« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
February 3, 2010
Largehearted Word Books of the Week - February 3rd, 2010
In the Largehearted Word series, the staff of Brooklyn's WORD bookstore highlights several new books released this week.
WORD is an independent neighborhood bookstore in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighborhood of Brooklyn, that will celebrate its third anniversary this March. Our primary goal is to be whatever our community needs us to be, which currently means carrying a lot of paperback fiction (especially classics), cookbooks, board books, and absurdly cute cards and stationery. In addition, we're fiends for a good event, from the classic author reading and Q&A to potlucks and a basketball league (and anything set in a bar). We're a small operation, just 1000 square feet and four people, but we read too much, so it all works out. If a weekly dose of WORD here isn't enough for you, follow us on Twitter: @wordbrooklyn.
Shadow Tag
by Louise Erdrich
This is nothing like Erdrich's other novels---it comes from an even deeper, more personal, and more painful place---but it is the best work of hers I've read.
This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
by Marilyn Johnson
There really isn't a better job than librarian, and I say that as a person with a pretty cool job. Fantastic to see them have a book of their own (and even better, it doesn't pretend to be surprised that there's more to librarians than a bun and a shushing finger).
Patriotism
by Yukio Mishima
Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico
by Javier Marias
Tales of Desire
by Tennessee Williams
I don't actually know if these are good, though I assume they are, given the authors. I just know that I love the design of these books so much that I've been carrying them around at my side like a security blanket for the last day.
Drood
by Dan Simmons
Very excited to read this now that it is in paperback and thus does not weigh five pounds.
Blackout
by Connie Willis
After an agonizing 8 years without a new novel, the doyenne of matter-of-fact, tongue-in-cheek sci-fi has TWO books coming out this year, both set in the time-traveling Oxford history department of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Genre schmenre: Willis never forgets, in the midst of all the tech, that her characters are people.
Feathered Serpent
by Xu Xiaobin
Loved this book, and so I hate the cover on the paperback, which manages to pack every visual metaphor about Chinese women into one small rectangle (aside from bound feet) and thus is incredibly dull. Ignore the cover and just read the book, which is a glorious sweeping family saga set against one of the most turbulent centuries in Chinese history.
WORD Brooklyn links:
WORD website
WORD blog
WORD on Twitter
WORD's Facebook page
WORD's Flickr photos
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Largehearted Word Books of the Week (weekly new book highlights)
52 Books, 52 Weeks (my yearly reading project)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly new comics & graphic novel highlights)
Book Notes (authors create music playlists for their book)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
