for leaving poor Harry behind, but I'm comforted that he perhaps got better representation in the movies than Artemis did. Of course it goes without saying that you can nearly always count on the book being better than the film, but there are degrees to these things. On top of that, I feel somewhat spared of mixed feelings over authorial association.
In the Artemis Fowl series, Colfer presents a world of fairies, ancient magic, and advanced technology. Their wondrous realm is hidden beneath our noses, quite literally, in an underground society. Creatures thought to be only legends have left the lands above to the humans, resigned to an existence of secrecy in the Lower Elements for the sake of peace. Holly Short is a reconnaissance officer of the Lower Elements Police (LEPrecon) and a rookie with a lot to prove. When she encounters a new threat that could lead to the exposure of her world, she is surprised to find that behind it is none other than a 12-year-old boy. Artemis Fowl II is a child prodigy with criminal ambitions. His newest scheme has turned his formidable mind towards uncovering the fairy world and exploiting it's magic, technology, and wealth. In truth, beyond confirming the signs he has seen that such a hidden world exists, he hopes to find the means to help his bedridden mother and locate his missing father, all the while restoring his family's fortune.
From the outset, readers are thrust into a tale of intrigue and action, and each book presents a new, master-crafted plot in continuation. The characters are intricate and each truly evolves throughout the course of the series, perhaps none more so than Artemis himself. The writing is infused with humor and wit. Without a doubt, these books impacted my reading tastes significantly in my formative years, and I believe they are worth exploring even for older readers. After pondering fond memories while writing this recommendation, I know I will have to revisit them when I get a chance.
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Click here for our April events newsletter.
And, as always, view our events calendar to see all of our upcoming events.
We host both virtual and in-person events, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
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Come visit us!
SUNDAY 12-5
MONDAY-THURSDAY 10-8
FRIDAY & SATURDAY 10-9
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Can’t make it to the store?
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Order by phone or online, then pick up at the store or the curb! We also ship!
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Give us a call at 801-328-2586.
Shop new books on our website.
Browse our entire inventory of new, used and rare books on Biblio.com.
Listen to audiobooks from Libro.fm.
Read ebooks from Kobo.
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