The Bear with the Books

Truth.

guiding-light:

This book. This book. THIS BOOK. I WANT TO MARRY THIS BOOK

This book. This book. THIS BOOK. I WANT TO MARRY THIS BOOK

Life Recently

I realize I haven’t done a real update in quite a while. I think I would like to set up some type of formula that I follow to insure that I am regularly updating my blog, but my life lacks a formula, so how can my blog have one?

We’re about to enter summer here on Long Island. Summer equals lots of things - open farm stands, sunny weather, grilling, beach time by August (damn cold water), vineyards and of course awesome tourists. I guess tourists are good for all of the money they bring into the community through the vineyards and restaurants and shopping centers, but they are also the people that can make my everyday life in retail pretty horrendous.

Joe and I are pretty much the most undecided people I have ever met. One moment we are thinking about moving off the island, looking for jobs in other areas. The next moment, we think we are going to stay here, possibly even buy a house. How those two things work together is beyond me.We are happy with where we are and what we are doing, but we are also pretty tired of throwing away our money by renting. Also, my work at least is pretty stagnant. I love being a bookseller, but there is only so much you can do as one, so much you can make as one. After a while, you start to feel restless. Maybe the summer will spice things up.

One thing that was really great recently was visiting my family down south. We got to see our nephew who we hadn’t seen since Christmas. It’s amazing how much he’s changed. He’s crawling all over the place now and really on the verge of walking on his own. We stayed with my sister at her house but also visited my brother-in-law’s camp house down on the bayou and spent a day in New Orleans. It was a much needed week away and a great way to kind of kick off a new, hopefully fun and exciting season in our lives.

vintageanchor:

“My alma mater was books, a good library - I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity”
— Malcolm X

Notewise, whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

David Sedaris via The New York Times

I love this! But can i just say my corgi at home and my sister’s both HATE vacuums.

Also - I think this corgi needs a bowl of water.

rraaaarrl:

brushie brushie brushie

I know cooler heads should prevail, but am I the only one who wants to see this?

I know cooler heads should prevail, but am I the only one who wants to see this?

(Source: elikapeka)

Book Review: Anatomy of Injustice by Raymond Bonner

I’m not a huge reader of nonfiction. I usually try to pick up a nonfiction title every once in a while because as a bookseller I feel like it’s my job to at least have a few nonfiction titles that I can recommend. However, when Raymond Bonner’s Anatomy of Injustice came in I knew I had to read it (and not because of any feelings of bookstore obligation).

From the flap, Bonner’s text appears to be true crime, but really it’s an analyzation of the justice system at work - when does it work, when doesn’t it, particularly how is it failing the innocent.

Bonner takes on the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a black man in South Carolina convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 76-year old Dorothy Edwards in 1982. Elmore, who worked as a handyman for Edwards denied any involvement in the crime.

Bonner’s work provides intimate details of the crime, the life of Edwards and that of Edward Lee Elmore. It also explains in clear, concise and captivating prose the mishandling of the Elmore case - not once, not twice, but in three separate trials.

What changed the fate of Elmore and part of what makes the book so interesting is the entrance of Diana Holt. Holt was a childhood victim of pedophilia. She was neglected as a child and was convicted of armed robbery at the age of 17. While serving her jail sentence she managed to turn her life around, becoming a model inmate and developing an interest in the law. Upon release, she went to college where she excelled academically. She went on to study at the University of Texas law school which led her to South Carolina and to the case of Edward Lee Elmore.

Anatomy of Injustice presents Holt’s tireless effort to do for Elmore what his first lawyers did not - prove his innocence. From numerous attempts to secure a new trial for Elmore to talking to the state’s witnesses herself to finally making progress by arguing that Elmore’s IQ (61) demonstrates that he is mentally retarded and therefore, unable by law to be executed, Bonner’s work shows the depth that one lawyer is willing to go to save her client.

Bonner’s book is not to be missed. It is a quick, engaging read that shows exactly where the justice system can go wrong.

Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Eowyn Ivey’s debut novel The Snow Child is an endearing novel based on the Russian folklore Snegurochka.

In Ivey’s version of the story, Jack and Mabel move to the 1920’s Alaskan wilderness in an attempt to start fresh, away from family and friends. The couple are unable to have children, and Mabel, in particular, feels scrutinized by their family and friends for what she feels is her failure. In Alaska, Jack and Mabel hope to find a place where they can lay their roots, depending solely on each other. But in the dark, snowy, Alaskan winter they find loneliness and a remaining gulf between them.

Then, one snowy night, in a rare moment of playfulness the couple build a snowman. Except, they shape the snowman into the shape of a girl in a long dress, adding a scarf and mittens, even rosy lips. The couple eventually go inside and go to sleep, no longer thinking of their snowgirl. But the next morning, the mittens and scarf are gone and there are footprints leading away from where the snowgirl once stood. Jack, looking away from the house even thinks he sees a small girl playing in the woods.

Over time they see more and more sightings of the young girl, playing in the cold Alaska winter. She wears the mittens and the scarf the couple used on their snowgirl, and she seems perfectly content in the Alaska snow. But could she possibly be the actual snowgirl in human form?

Ivey’s novel plays with this question in small doses of magical realism. However, the novel is centrally focused on an older couple, plagued by their history, their desire for the child that never came. Will the snowgirl (or the young human child playing in the snow) be for Jack and Mabel the child they had always wished for? Will their new life in Alaska and this child give the couple what they had been looking for all along?

Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child is an engaging, heartfelt read that explores what it means to grow older and for life to not turn out the way it was planned. Ivey’s prose is simple yet her story is complex, with layer upon layer emerging on each page through each chapter, as the reader works to determine who the snow child is and what she will mean for Jack and Mabel.

Readers will find pleasure in Ivey’s Alaskan getaway, in the sparks of magical realism placed throughout the text, and in her characters, filled with frailty yet hope.

Review: Agorafabulous! by Sara Benincasa

Sara Benincasa, apparently well known for her comedy, impersonations, radio shows, etc., was somehow an unknown to me until Agorafabulous! made its way onto the shelves at the bookstore.

A memoir about someone dealing with debilitating anxiety to the point where said someone can’t leave their house??? Sounds like a book for me! Wait - it’s told in a funny way??? Even better!

To be honest, though, I’m not sure I would have started to actually read the book if Benincasa wasn’t doing an event with us in the store. But, with an event scheduled, I started to read. Instantly, I was hooked. Benincasa is genuine, funny, captivating and extremely honest. One of my coworkers ingeniously calledAgorafabulous!”Bossypants meetsGirl, Interrupted.”

Benincasa’s story traverses the terrain of Sicily where a foreign country and the petty popular girls result in panic attacks to Emerson College in Boston where she first experiences full blownagoraphobia (to the point where she can’t exit her room to go to the bathroom) to her home in New Jersey to a new college in Carolina to Texas to New York City and finally to the stand up comedy stage.

I’m all about reading depressing mental health books, but that is definitely NOT what Agorafabulous! is. Benincasa somehow manages to tell about a very serious, real issue in a light-hearted manner while also expressing the depths of her illness. It’s an impressive feat, one I think many many readers will enjoy.

This excerpt from Agorafabulous! takes place shortly after Benincasa leaves Emerson College and moves back in with her parents.

Sometimes in the course of battle one needs to give up certain territory in order to achieve the greater goal of overall victory. It occurred to me that I might make a stronger case for staying in the house if I were scrupulously clean and pleasant-smelling. Emily Dickinson had probably been impeccably tidy gal, and her family had let her crazy ass roam the home in white dresses her entire life.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Bear Paws

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