This Week in Books, 11th Ed.

 Grand Opening of a New Local Bookstore

    We have a new bookstore that opened here in Northern Kentucky. Okay, it's not exactly new, but it is the second location of our wonderful Roebling Books & Coffee.

    

    

    Let me repeat! We have a new bookstore location in Northern Kentucky. It's two miles from my house, and a block away from where I work. This might be dangerous.

    It opened Saturday, Nov. 27, which coincidentally is Small Business Saturday. It's at Sixth and
Overton in Newport's East Row neighborhood, a little more than a mile from its main store near the Roebling Suspension Bridge in Covington. So it's a local business -- and a bookstore. Everything is right about this.

    It being Opening Day, it was a little short on stock -- but heavy on coffee and tea, and atmosphere, and comfortable chairs, and wonderful art and antiques throughout. It's so much more than a bookstore.

    It's a local cafe. It's a community meeting center, fitting for its location in a residential neighborhood. It's a place to browse, to find new books, to explore new ideas. It is using a new way to present books -- with their covers facing out, giving them room to show off, to present their best selves, to speak to you, the reader.

    And a slow browse gives you the opportunity to listen, to hear the book call out to you, to whisper what it has to offer. Maybe it's a new experience, presenting a new culture, or showing new way of looking at life. Maybe it's a salve for a troubled soul. It might be a gift for a treasured friend.

    Or maybe it's promising a magical tale, a tour from the faeries into another dimension, a read to remember. What spoke to me was A Darker Shade of Magic, from V.E. Schwab, a wonderful writer who also penned The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

    

This Week in Books, 10th Ed.

   An excursion north

     I have written before about the Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio. It's a great place, filled with small rooms full of books that are hard to find elsewhere. That is why I spent Memorial Day adding to my TBR Stack.

    Some of the books bought were recommendations from my fellow book fans who joined me on this trip. A few were ones I have had my eye out for. And a few were spur-of-the-moment decisions.

 

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

    She has long been a favorite. She is not only a great writer of science fiction, but is "a literary icon," as the author Stephen King described her.

    

    Anyway, I heard about this novel on a podcast called "Fast Forward," which is about topics that might arise in the future. (It's great. You should listen to it. Its host, Rose Eveleth, has the perfect podcast voice, and I am in love with it.) During a show about space flight and labor law, and what living and working on another planet might entail, the host mentioned this book. So I bought it. It was the least I could do.  

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune

    Look at that book cover! That should be enought reason to pick it up.

    Not only that, but the title has the word "cerulean." We need to use that colorful word more often. Says Merriam-Webster: "Cerulean comes from the Latin word caeruleus, which means 'dark blue' and is most likely from 'caelum,' the Latin word for 'sky.' An artist rendering a sky of blue in oils or watercolors might choose a tube of cerulean blue pigment. Birdwatchers in the eastern United States might look skyward and see a cerulean warbler." 

    What's it about? Who knows? But it's described as "being wrapped in a big gay blanket."

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

    This was recommended by Corina Fay, a teacher and one of my companions on this trip. Listen, when a teacher tells you to read a book, you read it.

    The book's description says that "between life and death there is a library." And this library allows the book's protagonist to change the course of other lives by changing her decisions. Of course, knowing this might make the choices harder. 

    Still, she should make those decisions. 

Girl A, by Abigail Dean

    I have had this one on my to-buy list for quite a while. I found it. So I picked it up.

    Based on a true story, it tells the tale of a girl -- known as Girl A in media accounts -- who grew up in her family's "house of horrors" before managing to flee and save her five siblings. When their mother dies in prison years later, the children must come to grips with their traumatic Despite the raw subject matter, I am told it's a novel one can rip through in a couple of days. A blurb calls it "gripping and beautifully written." What more could one ask for?

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.S. Schwab

    Another friend and bibliophile, scientist Melissa Mann, and I were discussing the fluidity of time, and she recommended this novel. She even pointed out the shelf it was sitting on.

    I did not know this, but Schwab is one of the great science fiction writers of our time. In this novel, her protaganist and title character is immortal -- with the catch that every year on her birthday, she jumps into another skin and time. No one remembers her former self.

    Which of course, leads to the awful blurb: "A life no one will remember. A story you will never forget." But an author does not write her own blurbs. So I forgave her and bought the book.

The Kingdoms, by Natasha Pulley

    The book blurb describes it as a "genre-bending feat (that) masterfully combines history, speculative fiction, queer romance, and more." So I have to ask, how could you pass this one up?

    Oh, you want more? It also bends time.

    Actually picking up this novel was a mistake. I was going for another book, but grabbed this one instead. It spoke to me.

The Elephant of Belfast, by S. Kirk Walsh 

    It has an elephant. In Belfast. Industrial, gritty, urban Belfast.

    It also has Loyalist Protestants and Republican Catholics continuing their long feud over a small piece of Ireland. 

    Then World War II happened. And life went on.

This Week in Books, 9th Ed.

When I first saw Parnassus Books -- the independent Nashville bookstore co-owned by writer Ann Patchett and named after a Greek mountain that was home to the Muses -- I was a tad disappointed. It looked like your basic suburban bookstore, located next to a paint store in a strip shopping mall that also is home to a Chipotle and a Vitamin Shoppe.

But once inside during my visit this weekend, I re-discovered how wrong first impressions could be. It's a wonderful place -- comfortable, well designed, and full of interesting people and helpful workers. I saw several books being promoted as outstanding works that I already have read and enjoyed, both confirming my taste and that of the staff.

And the books! I planned to buy one or two, and would up working out with a half-dozen. Of course, I had to pick up the owner's latest, The Dutch House, which will rise high on my TBR stack. Then I grabbed another book on my planned reading list -- Red at the Boone, by Jacqueline Woodson. Bonus! It's signed by the author.

The additions to the stack

So already I was winning.

The bookstore is subtlety subversive and feminist. It contains more than the average number of books by and about women. Numerous books in the children's section are about empowering girls. Many of the featured books are by female authors.

And it works. As I strolled over to the new and interesting books pile, I discovered The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbi Waxman. I had never heard of this novel before, but when you chuckle and recognize yourself in the book's description, it's a clear sign from Apollo to put it in your bag.

The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by. They are all -- or mostly all -- excited to meet her. She will have to ... Speak. To. Strangers.

So you can see why that one will be good.

Two more books somehow found their way into my bag: Night Boat to Tangiers, by Irish author Kevin Barry; and Going the Distance, by William Steele, a biography of the late Canadian writer, W.P. Kinsella, who is one of my favorite authors.

And by the way guys who checked me out. Your recommendation for the Sunflower Cafe in South Nashville was spot on. I thoroughly enjoyed my vegetarian meal there.

New goal: To see the best bookstores in the USA

I have a new goal in life. No, it's not to have my Twitter account blocked by Donald Trump or Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, although those are both worthy goals.

The Book Loft, in Columbus, Ohio

Instead, it is to visit every bookstore on this list, which purports to name the best bookstore in each state. I'm not sure how the listmaker made the selections. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that I have visited just two of them, one in my home commonwealth of Kentucky, and the second across the river in Ohio.

As for the Kentucky selection, I would agree that Carmichael's in Louisville is a fine and dandy place. It's cozy, yet has a good, eclectic selection. Still, I would give my vote to Coffee Tree Books in Morehead. It's near the campus of Morehead State University, has a generous collection of books beyond the typical best sellers, and it behind the best named coffee shop in the world -- The Fuzzy Duck, which, by the way, also has a great selection of teas.

The second -- the Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio -- is without doubt the top bookstore in my neighboring state to the north. I wrote about this gem in a previous blog post about the the best independent book stores I have visited. It remains true.