Common Good Books

LEAVING THE ATOCHA STATION I Staff Review

2012-01-31T17:41:00.000-08:00

Most men identify with characters in novels as young children, when the world is still awash with opportunity, the self still nothing more, it seems, than a body and a face; a name called home in time for supper. But you can call me Huck, or Adam, as the case may be. For like a boy pretending to be Superman, I truly did believe that I could fly from the first sentence of Ben Lerner's first novel, with its catastrophic and empowering relief of a story about the stories that one tells, in order to catch trains or to spend money that one doesn't have, to mystify one's place in politics, and even to explain, unnecessarily, the going to and being in museums, restaurants, parties, lost. How does one live alone, this novel asks, in the exact same tone of voice one asks one's self: Cowardly, at best, but down in writing, nonetheless. Not bad for a poet. Or a grown man dressed in mostly underwear.

Colin, CGB Bookseller

COMMON QUESTIONS I Louis Jenkins

2012-01-30T18:12:00.001-08:00

Louis Jenkins, author of Before You Know It and Nice Fish

Colin talks to Louis Jenkins about what to eat in Minnesota and dress up in overseas.

CGB: As I was reading European Shoes, it occurred to me that interspersing poetry with notebookentries, as a form, felt suddenly brand new.

LJ: Well, I got the idea when I was in Wales. I’dbeen, you know, writing things, taking notes, and working on poems all thetime. I talked with a class, and they had been working with a form calledHaibun, which if you know the Japanese poet Basho… he did a book calledsomething like… they translated it as, TheNarrow Road to the North, or something like that, and that’s the form. Hegoes and he has a little travel entry, and then he writes a little haiku poem.So I thought, ‘Well, I could use that, and just write prose poems instead ofHaiku.’ And so that’s kind of how I put the book together.

It’s an exciting form, in part because we seem to do lesswriting in notebooks, in the age of social media. Have you worked through otherforms?

No. Garrison wanted me to hook all of these poems togetherand turn them into a novel. But I tried that and it didn’t work out very well.

If you were assigned to write a Minnesotan version of yourpoem, “The Full English Breakfast,” with a list of Minnesotan fare, what wouldthat poem be?

I don’t know. Of course, everybody would immediately writeabout Lutefisk. I think I’d have to think about something else. And, of course,there’s the proverbial hot-dish, church basement fare. But I don’t know. If Iwere gonna write about food of Minnesota,I’d have to think about that awhile. Because, you know, you could do thosekinds of things, but they’ve been done and been done well. I’d have to think ofsomething new. And at the moment, I have no idea.

If you did the hot-dish, I could see that getting prettywordy, too. What with all of the preheating…

I discovered that the traditional green bean casserole… youknow that?

Yea, with the stuff on top?

Yea, the canned, fried onion rings. I discovered, by lookingon the web… I thought, ‘Well, there must be an alternative, better recipe’…Verydifficult to find. Almost every one of them called for Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup and canned greenbeans.

There's not something more up-to-date?

I found one or two, and I even tried one, but frankly, Ididn’t think it was as good as the old one.

So, Campbell’shas a monopoly on the green bean casserole, unfortunately.

I guess so.

I haven’t lived in Minnesotalong, but as a boy, during visits to Duluth,I and everybody else was captivated by the raising of the lift bridge. And assoon as it began to rise, everybody came to the shore there to start lookingout for ships. Is that how it is in Duluth?Are people in awe of it still? Still taking time to watch the ships?

Well, in the summer you get a lot of tourists, and, of course, it's all new to them. For people who live on Park Point it can sometimes be an annoyance. You get trapped. You're supposed to be at work or the dentist or something. So, it sort of behooves you to know the schedule.

COMMON QUESTIONS I Theresa Weir

2011-12-09T18:05:00.001-08:00

Theresa Weir, author of The Orchard

Colin talks to author Theresa Weir about living life in the fast lane and Wisconsin.

CGB: Many writers write in coffee shops or studios. You, however, bought a church. Does that "I shouldn't be doing this" feeling that people often claim to feel when it comes to using the lord's name in vain or sneaking boos inside a sanctuary ever occur to you while you write? Even a sentenceas harmless as "He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on the dashboard." Does a part of you think, "Eh, I'll change it to candle"?

TW: It's really more about what the neighbors think. One night I looked outside to see an angry mob of torch-carrying villagers trudging up thehill to the church. I thought they were saying, "Kill the witch." Theywere actually saying, "This hill's a bitch." So it's easy to misconstrue how people react to living in what was once a sacred space. Ithink everybody's okay with it.

You divide your time between St. Paul and rural Wisconsin. Everyone assumes the worst, so what's the easiest thing about living, occasionally, in the middle of nowhere?

Nobody can hear you scream.

One of the audience members mentioned having seen your book, The Orchard, outand about, in the hands of a stranger, and you lit up, adding that you'd always wanted to see a "live copy" of your book in theworld. I love this idea of a "live book" vs. a "dead book," which I suppose is any book not being read, but just displayed. If you were to come across a "live copy" yourself, what would you do? Would you let thereader know? Or would you act like someone else and simply mention to that person that you too had read The Orchard by Theresa Weir and, as far as you could tell, your days of reading other people's books were over?

My middle name is Toiling In Obscurity, and I'd really hate to have to change it to I Think I've Heard Of You. So I wouldn't admit to having read or written the book.

So, you're a genre-spanning author, who lives in two places at once and writes under the pseudonym Anne Frasier. Do you have a favorite anything?

My favorite thing is getting behind someone who's driving very slowly in the left lane. I love that.

COMMON QUESTIONS | Lynne Cox

2011-11-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to Antarctica and South With The Sun

Colin talks to author Lynne Cox about the relationship between writing, endurance, and highway transportation systems

CGB: In reference to swimming across the English Channel, you mentioned never wanting to do the same thing over and over again. How do you feel about stop-and-go traffic?

LC: That's why I live in California, so I can drive on the freeways.

It took you 7 years to write South With the Sun, and 21 to write Swimming to Antarctica, which you began writing on a typewriter and finished on computer. Do you prefer one over the other?

Each book has its own method. The way I wrote Swimming to Antarctica was chronological, but then Grayson was just sitting down to write this "One day..." story, and then [South With The Sun] was me weaving stories through time and place and theme, which was so different than what I'd done before. So, your question was... what?

Well, your answer is more interesting than my question. But some writers have strong opinions about, for example, writing on a laptop as opposed to a pad of paper.

What I learned is that I'll start by writing longhand. When I know that I'm ready to do it, I'll start writing, and the first two or three or four paragraphs will be constant writing, and then I'll sit down and start writing it on the computer, because I don't think writing longhand anymore is good for me. Now, I can just go from brain to computer.

You spoke of invoking a "presence of mind," while swimming alone in the dark at 1 in the morning or above a baby whale. Does that presence of mind necessary for enduring such mentally and physically demanding states and situations serve a purpose in the process of writing a book?

Absolutely. That's such a great parallel, because you have to maintain the storyline, you have to keep going in a forward direction, because if you don't, you lose yourself and you lose the story. And there's nothing worse than to be in the middle of... "I finally figured out what I need to write here," and then somebody calls you. Because you know that that whole thing you've figured out in your brain now that you're just about ready to write... you're thinking as you're going along, and now that thought is gone, and it just drives me nuts.

So you value preparation and endurance when it comes to thinking?

Exactly, and seeing a thought all the way through. That's why I don't write poetry. I'm a long writer. I write books. But that whole sense of being right there in the moment as you're writing it, that's what I really try to do. That's why I love when people say, "When I read about your swim in Greenland, I felt like I was right there." That's the best that I could ever hope to write: that I could take somebody and make them feel like they're right there in that moment.

It sounds like you're saying there's an association between length and longevity and the ability to focus.

Yes. And I learned, like swimming short distances in very, very cold water, the intensity of that focus is probably what got me through it. And the long distance swimmer is like the long distance novel or nonfiction writer. It's a book, not a novella.

You seem to like the cold. Have you considered writing a book about or in Minnesota. Perhaps one titled, Living in Saint Paul?

I hadn't thought about that. But I keep hoping that one day I'll get to swim across Lake Wobegon.

WONDAWEDGE | Staff demo

2011-09-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Martin, our indefatigable assistant manager, puts the WONDAWEDGE to a rigorous test, after which he gives this review: "Not bad." That is a rave review coming from Martin. Look how content he seems on that floor. Now imagine the WONDAWEDGE in other more relaxing contexts and you know you want one for yourself.

Available for purchase / Comes in an assortment of colors.

TWIN CITIES | Poetry by Carol Muske-Dukes

2011-05-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

Essayist, novelist and current Poet Laureate of the state of California, Carol Muske-Dukes gave a reading at Common Good Books from her latest book of poetry, Twin Cities. Come and get yourself a SIGNED copy!

Twin Cities is an emotionally rich book of poems about how things double by reflection, by reproduction, by severance. The poems embark from the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, divided by a legendary river, and move on to the parallel histories of a life lived and a life imagined and the random intersection of the two.

A sophisticated and lyrical new collection from one of today's finest living poets.

BLOOD, BONES & BUTTER | Staff review

2011-05-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be a "foodie" to enjoy this engaging, well written memoir. One wonders if chef Hamilton became successful as a result of her unconventional upbringing or in spite of it. What a life! What a story!

-Jean E.

Blood, Bones & Butter
by Gabrielle Hamilton
$26.00

WAXPOETICS | Featured magazine

2011-05-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

Funky like a dusty 45 pulled from a second-hand record store. This little mag covers funk, soul, jazz, like nobody's business. Musical dope.

-Bookseller Joe

Waxpoetics
$9.99

INSEMINATING THE ELEPHANT | Staff review

2011-05-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is a moving, hilarious book, dedicated to exploring the limitations of the human body, what Perillo call "the meat cage." Perillo spares no subject when dissecting what it means to be a body decomposing against our own wishes.

-Jevin B.

Inseminating The Elephant
Poems by Lucia Perillo
$16.00

NOBODY'S PERFECT | Staff review

2011-05-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

Just an incredible book! The pitcher who threw a perfect game and the umpire who stole it from him with a bad call team up to write a book about the game. But they have so much more to say. Just when the Barry Bonds stories get you down, the game is put back on its pedestal by these two gracious players.

-Sue Z.

Nobody's perfect
by Armando Galarraga, Jim Joyce
(with Daniel Paisner)
$24.00

CLEOPATRA | Customer Review

2011-05-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

My plan to dip into this bio at my leisure was destroyed with the first paragraph. Stacy Schiff immediately brought me into the world of 98 B.C., and the life of this amazing woman. This history is both personal and global. For all of us carrying forth our grandmothers' and mothers' work to bring equality to all women. It is mind boggling to discover the equality in law and life for women of Cleopatra's times. Read and weep; read and rejoice!

-Kathleen V.

Cleopatra
by Stacy Schiff
$29.99

More Common Good Books Favorites

2010-02-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

Stalwart bookseller Kathy writes about Louise Erdrich's new novel Shadow Tag:

Shadow Tag--the gotcha ego game played in defense or retribution or sickness and to everyone's detriment--just like in real life, just like with each of us to some degree. Louise Erdrich's story-telling skill breaks my heart, the characters break my heart, the story of their lives breaks my heart.

Store manager Sue praises Martin Pages' novel The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection:

I loved this quirky book especially the main character, Virgil. He has built tight little world around himself which is thrown into a wild spin when he picks up a message on his answering machine from a woman he does not know telling him she is leaving him. This book is a small gem.

Intrepid bookseller Keelin details the strange attraction of Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife:

The weird thing about A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick is that it's based on fact. Rural life at the end of the 19th century in small-town Wisconsin was perverse as the clash of pastoral life met the industrial period. Add a mail order bride who's not what she seems and it's a strange story indeed.

The World Premiere of My Antonia at the Illusion Theater

2010-02-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

Need a ticket to Allison Moore's adaption of My Antonia at the Illusion Theater (running 2/19 through 3/30)? Well we have a deal for you. Common Good Books has coupons good for 50% off of the ticket price. While you are here, register to win a pair of tickets.

Haven't read the book lately? We're hosting a discussion of the book (pick up a copy now--the Penguin classic edition is discounted 25%) on February 22nd at 7:00.

ORDWAY and CGB Partner Up

2009-10-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Learn more before you go >>

Go deeper into Little House on the Prairie before you enjoy the show. Buy some Little House stuff at CGB, then experience Little House on the Prairie, The Musical LIVE ON STAGE at the ORDWAY in downtown Saint Paul.

Books, CDs and DVDs are available at Common Good Books.

Use promo code BOOKCLUB for a 10% discount on select performances.

We've Got Opinions--CGB Shelf-talkers

2009-09-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

Jonathan, our events coordinator, loves the extremes. Lowbrow, highbrow--he's there with you. Anything in between leaves him cold. Here's his shelf-talker for Ron Currie's Everything Matters:

An off-beat, oddly uplifting story with enough disregard to the subtle effects and delicate story lines of much new fiction that you can forgive the poor choice of title. Currie throws around and has his fun with standard narrative conventions, but not at the expense of his story--or the reader. For a story of impending doom, I think you'd find it difficult to come across one as fun and inventive as this.
Purchase Everything Matters

Tod, one of our neighbors, offers his take on Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice:

Essentially, this book is just plain, good old fashioned, paranoid fun with equal amounts noir and California sunlight. Imagine Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski with a PI license instead of a bowling ball, in the early '70s instead of the early '90s, trying to navigate COINTELPRO, crooked cops, and the LA underworld. If you can do that, you will begin to have an inkling of how many conspiratorial agendas Pynchon's Jeffrey "Doc" Sportello must smoke his way through in order to elevate his consciousness above every individual, governmental agency, and criminal organization that wants to do him ill.
Purchase Inherent Vice

Get Well Soon, GK

2009-09-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here is the Prairie Home statement about Garrison's hospital stay:

Mr. Keillor was transferred to St. Mary's Hospital (Mayo) in Rochester, Minnesota, after admitting himself to United Hospital in St. Paul on Monday.

He will remain at Mayo until this Friday to undergo testing, and upon his release will resume his schedule as previously planned. He is doing well and the family appreciates the warm wishes.

Mr. Keillor says: "Good afternoon. I am in Rochester at St. Mary's Hospital. After feeling ill on Monday morning, I drove myself to the United Hospital ER in St. Paul where I got excellent care and then was transferred to Mayo simply because they know so much more about me down here. I am in the hands of smart and compassionate people and plan to get out on Friday and get right back to work, record a new audiobook as planned, do some lecture engagements, a book tour for PILGRIMS, and of course the season opener at the Fitzgerald on September 26. I have my laptop with me, and I am at work on the long-awaited Lake Wobegon screenplay. And that's the news from here."

Have You Seen This Man?

2009-07-30T16:36:00.001-07:00

On July 30th at 1:17 am, two thieves--one male, one female--broke into Common Good Books through Nina's Coffee Cafe. They stole our safe and damaged our cash registers. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

If anyone saw anything or knows these individuals, we ask you to please contact the Saint Paul Police Department at (651) 291-1111. If any neighborhood resident wants to see the surveillance video in full, please contact the store.

Events This Week

2009-07-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

All events at Common Good Books unless noted.
165 Western Avenue North, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55102
651.225.8989
Full events listing available at CommonGoodBooks.com

Monday, July 20, 2009 6:00 p.m.
Common Good Book Club Reads German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons
Click Here for More Information

Monday, July 20, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Julie Kramer, Missing Mark
Riley Spartz is back! Julie Kramer will celebrate the publication of her new book, Missing Mark at Common Good Books, and you are invited to the party. As the Booklist reviewer notes, "Issues of class, complications of a rare medical
condition, and elements of romance add to the interest of this sequel,
which has a surprising final twist and a neatly satisfying ending.
Kramer has a winning series here."
Click Here for More Information
Click Here for the Book Trailer

Thursday, July 23, 2009 7:30 p.m.
J.C. Hallman, The Hospital for Bad Poets
"In a nutshell, the amazing stories in J.C. Hallman's collection ...are not unlike pop parables for our times, or
magical puzzles, and they are witty, intelligent, inventive, satirical,
farcical, and finally full of a profound seriousness of purpose, not to
mention as funny as a barrel full of philosophers. Imagine Woody Allen trick-or-treating in a Kafka (or maybe Nietzsche) mask, going
story-to-story pretending to be Average Man merely disguised as a
secret solipsist, as he attempts to unriddle the absurdity of ordinary
Halloweened life for a laugh."
--Chuck Kinder
Click Here for More Information

Common Good Books Is Giving Away Books!

2009-06-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

Want to read My Sister's Keeper before seeing the movie? Common Good Books can hook you up! Email us at info[at]commongoodbooks.com with My Sister's Keeper in the subject line by June 30, 2009 to be eligible to win the book and passes to the movie.

Official Movie Website: http://www.mysisterskeepermovie.com/

Winners must be able to pick up their prize at Common Good Books, 165 Western Avenue N, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Coming in June!

2009-04-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

“When I was 16, Helen Fleischman assigned me to memorize Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29, ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state’ for English class, and fifty years later, that poem is still in my head. Algebra got washed away, and geometry and most of biology, but those lines about the redemptive power of love in the face of shame are still here behind my eyeballs, more permanent than my own teeth. The sonnet is a durable good. These 77 of mine include sonnets of praise, some erotic, some lamentations, some street sonnets and a 12-sonnet cycle of months. If anything here offends, I beg your pardon, I come in peace, I depart in gratitude.” —GK

Call or stop in to Common Good Books to pre-order!

Common Good Books
165 Western Avenue N
Saint Paul, MN 55105
651.225.8989
www.commongoodbooks.com

Join the Common Good Books Conceptual Soccer Club

2009-04-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

Common Good Books is conceptual sponsoring the Fugees soccer team of the North Atlanta Soccer Association. We know it's strange to sponsor a team this way, but we do what we can. How is this done: It's rather simple. All of us on staff have formed a conceptual circuit thought loop between our minds in support of the Fugees, pooled the support regions of our now collective brain to the Northern Atlanta region, and honed it in on this soccer team. It's a rather inspiring thing to do, and we encourage you to join us if you see fit. You can even do this at home, although we encourage you to do it at our humble store, for no better reasons than safety & solidarity. If you're interested, please stop by and let any of us know -- as we're all working with one collective mind on this issue, surely you won't encounter any confusion with the staff.

Of course you could read all about their story in Outcasts United, but we don't want to limit you to just the one option. Either way you'll be supporting a good cause and if you're running low on things to feel good about, well, now we've given you the chance to change that. That's how we do.

Larry Millett Event -- April 24th, 2:00pm

2009-04-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

Common Good Books is having a special event this weekend with Larry Millett. Larry has a new book out on St. Paul's Summit Avenue & Hill District and will be giving a presentation at the Virgina Street Swedenborgian Church (170 Virginia St) at 2:00 this Saturday, April 24th.

Following the presentation there will be a walking tour. The tour is ten (10) dollars and limited to the first twenty (20) people. Tickets will be sold at the church, day of the event only -- first come, first serve basis, so arrive early should you be interested.

Common Good Books Spring Cleaning

2009-04-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

A list of stuff we discovered during our annual spring cleaning:

--Four (4) Vacuum Cleaners -- Seriously
--One (1) Christmas Tree
--Ten (10) Copies of Pudlo's France (Hotel & Restaurant Guide) 2008/09 -- Planning a trip this summer? We've got an idea where you might want to go.
--One (1) Employee who can't stop Twittering -- even when in SD
--These guys who probably read some cool books.
--One (1) picture of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro playing baseball:

--Ten (10) copies of this book about Mermaids.
N.B. Mermaids rank third on our employee favorites list of half-reptilian/half-mammal creatures. The first two, if you're wondering: The lovely seahorse and the fearsome, yet allusive half-shark-alligator/half-man.
--Five (5) copies of Chuck Klosterman's novel Downtown Owl on our sale table, marked down to $12.00 (We didn't want to read it either).
--The strange phenomenon that whenever a certain employee starts talking about his conceptual band "The Aristocrats," (with two new singles "Jennifer Doyle On The Move" & "Does It Look Like I Want to be Approachable.") somebody who actually has a band seems to appear in the store.
--Too many MC's not enough mics.
--One (1) copy of the 2006 Sporting News Baseball Guide -- I'm going with the Cardinals to win it all. Your pick?
-- Jimmy Hoffa

Common Good Books Poetry Sale!

2009-04-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

Although every month is poetry month at Common Good Books, April is when the rest of the country catches up to us. To celebrate, all in-stock poetry is 20% off! Hurry in, stock up. April is cruel enough without missing this great opportunity to save.

Guest Blogger--Scott Muskin

2009-03-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

I read recently at Common Good and even on St. Patty’s Day it was a gathering of literature lovers to make the heart leap. Writers tend to dwell in solitude and, at least for most of us, in obscurity as well. I am fortunate enough to have a publisher with at least some marketing/PR budget, but when it comes down to it, I too am merely putting words onto paper and hoping for someone to read them. Where are our meeting houses, our trailheads? Coffee shops are great, but also somehow lacking. It’s book stores that sate our communal hunger for writers and readers to mingle, interact, and advance our creative consciousness—and it’s been so long since I’ve spent time in a truly literate, unmitigated bookstore like Common Good that I had forgotten what it was like. It’s like heaven, is what it’s like. And reading at such a place puts a big fat nail through my forehead on onto the literary map. You were here. Feels wonderful, and I am so grateful for the opportunity.
--Scott Muskin
Scott is the author of The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson: Mama's Boy and Scholar

Need to Find Scott Muskin's Book?

2009-03-13T13:07:00.001-07:00

Scott is reading at Common Good Books on Tuesday, March 17th at 7:30.

David Mura Event Recap

2009-03-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed it, here's a recap of CGB's event with David Mura.

Allan Kornblum, Publisher of Coffee House Press gave the evening it's first shot in the arm. Kornblum's introduction for David Mura and Mura's book Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire was nothing short of legendary and his Coffee House Press mission statement was as inspired and sincere as you'd ever hope to come across.

The next bump that really got everybody going was Mura's "fracking" good reading--if you were there you know. Seriously, this guy's electric and his reading is no simple reading, but rather a sinus-clearing performance.

After the reading, and before we all went home to stare at our shoes under a haze, Mura chatted up with the events attendees and signed copies of his book. Notice how enthralled the gentleman on the left is by Mura's book--he just cannot stop reading and he's standing.

Photos by Coffee House Press Publicist, Esther Porter.

Rod Blagojevich Gets A Book Deal; First Amendment Gets A Curveball

2009-03-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

If you can't get away with selling a Senate seat, try selling a book. Roddy B. did it, but it might not work out so well for him after all.

In lieu of the former Illinois Governor's book deal the State Legislature has been busy. Alarming supporters of the First Amendment, the Illinois legislature has introduced a bill that would require “any elected official who is convicted of a felony or of a misdemeanor involving a violation of his or her official oath of office to forfeit any monetary rights derived from any media depiction or detailing of the crime for which the person was convicted as a term of their sentence. The forfeiture lasts during the term of the sentence and any period of probation, parole or supervised release.” Despite the full support of State Legislature, opposition to this proposed bill is growing, including the Motion Picture Association of America voicing it's disapproval.

The proposed bill, Illinois House Bill 4078, if passes not only breaks Roddy B.'s six-figure book deal, but carries with it a fallout in the protection of First Amendment Rights. As David Horowitz of Media Coalition argues, “This is obviously a real concern and would potentially inhibit books, movies, magazines and all manner of media in trying to tell a story that has real news or public interest value.” I'm inclined to agree and am in Blagojevich's corner (and the First Amendment's as well) in hoping this bill does not pass. After all, writing a book is a valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing.

Wondering if the State is more concerned with what Blagojevich may reveal, or take liberties in disclosing, about Illinois politics, or if it really feels so strongly about the integrity of the bill that it would be willing to curb rights protected by the First Amendment? Please let us know what you think.

March Events--Part 1

2009-03-06T08:34:00.000-08:00

All events are at Common Good Books--165 Western Ave. N, Saint Paul, MN 55102 unless otherwise noted. Call us at 651.225.8989 to confirm date, time, and location.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Marisha Chamberlain, The Rose Variations
"This discrepancy between sound and words gives the playwright and poet Marisha Chamberlain's enthralling first novel its unique texture. Out of the homespun material of awkward love affairs and lust for tenure, she has written a story that surprises us with fresh insights."--James Wilcox
Click for More Information

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 7:30 p.m.
The Color Purple Panel Discussion (Part of the View from Ordway Series)
Join us on Wednesday, March 11 at 7:30pm for a conversation with four diverse women--Robin Hickman, Jill Mikelson, Germain Brooks and Aditi Kapil--sharing their insights into the complex social issues raised in Alice Walker's poignant story, The Color Purple.
Click for More Information

Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Tom Arndt, Home
Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church, 170 Virginia Street, St. Paul, MN 55102
"There's a lot to look at in these large black-and-white photos -- downtown cafeterias and threshing bees, all-star wrestlers and old Twin Cities landmarks, and faces. Wonderful faces, sometimes staring you right in the eye."--Laurie Hertzel
Click for More Information

Saturday, March 14, 2009 1:00 p.m.
Steven Lovely, Irreplaceable
Booksigning
"Lovely's very real portrayal of grief is nothing to doubt. He gives an utterly convincing portrait of people who have lost the person they love most in the world. It is a touching story."--Vinnee Tong
Click for More Information

Garrison Keillor Remembers Bill Holm

2009-02-26T12:32:00.000-08:00

Bill Holm was a great supporter of the store, and we are all shocked and saddened by news of his death. We thought we would share Garrison's thoughts on the loss of his friend.

Bill Holm was a great man and unlike most great men he really looked like one. Six-foot-eight, big frame, and a big white beard and a shock of white hair, a booming voice, so he loomed over you like a prophet and a preacher, which is what he was. He was an only child, adored by his mother, and she protected him from bullies, and he grew up free to follow his own bent and become the sage of Minneota, a colleague of Whitman though born a hundred years too late, a champion of Mozart and Bach, playing his harpsichord on summer nights, telling stories about the Icelanders, and thundering about how the young have lost their way and abandoned learning and culture in favor of grease and noise. He thundered with the best of them though he had a gentle heart. He was an English prof who really loved literature, and he could buttonhole you and tell you he'd just finished reading Dickens again and how wonderful it was. He got himself into print pretty well, and anyone picking up his "Windows of Brimnes" or "The Music of Failure" or "The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere On Earth" will get the real Holm. He hated Minnesota winters and maybe that's what killed him, flying back from beautiful Patagonia to the windswept tundra and thinking about having to shovel out his house in Minneota. I'm glad he got to see Barack elected, which restored some of his faith in his countrymen. I wish I'd been there to catch him as he fell. I hope his Icelandic ancestors are waiting to welcome him to their rocky corner of heaven. I hope his piano goes to someone who will love it as much as he did. I hope that people all across Minnesota will pick up one of his books and see what the man had to say.
--G.K.

David Mura at Common Good Books -- March 5th at 7:30

2009-02-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

Common Good Books welcomes David Mura, author of Minnesota Book Award nominated Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, to our store for a reading and signing of his new book. If you've been paying attention, this is our second event with a MBA nominee, and if you've been missing out on our events what better time to start then now. This event is open to the public and free to all.

Ben Ohara is the sole surviving member his family. A troubled and brilliant astrophysicist, Ben's younger brother has mysteriously vanished in the Mojave Desert. His father, one of a small group of WWII draft resisters (known as the No-No Boys) during the internment of Japanese Americans, committed suicide when Ben was young. And his mother, whose wish to escape the past was as strong as his father's ties to it, has died with her secrets.

Now struggling to support his wife and children and under pressure to complete his historical study, "Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire," Ben realizes that the key to unlocking the future lies in reassessing the past.

As Ben vividly recalls a childhood colored by the tough Chicago streets, horror movie monsters, sci-fi villains, Japanese folktales, and TV war heroes, he begins to understand the profound difference between coming of age and becoming a man. And by retracing his brother's footsteps and returning to the site of the Heart Mountain Internment Camp, Ben uncovers a truth that has the power to set him free.

An acclaimed memoirist, poet, and playwright, David Mura is one of America's most insightful cultural critics. His memoirs, "Turning Japanese "and "Where the Body Meets Memory," along with his poems, essays, plays, and performances, have won wide critical praise and numerous awards. Visit his website at www.davidmura.com.

Laura Flynn at Common Good Books -- Wed. Feb. 25th at 7:30pm

2009-02-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

Common Good Books welcomes Laura Flynn, author of the Minnesota Book Award nominated memoir Swallow the Ocean. Ms. Flynn will be giving a reading and book signing for the paperback release of her new book. This event is open to the public and free to all.

When Laura Flynn was a little girl, her beautiful, dynamic mother, Sally, was the center of her imagination. It wasn't long, however, before Sally's fun-loving side slowly and methodically became absorbed by madness. As Laura's parents divorced and her father struggled to gain custody, Sally's symptoms bloomed in earnest while Laura and her sisters united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother taught them so that they might deflect the danger threatening their fragile family.
Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is redolent with place. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood had Laura and her sisters not been resilient and determined enough to survive their environment even as they yearned to escape it.

New Book We're Excited About...

2009-02-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Local favorite Marlon James has come out with his second novel, The Book of Night Women, a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear.
The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracies weak link.
Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.
Stop by and check it out. We believe you'll find it as exciting as we all do.

New GK Poem Available

2009-02-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a taste of Garrison Keillor's new poem, "Workers." We've got a limited supply available for free at the store.

Let us praise good workers (you know who you are)
Who come to the job gladly and do what they can
For as long as it takes to raise the barn
Or clean the house--the woman or man
Who dives in and works hard straight through

You'll have to stop by to read the rest.
Common Good Books
Selby and Western (Below Nina's)
651.225.8989

Our Friends at 10,000 Villages Have Started a Bookclub

2009-02-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

SOMETHING NEW: (a yet to be named) BOOK DISCUSSION GET TOGETHER
Meeting one night each month, our literary journey explores today's world, our values, and opening our eyes and hearts to different experiences and possibilities. Lynn Tchida, writer/photographer, community educator, and Ten Thousand Villages board member will facilitate the six-month journey. Your commitment can be to attend any or all bookclub get-togethers. Our seating is limited to 10, please call or Email to reserve your space.
Dates: Wed. Mar. 11
Time: 6-7:30pm
Place: Ten Thousand Villages 867 Grand St. Paul
Sign Up: Call 651-225-1043 or Email
eventscoordinator.stpaul [at] tenthousandvillages.com

Steven T. Wax Event -- Feb. 17th at 7:30

2009-02-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

Please Join us at Common Good Books as Steven T. Wax reads from and signs his new book Kafka Comes to America. The event is open to the public and free to all.
Federal public defender Wax masterfully delivers a harrowing story of the erosion of civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks in a powerful testimony that reads like a thriller. Wax follows the stories of two men he represented, both victims of post-9/11 counterterrorism measures. The first American citizen and fellow lawyer Brandon Mayfield was arrested by the FBI as a suspect in the Madrid train station bombings in 2004, after the FBI claimed that a latent fingerprint found on the scene matched Mayfield's. The second story revolves around Adel Hamad, a Sudanese-born hospital administrator arrested in Pakistan while doing refugee relief work. Imprisoned for six months in a fetid hell for alleged connections with al-Qaeda, Hamad was hooded and shackled and transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he has languished for the past four years. With considerable finesse, the author narrates these two gripping stories in alternating chapters through each stage of his clients cases. Wax offers personal insight and professional outrage; his is a powerful voice that deserves to reach all Americans. "(June)" Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

New in Paperback at Common Good Books

2009-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

For the Kids...

Katherine Applegate's Home of the Brave is the story of a young African refugee in Minnesota told in spare free verse. More than a story of immigration, it helps us understand ourselves better. As bookseller Liddy Rich writes, "You know how when you travel far away you get a better understanding of home? Well, this book does the same, minus the trip."

And for the Adults in the Room...

Charles Baxter's The Soul Thief is creepy, witty, and well-observed. It will haunt you long after you have turned the last page.

Kirk Anderson Event -- Tues. 10 Feb.

2009-02-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

Common Good Books welcomes Kirk Anderson on Tuesday, Feb. 10th. The event is open to the public and free to all.

Kirk’s award-winning cartoons have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and hundreds of other newspapers and magazines throughout the U.S., Britain, Canada, and other countries.

They have prompted stockholder protest of corporate policy, have been debated on talk radio and in newspaper columns, orchestrated into classroom lessons and Congressional presentations, collected in over 150 books, appeared on ABC’s Nightline, and been chosen for national exhibitions, at the Warhol Museum and other venues.

As the staff cartoonist for the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN), Kirk afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted from 1995 to 2003. He currently free-lances his work, and is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Kirk’s cartoons have been publicly denounced by a governor, officially condemned by a state university, personally admonished by a U.S. Senator, reviled in print by an archbishop, and vilified by police, business leaders, talk radio, the NRA and others. If there’s anyone you’d like to piss off, consider subscribing to Kirk’s cartoons today.

Needless to say, we're all very excited to have him here.

Shelf Talker O' the Day

2009-02-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

Bookseller and wiseacre Elmer Pierre describes Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigudardottir as:

Murder in Iceland, witchcraft, college students, secrets, and a female sleuth who is neither drunk (except once) nor depressed. Icelandic history combined with modern family values!

In other words, Elmer, a connoisseur of Scandinavian crime fiction, approves!

To purchase, click here.

One More Day!

2009-02-05T13:46:00.001-08:00

"Praise Song for the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander, the poem commissioned for the President Obama's inauguration, will be available in a chapbook edition tomorrow, February 6th, 2009. Published by Saint Paul's own Graywolf Press, the book is a perfect remembrance of an historic moment. It's a book to treasure and to give away.

The book is available online at CommonGoodBooks.com and at the store.

Introducing: The Dead Feminist Society, A Salon

2009-02-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 7:00 p.m. at Common Good Books

Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Frances E. Willard. Catherine Beecher. These nineteenth century heroines waged war on an American culture that denied women their basic rights. The Dead Feminist Society exists to honor their vision and to support Minnesota feminists in our commitment to stand for gender equtiy, dignity and fairness.

Join the salon that welcomes, discusses and deepens the ideas of feminism while examining the dynamics of our fascinating 21st Century social structure.

Guest speaker for Feb. 18th is Adrienne Christiansen, an associate professor of Political Science at Macalester College and Director of the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching. She teaches courses on women's political rhetoric, the rhetoric of campaigns and elections, and cyber-politics. She is currently at work on an article about Sarah Palin's quixotic campaign for the United States' vice-presidency.

Your host is Kristine M. Holmgren, a dyed-in-the-wool women's advocate. Holmgren fights the good fight for gender equity every day as a Presbyterian minister (ordained before it was cool), a former editorial columnist for the Star Tribune and an outspoken advocate for women and families.

Some of the books we will be exploring are:

Female Chauvenist Pig: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture -- Ariel Levy.

Why Men Earn More; The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap and What Women Can Do About It -- Warren Farrell.

Walking Out on the Boys -- Conley, Frances

Upcoming Events at Common Good Books

2009-02-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Kirk Anderson, Banana Republic: Adventures in Amnesia
Political cartoonist Kirk Anderson discusses his provocative new collection, Banana Republic: Adventures in Amnesia.
Kirk Anderson anwers Jodi Chromey's Six Questions
Click for More Information

Saturday, February 14, 2009 3:00 p.m.
Peter O'Toole, Paris Walks
Come meet photographer Peter O'Toole and purchase his beautiful book of Paris photos at Common Good Books.
Click for More Information

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Steven Wax, Kafka Comes to America
Steven Wax discusses post-9/11 justice and the erosion of civil rights under the Bush Administration. His book, Kafka Comes to America, "portrays how chillingly close we have come to forsaking our foundational beliefs of justice and liberty."
Click for More Information

Minnesota Book Awards Announced

2009-02-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to all the nominees for the Minnesota Book Awards. Common Good Books hosted many of the nominees this past year and we'll see a few more in the next few months, including:

Catherine Friend, The Compassionate Carnivore
Rae Katherine Eighmey and Debbie Miller, Potluck Paradise
William Kent Krueger, Red Knife
Julie Kramer, Stalking Susan
Kao Kalia Yang, The Latehomecomer
Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life
Laura Flynn, Swallow the Ocean
David Lanegran, Minnesota on the Map
David Mura, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire
Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
Todd Boss, Yellowrocket

It's About Time -- On Our New President, Barack Obama

2009-01-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

"...the surest road to the Common Good."
--President Obama

So maybe he didn't exactly have us in mind when he said this, but we like it anyway. We here at Common Good Books just want to take a moment to congratulate our new President--Thank you President Obama, please keep us inspired. We'll do our best here in St. Paul to spread the good word and hope through books with our fine selection of books and newly-repatriotic booksellers--even if repatriotic isn't a word and even though Mencken said that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

We'll also do our best to update and maintain our blog, which may or may not silently emerge to shake off the foundations laid down in, oh, let's say, the last eight (8) years and carry forth the hope and promise that President Obama brings to our nation. Shall we fall short of that you have our apologies, but we'll give it a shot.

On a more serious note, our sincerest congratulations to President Obama and may he help lead us out of the dark, inscrutable quandary he and the rest of the nation must endure every day. For what it's worth President, we're in your corner.

Jevin Boardman's Poem "Like" is Selected as What Light Poem

2008-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

Jevin Boardman, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Hamline's Graduate School of Liberal Studies program and Common Good Books neighbor (employee at Nina's Coffee Cafe) has published his first poem in mnartists and Major & Quinn's What Light competition.

Congratulations, Jevin.

Read the poem here>>>

Shelf Talkers

2008-12-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

Reviews from around the store:

All of Us, by Raymond Carver

The short story master was also a brilliant poet. Carver wrote about alcoholism, fishing, the past, and looking out of windows (among other topics) with such beauty. His poetry cuts through with the precision of a razor. Amazing stuff.

by Joe Finck

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Although there is humor, The Guernsey is not the frivolous novel the title implies but all about true-to-self, courageous choices and sticking together in adversity--a deeper, wider Jane Austen.

by Kathy

CGB at TCDP

2008-11-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

Jill Ackerman wrote a nice little article about us over at Twin Cities Daily Planet. Read it here>>>

Thanks, Jill and TC Daily Planet.

Happy Birthday to Us!

2008-11-21T13:40:00.007-08:00

Recently we celebrated our second birthday, and Garrison dressed up for the event.

Rick Simonson of Elliot Bay Has Some Nice Things to Say About CGB

2008-11-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company may be my favorite bookstore in the country. It's not as impressive in its mass as its west coast neighbor, Powell's, or Stand on the east coast, which I just visited. Those stores go on for miles and miles (18 in the case of Strand), and it's hard to come up with a title that is not on their shelves (last time I was in Powell's I spent four hours and they had every book that popped into my head). This is all not to say that Elliot Bay is a small bookstore. Quite the contrary, in fact. It's pretty massive itself. But while Powell's and Strand are museums of books, Elliot Bay is able to pull off something that they cannot: Elliot Bay, though a very large store, feels small. It is wood everything and sectioned off in ways that make you feel all alone at times. The coffee shop--a perfect companion to the store--is like an afterthought, a hole cut into the middle of the bookstore to create a space for it in the basement. And the neighborhood where it sits is picturesque and wonderful.

This all being the case I was very excited to see that Rick Simonson, who has worked as a bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company since 1976 (and therefore, in my opinion, is an expert on the matter), had some very nice things to say about Common Good Books in Publishers Weekly on October 28. The whole article is nice and very informative as to the history of books in the Twin Cities, and you can read it here. But here's what Mr. Simonson had to say about our humble little store:

First stop, on the St. Paul side, was Common Good Books (www.commongoodbooks.com). Most known to those of us outside the region as the bookstore that Garrison Keillor owns, it bears the traces of him quite lightly, at least in first glances. A few photos, a poetic salute on the white greaseboard, a stack of signed copies ... they were there. But far and away what caught this eye was how real, how settled a place it felt. Sue Zumberger was there tending things, letting me in before the place normally opened, not so much because of my saying where I was from, but that I was there.

It is a lovely, lively feeling place, the most airy and light I have ever felt a subterranean retail space. The primary entrance comes off a passageway fronted opposite by the local office of the US Congresswoman. Another, surely much-used way in, is a direct stairway treading up to the very convivial corner coffee cafe, Nina's.

Common Good Books celebrates its second birthday this Saturday, November 1. To celebrate, for sure. It feels, in a good, comfy way, like one of those places that's been around much longer. It inhabits its self and place well. The lit sections, such as my eye perused, were great. Skylights angled in from the sidewalk above let whatever light outside in. Then some labyrinthian passages: nooks and crannies abound. There is one angling passageway, taking you in and out of low-ceilinged coziness to daylit airiness within steps. A hideaway couch and chairs worthy of Shakespeare & Co. in Paris is back by the travel books.

Literary News of the Week

2008-10-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

Why aren't American poets considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature? One answer from David Orr of the New York Times:"American poets, it’s sometimes suggested, are private, introspective — more interested in the nature of poetry than the nature of the world." Read the rest here>>>

Liberty, Garrison Keillor's latest Lake Wobegon novel reviewed in the New York Times.

Michael Greenberg | Hurry Down Sunshine | at CGB Wednesday, November 5, 2008 7:30 p.m.

2008-10-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

Read a portion of Hurry Down Sunshine

Philip Roth, Indignation web cast

2008-09-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

We have signed copies of Indignation at the store!

A Big Thank You to Dave Schwartz

2008-09-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

CGB would like to say thanks to Dave Schwartz for taking the time to post all week. What great reads! Make sure to pick up a copy of his book Superpowers.

Guest Blogger Dave Schwartz: Let It Be

2008-09-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

I confess that, although I've been using a Minneapolis band's discography to title my post this week, my true love is St. Paul. This despite the fact that I've only spent about eight years living within the city limits: the first seven, and this last. I've spent most of my time in the suburbs here, in Madison, Wisconsin (going to school, off and on), and in Chicago.

It was living in Chicago that forced me to admit that St. Paul, much as I love it, isn't necessarily a "world-class" city. Even combined with Minneapolis, it's simply not on the scale of Chicago or New York, and it doesn't have the history of London or Munich or Tokyo. I enjoy books about cities--books like Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography, Andrew Hussey's Paris: The Secret History, or Fredric Morton's books about early 20th-Century Vienna. And I love Herbert Asbury's popular crime books from the 1930's, like Gangs of New York and The French Quarter, equal parts legend and history about the raucous, gritty underbelly of empire building.

St. Paul, with its shady beginnings and Prohibition-era notoriety seems ripe for a book like these. Add in things like the Streetcar Riots, figures like James J. Hill and Archbishop John Ireland, and the shifting ethnic character of the city--from the Irish rise to respectability to the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood to the new Hmong and Somali communities--and you've got the makings of a great American saga, but it may be some time before anyone writes it. Biographies seem to take about ten years to write, on average, and the biography of a city could be the work of a lifetime, I suppose. In the meantime, in addition to the above, I give you five reasons to love St. Paul:

1. Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant. The capital city took its name from this fur trader and whiskey bootlegger until Father Galtier took offense and "re-christened" the city. Working out of a cave near Fort Snelling and getting most of his business from the soldiers stationed there, one-eyed Parrant was the city's first inhabitant but left under mysterious circumstances in 1844.

2. Summit Avenue. I am perhaps biased, being a current inhabitant of the neighborhood, but if there is a more picturesque drag in any American city I have yet to see it. Most of the mansions of the robber barons (and their bankers, lawyers, managers, etc.) are still standing a hundred years later, thanks to the economic winds of fate; for the most part, when fashion and disdain for history might have demanded their demolition and replacement, there simply wasn't the money for it. Now they stand like Gothic castles, even subdivided and gone condo as some of them are, monuments to the days when the railroads made the city a boomtown. The perfect place for a quiet stroll on a summer evening, or a guided tour on a Sunday afternoon.

3. Mee Moua. In the wake of Vietnam the Hmong, allies of the Americans during the war, were given special consideration for immigration. Thanks in large part to former mayor George Latimer, many of them came to St. Paul, where they have become prominent in business, the arts, and politics. Mee Moua is an example of the latter, holding the highest political office of any Hmong-American in her capacity as a Minnesota State Senator.

4. The O'Connor System. While not precisely a thing to be proud of, the O'Connor System made St. Paul one of the most notorious cities in the U.S. during Prohibition, and added a particularly colorful chapter to its history. Originated by Police Chief John O'Connor, the system made it known to wanted criminals like John Dillinger, the Barker Boys, Machine Gun Kelly, and Babyface Nelson that they would not be harassed by the St. Paul police so long as they agreed not to commit any crimes within the city limits. While the federal government--particularly the newly-formed FBI--weren't bound by any such gentlemen's agreement, the arrangement lasted long enough for corruption to spread throughout the police department and city government. Since, during the Depression, gangsters were seen more as glamorous folk heroes than public enemies, it wasn't until the heir to the Hamm's Brewery fortune was kidnapped that the system began to fall apart and the reign of the gangsters crumbled.

5. The St. Paul Winter Carnival. When a New York reporter called St. Paul "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation," the Chamber of Commerce responded by creating a festival of winter sports and arts. That was in 1885, and it's still going today, with ice sculptures, Vulcans, and cold toes. In a way the Carnival sums up the stubborn and defensive (in the best way possible) nature of St. Paulites and Minnesotans in general. "Too cold? I'll show you too cold!" I've written more about the Carnival here, at my own regular blog, about the wacky wonderfulness of the pagan-inspired Carnival mythology, from gun-toting princes to Klondike Kates, and the special ephemeral wonder of an ice palace--may we see another someday soon.

That concludes my stint as a guest blogger here, and I'd like to thank Common Good Books for inviting me to yammer at you all week. As mentioned above, I can be found at my usual blog, so if you've enjoyed these posts you may want to check that out. If you'd like to read an excerpt from Superpowers, you can find that here. And for good measure I'll point you at this interview I did recently with Bookslut.com. Thanks for reading!

Guest Blogger Dave Schwartz: All Shook Down

2008-09-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

It's nearly autumn, and that means football. As an enthusiast of all sorts of different things--like Nilla Wafers, Naomi Novik books, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just to name a few--it would not be right for me to disparage anyone else's interests. But can football lovers really call themselves "fans"? "Fan" is, of course, short for fanatic. Fanatic? When there are only sixteen games a year? That's not commitment. That's not obsession. (Oops, there's that word again.) Sometimes I think the only true fans are baseball fans, because who else keeps the faith for 162 games a year?

OK, maybe soap opera afficionados. But there's a reason that Annie Savoy talks about "The Church of Baseball." So on a day when the Twins are only a game out of first place--wait, a game and a half? $&@#ing bullpen--I give you my list of the five best baseball books.

1. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella. While Shoeless Joe gets most of the attention (and the film adaptation), Confederacy is the weirder and more moving of the two books. Concerning time travel, angels that take at-bats, and a 2,000-inning contest between the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars and the 1908 Chicago Cubs, the story features cameos by Theodore Roosevelt, Leonardo da Vinci (as the true inventor of baseball), and of course the immortal double play combo of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Kinsella presents baseball as magic in and of itself--unbounded by a clock, with home runs sailing off towards infinity--and this book might just make you believe it.

2. You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters by Ring Lardner. Holden Caulfield excluded Lardner from his list of phonies, and in Jack Keefe he found his literary model. Lardner tells his stories about Jack in the form of letters from the young pitcher to his old friend Al, and Keefe's vernacular has more than a little in common with the folksy way Holden tells his story. The difference is that Keefe lacks both the angst and the self-knowledge that Holden is cursed with, and the result is often hilarious, occasionally biting, and always charming. In the canon of early 20th-Century American writers, Lardner is too often overlooked.

3. The Catcher Was a Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff. The true story of Princeton graduate, pro baseball player, and OSS spy Moe Berg. That tag line alone ought to sell you on this book.

4. Five Seasons by Roger Angell. Angell writes about baseball for The New Yorker; he's also been called the best baseball writer ever. That's the sort of claim that never goes undisputed, but there's a lot of intelligence and compassion in this chronicle of the sport from 1972-1976.

5. Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop. What if Frankenstein's monster survived the Arctic and ended up in the United States? What if it were the South during World War II? What if he became a minor league baseball player? If that sounds wacky, it isn't; it's one of the quieter and subtler books on this list, and it may well be the best. (It's a tragedy that it happens to be the only one out of print.) Bishop is a humane and thoughtful writer, and this book is not to be missed.

Guest Blogger Dave Schwartz: Hootenanny

2008-09-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with elephants.

Well, perhaps obsessed is a little strong. I don't follow elephants home from work or schedule my vacations around theirs. I don't dream about elephants. (At least, not often.) I don't have pictures of elephants, cut out of glossy celebrity magazines, assembled into a collage on the wall of my attic bedroom. Funny, isn't it, how me telling you about the ways in which I am not obsessed is almost as creepy as if I were?

A friend of mine asked me the other day, Why elephants? The fact that I think this particular friend has asked me this question before makes me think that my friends are worried about me. It's a valid question, sure: Why elephants and not, say, pandas? Or otters?

It's true that I do have a tendency to, um, lecture when the topic of elephants comes up. Did you know that they communicate via ultrasonic rumbles which they can sense for miles through the pads of their feet? Did you know that they ignore all animal bones except for their own (and sometimes humans), and when they come upon the remains of a family member they often pause as a group and handle the bones with their trunks as if remembering? Did you know that some elephants live in the desert and dig wells, or live in forests and are rarely seen? DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW.

It's true. I can be tiresome on the subject, which is probably why "obsessed" is as good a word as any. As an obsessive, I offer you my list of the five best books I've read about elephants:

1. The Fate of the Elephant by Douglas H. Chadwick. An exhaustive travelogue on elephants by a noted wildlife author. Chadwick visits just about every place elephants live, traces the movement of the illegal ivory trade, and talks about the politics of elephant conservation in an accessible way. Smart and reverent and worried.

2. The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy. Fiction, told from the point of view of a small family of elephants struggling to survive a drought. Gowdy walks a line between anthropomorphizing and an educated guess at how elephants might think: with compassion, and intelligence, and sometimes desperation.

3. Coming of Age With Elephants by Joyce Poole. Poole, one of the original researchers on the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya (along with Cynthia Moss, below), mixes personal memoir with scientific biography here. She traces the lives of the local herds, chronicling death, birth, mating, and the direct impact of poaching.

4. Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family by Cynthia Moss. Less personal than Poole's book, Moss covers the characteristics, behavior and life cycle of elephants through stories of the Amboseli families.

5. Love, War, and Circuses by Eric Scigliano. More focused on Asian elephants than the previous three books, Scigliano looks at elephants in relation to human culture, from theories of how the clearing of the plains by mammoths made it possible for humans to thrive, to Ganesh and other elephant signifiers in religion, and the problem of elephants in captivity.

Guest Blogger David Schwartz: Don't Tell a Soul

2008-09-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

You know what? Superheroes take themselves too seriously. Somewhere between The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight*, between the death of Jean DeWolff and Marvel's Civil War, something got lost, or at least pushed deep into the background. Don't get me wrong; the maturation of comics is a beautiful thing, and anyone who thinks Watchmen would have been better if the Comedian were actually funny is out of their mind. But there is of course something very silly about people in tights, and we forget that at our peril.

For that reason, I give you:

Five Things About Superheroes That Are Not Serious:

1. The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, by Justin Pierce. "Satirical take" does not really cover the lunacy of this weekly webcomic. Inspired by a certain DC superheroine, Wonderella is part disinterested world-saver, part celebutante, all mouth and no filter. In the most recent strip she responds to a question about her sudden vice-presidential run by saying "I've shot FIVE people in the face. That's five times as many as any sitting vice president." Pierce has just put out a book of the first 100 strips starring Wonderella and her supporting cast, which includes Jokerella, Doctor Shark, and her sidekick Wonderita.

2. Superdickery.com, by various. Before comics were dark and complicated, they were weird and random. Back in November 2004 some folks on a discussion board began talking about comics covers from the Silver Age, which took place in the years before irony, subtext, and continuity were invented. The prevailing theme of the strange covers that Superdickery displays--like this one from Lois Lane comics, this from Action Comics and this from Jimmy Olsen's solo title--was pretty clear. Superman is a d--is not a very nice person. Superdickery has some hilarious covers, not just from the Superman family of comics but from all across the Silver Age; perfect for losing hours of your life on the web.

3. Seanbaby's Superfriends Page. If you were a kid in the seventies or eighties, you probably remember Super Friends. If you're an adult now, and you've seen the cartoon since, you probably experienced the horror of realizing just how stupid it actually was. Even post-Scrappy Scooby-Doo looks good in comparison. As Seanbaby says: "the Super Friends somehow stayed alive for 10 years by hiring people who could talk to fish, match a cape to their underwear, and turn into a bucket of water." And really, that's the point of this site; documenting the pathetic powers and behavior of the Super Friends and their nemeses, the Legion of Doom. Do you think Aquaman is pathetic? (He is.) Have you ever thought about how pathetic his arch-enemy must be? Seanbaby has; not only that, he has the evidence that will make you pity poor Black Manta. After you laugh at him, of course.

4. Nextwave by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. Warren Ellis--best known for his gonzo science fiction journalist Spider Jerusalem and various futurist, politically and technologically savvy takes on superheroes--stripped down superheroes to their essential elements with this series, with hilarious results. "It's an absolute distillation of the superhero genre," he has said. "No plot lines, characters, emotions, nothing whatsoever. It's people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode." I don't think I can say it any better than that.

5. Squirrel Girl. Created by none other than the legendary Steve Ditko, Squirrel Girl encapsulates all that is ridiculous about superheroes and makes it sublime. Sweet-natured and optimistic, Squirrel Girl has the power to control squirrels. Yup. She also wears a big furry suit with a bushy tail attached. That's a joke in itself, sure, but what's inspired about the character is that with the help of her army of squirrels she has managed to defeat such heavyweight villains as MODOK, Terrax, Thanos, and Doctor Doom himself. Now THAT'S comedy.

*That's right, he returned first. It's a Frank Miller thing, and if you think that's confusing you probably don't know about The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Which, to be fair, is skippable.

Guest Blog, David J. Schwartz: Pleased To Meet Me

2008-09-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Twin Cities book lovers. That is, I assume that if you are reading this, you love books. At the very least you buy them, and while the link between love and money has not been scientifically proven, there are certain things that have to be taken on faith. This, at least, was what I told myself last week, while my city was under occupation by delegates and law enforcement officers from all over the country. "It will be over soon," I told myself, and in the end my faith was rewarded. I don't care what your political beliefs are--having a helicopter hovering above your neighborhood around the clock is going to disturb your sleep.

Who, you may ask, am I? I'm Dave Schwartz (though on the books it says David J. Schwartz), and I'm honored to be your guest blogger this week. My novel Superpowers, about five college kids in Madison, Wisconsin who drink a batch of home-brewed beer and wake up with a hangover and weird powers, came out in June, which is when I found out what it was about.

That probably sounds odd, so let me explain with a link. Lauren McLaughlin, author of the recent YA novel Cycler, blogged recently about how doing interviews and other publicity for her book had forced her to think about it in a way she hadn't before. She says of analyzing her own work:

I was an English major in college so this should be a piece of cake. After all, I don’t have to hypothesize what the author intended. I was there. I know what she intended.

Or do I?

I had a flash of recognition reading Lauren's post, because, like her, at some point between the conception of a work and the completion, lots of things change--at least, for me they do. Whatever my intentions were with Superpowers when I started writing it, a lot of them shifted along the way. Morphed, you might say. I blame the characters, personally. For some reason, the more real they become, the less amenable they are to fitting into grand thematic matrices. The nerve: without me these people wouldn't even exist, and yet here they are telling me their stories. That's supposed to be my job!

So I found myself having to look at my novel from a new perspective, to try to approach it as a thoughtful reader might, and some of the conclusions surprised me. Among other things, I've written a book about power that implies that perhaps the best thing to do with power is not to use it. I never had a single conscious thought about inserting that idea, but I don't disagree with it. If I'd read it in someone else's book I'd think that was pretty insightful (even if the author went a long way to say it), but since I know the author pretty well I'm not impressed. I'm not going to give that guy credit for a happy accident.

Some writers don't have this problem, I suspect. Some writers work with strict outlines, and when a character starts to wander from the narrative path they either steer him straight or kill him off. But everyone who gets as far as publication has to deal with reviews, and that's where you really get to know yourself. At least, you get to know a version of the person who wrote your book, and sometimes it's someone you don't much care for.

Reviews, in the age of instant commentary via blogs, email, user reviews, social networking, etc., are, with a few unhappy exceptions, the black hole of author commentary. Many of the writers I know are online and will happily make mention of everything from politics to traffic to that awful waitress at the restaurant last night; but while most of them will happily excerpt and link to positive reviews, it's a near-universal taboo to take on the bad ones. This is a good thing, to be clear, as the occasional head-butting between author and reader at Amazon will attest. But I only really came to appreciate how difficult it could be to keep mum about such things when my own book came out.

If analyzing your own novel is a surprising experience, reading someone else's analysis will teach you things about your writing skills, knowledge of subject matter, and motives for telling your particular story that you have probably never suspected. Taking the good with the bad, you may discover a book and an author so full of contradictions that their existence seems unlikely. A book can be both "thoughtful" and "ill-considered," both "earthbound" and "soaring." It can "zip along" and "never attain any sort of urgency." Characters can be "superbly drawn" and "remain mostly static."

Please note that I am not arguing with any of the less-than-glowing reviews. (I would, however, like to point you at some rather glowing ones, like this one here, this one, and this one.) I'm just trying to illustrate a point, one that I'm trying to prove to myself: these people opened the same book, but they all read a different one. It doesn't mean that the reviews don't matter, because even the most dismissive one has an opinion to express; but it's just an opinion, and in the end I have to weigh mine a little heavier than theirs.

So who, you may ask again, am I? I was born right here in St. Paul, and I'll be blogging a little about that this week. I love baseball and elephants (whom I consider to be non-partisan), and I'll be blogging about those things, too. First, though, I think I'll talk about superheroes, which--as you might guess from my book--I'm also a fan of. More on that tomorrow.

Guest Blogger: Bart Schneider on a fictional governor versus a real one.

2008-08-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Jim, It’s Him

The fictive governor of Minnesota in my new novel, The Man in the Blizzard, is named Jim instead of Tim. In a scene late in the novel, Jim (his last name his Holsom), makes an appearance at a huge anti-abortion rally on the state capitol grounds. Pregnant women from around the country have been brought in at full term to be induced and give birth in medical tents around the capitol. The rally takes place on Labor Day and the the organizers have appropriated the phrase “Labor Day” for their own uses. Governor Jim Holsom speaks at the birth-in and signs that say, “Jim, it’s Him,” distributed by 4H kids from the state fair, spring up everywhere. Jim is hoping to get the VP nod and this appearance, in which he quotes Deuteronomy 30:19, “Choose life so you and your descendants may live,” firms up his conservative bone fides and he ultimately gets the nomination. Today, the real guv of Minnesota is in Denver, doing the VP job of dumping on the other party at their convention, as he hopes to get the nod. He actually knows by now. McCain announces tomorrow. Of course, I hope Pawlenty gets it. How often does one get a chance to look prescient? It looked unlikely, back when I turned in the final draft of the novel. I told myself that that was alright. If Philip Roth and Michael Chabon could write alternative history, I could write alternative present. That was my poetic license. Of course, I’d be very happy to see a bunch of Republicans bouncing around with signs that said, “Tim, It’s Him.”

Guest Blogger: Bart Schneider

2008-08-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

David here. Common Good Books bookseller. I'm happy to introduce you to what we hope will become a regular and expected occurrence on this blog--authors guest blogging. For our first installment we are lucky to have Bart Schneider, author of Blue Bossa, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Secret Love, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Beautiful Inez; and his latest, The Man in the Blizzard, which takes place right here in St. Paul, in the present moment, leading up to the Republican National Convention.

Bart will be reading and discussing poetry and politics at CGB on August 31, the eve of the RNC, with Bill Holm and Mary Logue.

Enough of me (Look for guest blogger David J. Schwartz soon)

A Poet is Reborn or What the Hell are you doing with Your Spare Time?

by Bart Schneider

My new novel, The Man in the Blizzard, is about poetry-spouting detectives who get mixed up in next week’s Republican convention. When I realized that my detectives spoke poetry, part of my research involved raiding poetry collections in bookstores and libraries to find the perfect quotables for my dudes. My neighborhood bookstore at the time was Common Good Books in St. Paul, which has one hell of a poetry section, rivaled in recent memory only by the late Hungry Mind and the great bookstore of my youth, City Lights in San Francisco. When I was sixteen and first started writing poetry, I’d spend long Saturday afternoons cruising the basement poetry section at City Lights. I sampled a couple of dozen books, trying as well as I could to get a beat on each poet’s voice. I rarely had more than a buck in my pocket in those days so couldn’t afford new books published, which cost anything from $1.75 to $2.25, so I’d amble next story to Discovery, the great used bookstore on Columbus Avenue, where you could get a book from a couple years back for 90 cents. I’d head over to Washington Square Park with my new book and feel like a junior hipster. Forty years later, my fortunes have changed a bit, and I was actually able to buy poetry books at Common Good. Now, marooned in Minnesota for a month of readings and family visits, I’ve had too much time on my hands. Too fractured in mind and spirit to work on a new novel, I’ve been knocking out poems for the first time in years. I don’t make great claims for them. I don’t even recognize my own voice as a poet. I’m really looking forward to reading next Sunday at Common Good with two real poets: Mary Logue and Bill Holm. Meanwhile, here’s a sample of what I’ve been writing:

FURY

I’ll admit, I’m confused by it.

Everybody agrees that it’s not healthy.

A guy can take a course to help manage it.

Talking about it is supposed to be the best approach.

I spend a lot of time talking to myself

but that only seems to make it worse.

Remembering to breathe is also helpful,

yet far more complicated than it sounds.

Most agree that men are more often

afflicted by it than women,

however I think we suffer it in equal measure

but simply express it differently.

To lash out with it can result in violence,

to internalize it may cause cancer.

It can look like a madman thrashing up the street

or a sullen creature chewing her nails to the nub.

The experts speak of it as something than can be displaced,

which makes me think of a constellation

in the night sky that’s suddenly gone missing.

Some people consider it an irrational act of nature.

Others rack it up with the emotions

as if it were a blameless abstraction.

I’m here to hold it responsible.

I like to blame it on other people’s stupidity and neglect

since I’ve learned how to disassociate from my own.

Or blame it on the fact that so much

that I’ve expected and deserved has not materialized.

Sometimes I like to test it,

to put on a freshly laundered white shirt

and see how quickly the fury soils it.

David J. Schwartz on Superpowers, Writing Fiction, and Madison

2008-08-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

There's a great interview with David J. Schwartz (Read at CGB on July 3, 2008) on Bookslut discussing his novel, Superpowers (maybe you've already seen it since it's been up since July).

Click here to read it. It's a good interview for reader and writer alike.

Bart Schneider, The Man in the Blizzard

2008-08-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

After spending 25 years in Minnesota Bart has headed back to his home state of California. But not before leaving us with his Twin Cities novel, which takes place, appropriately enough, during the months leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Here's a video-trailer for The Man in the Blizzard, made by Max Becker, a filmmaker and graduate of Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Also appropriately enough, Common Good Books is having an event with Bart on the eve of the RNC. Click here for details.

Some Packed Houses For Some Great Events

2008-07-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Our last few events have been great! Whether we're learning about the history of the Supreme Court and The WPA or hearing how a local author came to be a best seller, we've been enjoying every minute.

Julie Kramer brought all kinds of goodies in support of her wildly popular first novel, Stalking Susan. She had the book cover as frosting on cookies, labels on wine and water bottles, and tee shirts on her sons. Now that's promotion.

Frederick Lane offers fascinating insight into what he sees as a deliberate effort by the Religious Right to reshape the Supreme Court in The Court and the Cross. Here, Fred makes everyone a little bit smarter. Just look at that guy in the shorts in the first row. Doesn't he look like he's getting smarter?

Susan Quinn discusses the Federal Theatre Project, which I knew nothing about before checking out her book, Furious Improvisation. What a fascinating program that included such luminaries as Orson Welles and Sinclair Lewis and produced Vodoo Macbeth, which had an all-black cast.

Julie Kramer signs her book. Check out the t shirt in the background.

Book cookies!?

Julie Kramer

Fred Lane

David!

2008-07-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

The Store Entrance and the Back of Martin's Head

2008-07-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

Good Advice All Around

2008-07-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

David Schwartz Emits Light from Mouth While Reading

2008-07-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

David Schwartz Signs Superpowers (Also Seen, Back of Elmer's Head)

2008-07-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

Charles Leerhsen (Crazy Good) and the Back of Elmer's Head

2008-07-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Joe with the Pox

2008-07-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Joe and K2

2008-07-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Joe before the pox with Keelin.

An Excerpt From The Court and The Cross//Event at CGB This Sunday

2008-07-10T16:34:00.001-07:00

Frederick Lane will be reading this Sunday, July 13 at 2pm at Common Good Books. Here's an excerpt from the book.

There is one fundamental belief that has sustained the Christian Right through long days of campaign speeches, phone banks, leafletting, poll-watching, and fund-raising: America has abandoned its historical religious foundations and needs to be restored to its proper status as a Christian nation. A highly profitable industry of Christian Right think tanks, lobbying organizations, law firms, lecturers, historians, writers, and websites has sprung up to defend America's allegedly Christian origins and to push for legislation and policies on that would irrevocably save the nation for Jesus Christ.

Conservative author Ann Coulter offered a typically stark statement of the Christian Right's ultimate goals. In an October 2007 interview with Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC's The Big Idea, Coulter pointed to the 2004 Republican National Convention as her ideal vision of America:

Coulter: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They're
Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America, they --
Deutsch: Christian -- so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?
Coulter: Yes.
Deutsch: We should all be Christian?
Coulter: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

Admittedly, Ann Coulter is to civil discourse what Cruella de Ville was to Dalmation puppies, and she certainly doesn't speak for all Christians or even all evangelical Christians. But her belief that
America would be better off if it were predominantly and avowedly Christian is not an isolated view.

One of the leading websites for the Christian Right is The Conservative Voice, a news and commentary site founded by Nathan Tabor, who holds a Masters in Public Policy from Pat Robertson's Regent University. As the site proudly proclaims, Tabor was once described by the late Jerry Falwell as a "young Jesse Helms." Tabor entered the Republican primary for Congress in North Carolina's Fifth Congressional District, but despite support from some of the Christian Right's most influential leaders -- Pat Robertson, Bob Jones III, Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), Beverly and Tim LaHaye, Michael Farris, and others -- Tabor finished a distant fifth out of eight candidates.

Tabor's Conservative Voice website, however, has been a much more successful endeavor. Committed to promoting "Faith, Family, Freedom," Tabor's site features over 100 columnists, including a variety of conservative icons: Pat Buchanan, William F. Buckley, Robert D. Novak, Phyllis Schlafly, Paul M. Weyrich, to name just a few. One of the more strident "conservative voices" is Bill Gray, a former computer industry worker who runs an online Christian ministry called the Bill & Dory Gray Christian Ministeries. In an editorial published in 2007 on the Conservative Voice website, Gray emphatically summarized the fundamental fears of the Christian Right movement:

America is in a fight for its very life -- from the inside! Our American society, our American
culture, is on the brink of implosion.

This may sound very dramatic; but, it is true. America is like a huge keg of dynamite, and the
fuse -- is the fallacy of "Separation of Church and State" perpetrated by Secular Humanism,
comprised of the ACLU, the NEA, Liberal Politicians, Gay/Lesbian Activist groups, and other
atheistic organizations.

After recounting numerous references to God and the Creator in the history of the American colonies and the early days of the Republic, Gray concluded his essay with an unequivocal call to Glory:

We must protect our nation, founded UNDER GOD and for the GLORY OF GOD.

The next time you hear some fanatic screaming "First Amendment Rights" or "Separation of
Church and State" -- tell him to go lock himself in a padded room and scream to himself. For
we no longer want to hear it.

We are Americans, living in a Christian nation which was founded by Christian believers. You
have a right to read your Qu'ran, your Torah, or any other sacred book you have; you have a
right to worship rocks, stars, the sun, and the moon, or plaster statues, if you like. You have the
right to live as you like, in any lifestyle you chose. Just do not try to force that lifestyle upon me,
or upon my children or grandchildren.

Gray also took the time to defend the comments that Coulter made on CNBC, although Coulter may wish that he had chosen a more felicitous metaphor. "What is my opinion of Ann Coulter?" Gray asked rhetorically. "Ann is like a beacon light -- a lot of pigeons will leave their droppings on it -- but, it raises awareness and guides people. Ann, like Jerry Falwell, often says things that, to some,
are outrageous. But, you have to admit, it does make you think." Gray said that even though it might not have been expressed well, Coulter's fundamental argument was correct:

Will Jews who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as their long awaited Messiah be saved? No.
Neither will Germans, Africans, British, Polish, Latin Americans, Mexicans, etc., -- no one,
regardless of your nationality or ethnic culture, will be saved except through Jesus Christ. He
makes this very clear in John 3:3, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, HE
CANNOT SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD."

So, when you think of Ann Coulter; do not think of her as a loudmouth -- but, instead think of
her as a beacon light covered with pigeon poop -- but, still making her case for Conservative
Christianity. God bless Ann Coulter!

The claim by Christian conservatives that America is a Christian nation is disturbing enough when preached from the pulpit or proclaimed on national television. It assaults the fundamental premise
of this nation, that it is a pluralistic society that draws its strength in large part from the varied contributions of numerous cultures and traditions. Moreover, the insistence that the United
States is a Christian nation, a claim heard at increasingly high levels of government, unnecessarily antagonizes non-Christian nations and makes it more difficult for this country to play an effective
role on the increasingly crowded and diverse global stage.

There may be one or two salutary aspects to the strident insistence that America is a Christian nation: the debate over what the Constitution's drafters intended is generally healthy for
democracy, and the dredging of historical documents for quotes allegedly affirming America's Christian foundation provides much-needed work for liberal arts majors. But the insistence on a Christian identity for the nation is far more dangerous and divisive when the claim is made by state and federal legislators, and downright destructive when laws, public policies, and judicial decisions are explicitly based on that premise. In those circumstances, the assertion that America is a Christian nation threatens to erect a wall between the federal government and those of its citizens who are not devotees of Ann Coulter, Bill Gray, and other Christian Right demagogues.

Attempts to codify God in the nation's laws have occurred throughout American history, with varying degrees of success. But over the last three decades, politicians at both the state and
federal level have been increasingly aggressive in their efforts and increasingly narrow in their definition of God. In 2004, for instance, the platform for the Republican Party in Texas flatly stated "the United States of America is a Christian nation" and in 2006, expanded on that theme to urge the teaching of "school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America's legal and its political and economic systems."

In Missouri, Representative David Sater proposed a resolution in the spring of 2006 that would have declared the United States a Christian nation and also recognized Christianity as the state's
"majority religion." The resolution went on to state that the founding fathers "recognized a Christian God and used the principles afforded to us by Him as the founding principles of our nation." The resolution caused a stir when it was sent to the full House for a vote, but it was ultimately dropped from the House calendar in late March.

At the federal level, various legislators -- most notably Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) -- have given speeches on the floor of Congress declaring that the United States is a "Christian Nation," and have
even sponsored legislation to codify that belief in various ways in the nation's laws. The Christian Right lost its two most fervent advocates -- Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) -- in 2006, but a number of others remain. In the heady days following the success of conservative politicians in 2004, Santorum was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, but that prospect faded with his loss to former Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey. In Santorum's absence, each of the remaining 2008 Republican presidential candidates trumpeted his religious values and slavish devotion to the Christian Right's core issues -- but the possibility that Rudy Giuliani, the thrice-married, semi-pro-choice, occasionally cross-dressing former Mayor of Sodom (New York), would win the nomination had evangelicals threatening a general-election boycott.

"My position remains the same," the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins told The Los Angeles Times, "as I think it does for a number of pro-life conservatives -- that we draw a line that we will not cross in supporting a pro-abortion-rights candidate."

While the push to formally codify America as a "Christian nation" may play well on the political stage in some parts of the country, even the more moderate of the proposals would destroy the religious and social pluralism that has been at the core of this nation's success for more than two hundred years. The most extreme proposals, made by individuals surprisingly and disturbingly influential in contemporary conservative political circles, would literally impose Old Testament law for criminal behavior, strip the voting rolls of all but the godly, and turn civil government into little more than a beadle for evangelical Christian churches.

Frederick Lane is an expert witness, lecturer, and author who has appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the BBC, and MSNBC. He has just finished his fourth book, "The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court" (Beacon Press May 2008), and is beginning work on "People in Glass Houses: American Law, Technology, and the Right to Privacy" (Beacon 2009). For additional information, please visit http://www.FrederickLane.com.

The Story Behind Stalking Susan

2008-07-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

People want to know if I have a special enemy named Susan. I don't. Stalking Susan is not a personal tale of revenge.
Some stories stay with journalists long after the newscast wraps. A decade ago, as a television news producer, I covered two St. Paul cold case homicides that inspired me to write Stalking Susan. The cases involved two women, both named Susan, murdered in Saint Paul exactly two years apart. Their cases remain unsolved.
Susan Ginger Petersen, age 28, was strangled May 17, 1983. Her body was found in a Highland Park alley in Saint Paul.
Susan Jean Rheineck, age 16, was asphyxiated May 17, 1985. Her body was dumped near the Mississippi River in Saint Paul.
My debut novel is not their story, but in the world of fiction I was free to ask myself, what if? When I wrote Stalking Susan I changed the victims' ages, appearances, occupations, and the time and locations of their deaths. I added more victims. I also changed their last names and almost changed their first name. But I decided to keep Susan because I never forgot them and I wanted others to remember them, too.
The Saint Paul Police Cold Case Unit is taking a fresh look at these homicides and welcomes tips from the public (651-266-5956). Privately, some cops say wouldn't it be funny if fiction helped solve murder.
Last year, soon after Doubleday bought Stalking Susan I was browsing Common Good Books with a friend. Kicking the tires, so to speak. Imagining where my book might one day sit and the company that might surround it. Somehow, I was drawn to the Quality Trash table; I even pointed it to out to my friend, author Steve Thayer.
"That's it. That's where my book belongs."
He laughed and responded, "Well, the quality is certainly there, but I'm not sure it rises to the appropriate level of trash."
But not so fast. Stalking Susan has now garnered praise from both Publisher's Weekly, which starred it and called it an "impressive debut," as well as People magazine, which featured it as a Sizzling Summer Read, "Truly scary, no matter what your name."
And if that combination doesn't validate my debut, Stalking Susan, as Quality Trash, I don't know what does.

Stalking Susan Book Trailer

2008-06-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

Julie Kramer's terrific new thriller, Stalking Susan, is a perfect summer book--smart, fast, and thrilling to the end--and based on two unsolved murders in the Twin Cities. It isn't out until July 15th, but Julie has posted a book trailer for it on her website.

Meet Julie at Common Good Books on July 24th at 7:30.

Geoff Herbach--From Cubicle Dwelling to the Avant Garde

2008-06-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

Common Good Books is pleased to welcome Geoff Herbach back home after a long book tour on Thursday, June 12th, at 7:30 p.m. We've asked him to tell us a bit about writing his first novel, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg.
Geoff will be joined at the bookstore by his fellow Lit 6 writers, the creators and cast of The Electric Arc Radio Show.

I am happy to be in the vanguard. In the next year, there are at least two other books being published by major U.S. publishers that use the suicide letter as their narrative medium (uh, way to tell their story). I’m not sure why suicide letters are so popular right now, but think it has something to do with the Bush administration (this is not a tongue in cheek statement – I mean it).

My book, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, is not a about suicide, however. It is not a book about depression or medication or hospitalization (although all three are in it). The Miracle Letters, in its essence, is about the power of reflection.

The book, thankfully, is not autobiographical (there are details, of course, that some reader close to me will recognize – that’s the nature of this business, I think). But, the story is not entirely unrelated to my own, either. When I began work on this book, I held a job at Wells Fargo doing some kind of computer programming. For several years I went through the motions, earning money, not particularly happy, without giving proper consideration to why and how I’d gotten there. Why does a former English major who did nothing but write wild stories through college now attend staff meetings detailing new programming language in a financial calculator?

At the beginning of the book, T. Rimberg not only works in an office, he’s lost everyone dear to him through a series of terrible and vaguely cowardly choices. Although he intends to both punish and apologize to people with his suicide letters, the unintended consequence of his writing is that he begins to understand his past and this understanding, far from propelling him to his demise, propels him into life and future. My favorite marketing tag line for the book is, “Sometimes life gets in the way of a well-planned death.”

I no longer work for Wells Fargo, not because it is a bad place to work, but because it made no sense for me to work there. Now I write and do big, wild reading events with my pals at Lit 6 and The Electric Arc. We’re going to be doing one of these events in support of The Miracle Letters on June 12 at Common Good Books. You should come over. I’ll write a thoughtful, yearbook-style message in The Miracle Letters should you purchase it.

David Wroblewski on Surviving the First Novel

2008-06-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

David Wroblewski's first novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, has been garnering positively gushing notices, with Stephen King comparing it to Watership Down, Night of the Hunter, and Life of Pi, and Publishers Weekly claiming "the propulsive narrative will have readers sucked in all the way through the breathtaking final scenes." We've asked him to tell us about the skills necessary to survive writing your first novel.
Meet him at Common Good Books on Monday, June 16th at 7:30.

One essential survival skill of the novelist-in-progress, you might be surprised to learn, is having a reply for the casual question, “What is your novel about?” A good answer isn’t so easy to come by. For one thing, as a novelist you must believe, passionately, that the long form is the only possible way to answer such a question, that every novel comprises a braid of ideas and images that surface and submerge and surface again in some new variation. You believe that if there truly was a shorter answer then there would be no novel at all. So right off the bat, you’re stuck.

On the other hand, it’s a reasonable question, you’ve asked it yourself. So you wind up inventing rules for yourself. Your answer can’t be an outright lie; it has to convey the kernel of the truth. It can’t tell too much, or you feel either that the story leaking away, or that you’ve committed yourself to one of the several possible ideas you’re nursing along in parallel until one declares itself primary. It can’t be glib, or self-denigrating, or you risk be haunted by your own words the next time you sit down to write. A great answer would be quick, suggestive, and noncommittal, so that the person asking the question can draw their own conclusions and you’re done before they might looked bored, which is deadly—talk about being haunted when you sit down to write.

I started Edgar’s story in the mid 1990’s, and for years I didn’t have any answer at all, much less a great one, though I learned to see that question coming from a mile away. I’d been fumbling my way through each incident on a case by case basis, when one night an acquaintance reworded things slightly. Instead of asking, “What is your novel about?” he asked, “What kind of a novel are you writing?”

I was dumbfounded. By then I thought I knew what my novel was about (dogs, and a particular story of family mayhem that interested me) but I didn’t know what kind of a novel it was, or even, the longer I thought about it, what kinds of novel there were. I floundered a bit, then stammered, “Well, it’s a tragedy.” From the look on my friend’s face, I saw that wasn’t much of an answer.

“The main character is named Edgar Sawtelle,” I added, feebly.

“Is that the tragedy?” he asked.

A person doesn’t want that sort of thing to happen more than once. Then and there I decided I had to come up with something, and one day shortly afterward I found myself saying that The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was a boy and his dog story for grown-ups. And lo and behold, I actually liked that answer. It rang true, it gave almost nothing away, and best of all it was just packed with meaning for me. I remember the first time I saw the inside of a golf ball, when I was maybe eight years old. I’d thought I’d been holding this simple, indivisible sphere, but under the shell I discovered thousands of miles of rubbery brown thread. I took the end and kept unwinding and unwinding until my lap was filled with a wild tangle. That’s the image that comes to mind when I think about that reply. I began to hand it over when people asked what my novel was about, and I watched them take the shell off. Oftentimes they ended up telling me stories about their own dogs, which was great fun.

As a writer, your job is to keep cracking open ideas like that. Some turn out to be empty, like ping-pong balls—all you find inside is a puff of stale air. You set them aside and try again. When you’ve gathered enough winners you take your lap full of thread and braid it into something, and if it is of a certain length, you call it a novel. In the braid of Edgar Sawtelle, you’ll find a farm I know very well, a little bit of Kipling, a love story, and yes, a tragedy. But mainly, you are going to find a boy and his dog story for grown-ups. I hope you like it. And I hope, if we ever get a chance to talk, you’ll tell me a dog story in return.

Some Sad News

2008-05-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

St. Paul author, and CGB customer, Daniel Hardy died of a heart attack on Saturday (Read his obituary here).

Daniel had been working on a book about a man who he thought--and had pretty strong evidence to back it up--was the basis for Fitzgerald's Gatsby. According to the obituary Daniel had just finished the book, which is little consolation, but if you are involved with writing, you know that this fact offers at least some.

According to the obituary, his wife, Mary, is going to try to publish the book posthumously. I hope she can. I was always severely interested in Daniel's updates on the progress of the book. I would see him at Ninas or in the bookstore, and he would excitedly--well, as excitedly as he got, he seemed a pretty laid back guy--tell me some far fetched story that he had learned through his research about his Gatsby's escapades.

It really does seem like a fascinating book. Hopefully it will (and I think it will) see its way into print.

But that's for another time.

Now is a time to offer our condolences. To say our thoughts are with all of Dan's loved ones. To mourn the loss of a literary St. Paulite. And to celebrate his life's work and passion.

-David

Geoff Herbach & Sam Osterhout on the Road for The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg

2008-05-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

Our friends over at mnartists.org are doing a cool travel diary with Geoff and Sam as they tour the country in celebration of The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg. Geoff and Sam, along with their fellow Electric Arc Radio stars, Steph and Brady, will be at CGB on Thursday, June 12 at 2008. We're all considering this a welcome home of sorts from this long book tour, which you'll see, once you read some of these diary entries, will be greatly needed.

Debut novelist Geoff Herbach sets off with his buddy and Electric Arc Radio castmate, Sam Osterhout, on a book tour around the country. Over the course of the next few weeks, Geoff and Sam will be sending in a road diary documenting their travels.

SAM
I stood in the doorway of my apartment in Minneapolis and looked in at all my stuff—the coat hooks, my bookshelves, my kitchen and my beloved kitchen appliances, the little rug in front of the kitchen sink that makes me fall over every afternoon during lunch—and then I backed out the door and let it shut, trying keep the image of all that stuff in my brain. Why is it so sad to leave home?
Herbach pulled up and I heaved my giant princess bag into his hatchback and we got a sandwich and hit the road for Madison, Wisconsin, the first stop on the extended Miracle Tour.

GEOFF
When books come out, the author goes on a book tour. There are authors from all over the place constantly stopping everywhere – bookstores, amphitheaters, etc. – all the time. Right? Apparently, most of them aren’t first-time authors. And, apparently, those authors who stop at a bookstore and find crowds there to greet them already have a readership. The crowd knows the author’s other works. The crowd is jacked to read more. The crowd wants to meet this fabled writer. I am a first-time author. Don’t expect jack for audience. I’ve been told that over and over. Don’t expect jack. Outside of the Twin Cities crowds won’t magically appear. That’s okay. I think. Actually I’m filled with anxiety. Why am I going on a book tour?
Because I’ve always wanted to go on a book tour. And it’s going to be really great. Sam is my pal. He’s agreed to go with me. He’s a great writer and reader. He’ll make it fun. We drive towards Wisconsin, my home state.

READ MORE HERE>>>

Cathy Sultan -- Author of Upcoming Event @ CGB

2008-05-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

Press Release:

Cathy Sultan and her husband, Michel, were in Beirut last week when fighting broke out between Hezbollah and US-backed government forces. She was fortunate to be able to leave Beirut for Paris, since Hezbollah had closed the airport. After five days of sometimes intense fighting, the city is now relatively calm.

Cathy was interviewed on the Diane Rehm show WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio, Monday, 5/12/08, along with David Ignatius, columnist for the Washington Post, and Hesham Melham, Washington correspondant for An Nahar, the Lebanese daily. On 5/22/08 she will be a guest on KFAI's "Write On! Radio" 90.3 FM in Minneapolis and 106.7 in Saint Paul and live on the web at www.kfai.org

Cathy will appear at CGB on Thursday, May 22 at 7pm.

Riding Shotgun with Kathryn Kysar

2008-05-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Common Good Books presents Kathryn Kysar, Shannon Olson, Susan Power, and Ka Vang at the Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church on Mother's Day (Sunday, May 11th, 2:00 pm; free, bring mom). We asked Kathryn to tell us a bit more about her book, Riding Shotgun.

What do you want the Common Good Books readers to know about your anthology?
Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers is of the complexities of the mother/daughter relationship. The anthology features twenty-one unique essays that defy the June Cleaver/Hallmark cliche that mothers are perfect. These essays create a mosaic of portraits of women in the 20th century who do their best to raise their children and live fulfilling lives. Some essays are filled with love and joy, others pain and suffering, but they are all honest and soul-searching.

What do you love about this book?
The authors wrote amazingly well crafted essays that are intimate, thoughtful, and probing. I love the diversity of voice, experience, and form.

What do you want to the book to accomplish?
I hope readers will get a glimpse of their lives in these essays and continue the conversation about mothers as we challenge the "mother" stereotype and paint portraits of flawed, brave, fragile, strong, resourceful, smart real women.

Quote of the Day

2008-04-23T15:02:00.001-07:00

"Never let it be said that I don't lead people to have second thoughts."

-Elmer Pierre, infamous bookseller

This Guy Makes Me Want to Shave My Head and Get Smarter

2008-04-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

Austin Dacey just finished reading upstairs at Nina's, and it was a great event. He's a very eloquent speaker and it's easy to see just how passionate he is about his subject matter both from the passages he read from The Secular Conscience and in his thoughtful responses to audience questions.

When Mr. Dacey's next book comes out, we will gladly have him back to read. If you didn't get a chance to attend this event, I'd highly recommend tracking him down if you are in any of the cities on his book tour.

Literary Magazines in MN

2008-04-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Writer and performer Stephanie Wilber Ash (who will be reading with Geoff Herbach at CGB on June 12) wrote a nice article on literary magazines in Minnesota, though she only listed InDigest Magazine, rather than interview the upstanding gentlemen who produce that magazine. Even after they published her good friend and Electric Arc cohort, Sam Osterhout. Despite this transgression it's a good article and a good introduction to lit mags in the state.

Read the article here>>

For having a small magazine section, we have a pretty good selection of lit mags at CGB, including two mentioned in the article--Conduit and Elysian Fields.

Other lit mags you'll find at CGB:

If you have any suggestions or lit mags you'd like to see in the store, let us know by commenting on this post.

Catherine Friend on The Compassionate Carnivore

2008-04-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

In advance of her upcoming event at the Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church on Wednesday, April 30th, we asked the Hit by a Farm author to talk a bit about her new book, The Compassionate Carnivore.

Humans have been eating meat since our ancestors began the fairly creepy practice called kleptoparasitism. Basically, we’d let the more skilled predators like lions, leopards, and other clawed beasts chase down and kill the prey, then after some hard-working panther had stashed his dead gazelle in a tree, we’d climb up and steal it.

Gross.

Luckily, our meat now comes so neatly packaged in shrink wrap that we can easily forget we’re eating an animal. But then about 30 years ago those pesky animal rights activists began chanting “Factory farming is bad for animals and eating animals is bad.” The only part of that mantra that stuck in my head was “eating animals is bad,” but since I wasn’t going to give up meat, all I acquired was a healthy dose of guilt about my cuisine.

As a farmer who raises meat, I like that people keep eating meat. But as one who cares about animals, I’ve come to the really uncomfortable conclusion that those unrelenting activists were right about one thing: Factory farming is bad for the animals.

So what’s a carnivore to do? Are there any choices between giving up meat entirely and assuaging our guilt with a 16 ounce prime rib, medium rare?

I think so, which is why I wrote The Compassionate Carnivore, Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat. The book looks at animals, their lives, why those lives are worthy of our consideration as meat-eaters, and how we might change our meat-eating habits to reflect that.

Are You on Facebook?

2008-04-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

If so, become our friend and join the discussion (brought to you by Joe) about underrated authors.

What The Vatican Didn't Say About The New Deadly Sins by Austin Dacey

2008-04-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

You may have heard that the Catholic Church recently released an upgrade to the Seven Deadly Sins. Appropriate to the age of globalization and biotechnology, the new list includes such supposed social vices as contributing to extreme poverty, accumulating extreme wealth, trafficking in or consuming hard drugs, despoiling the environment, and engaging in "morally debatable experiments" or "genetic manipulation." I applaud the move insofar as it signifies that the moral imagination of the Catholic leadership is finally moving beyond concupiscence. Everyone I know has been angry, proud, envious, greedy, lustful, gluttonous or slothful at least once in the last month. But most of us have not trafficked in hard drugs or modified a genome. So by doubling the number of sins, the Church may have inadvertantly made most of us 50 percent less sinful overnight! The episode also illustrates one of the main themes of my book, The Secular Conscience, that morality cannot be equated with any list of "Shall"s and "Shall Not"s since a list cannot anticipate future moral quandries, and a list cannot tell you why you should follow it rather than some other list. For that we need conscience.

Reason, Faith, and Storytelling by Jon Spayde

2008-04-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

There’s an argument going on in America about the “reasonableness” of faith. A quartet of “neo-atheist” authors, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, have argued against religion, and the faith in God that underpins religion. Their primary claim is that faith and religion are irrational because God is a delusion. (They have much more to say, too, of course, about what they see as the dangers and deficiencies of religion.) “Believing” authors have responded with defenses of the reasonableness of what the neo-atheists attack.
My book, How to Believe, is a “believer’s” book of a different sort. I’m a journalist, not a philosopher or a theologian, and what I tried to do with the 34 profiles of Christian believers in the book was not to prove something about religion or God but rather to tell the stories of belief and find out how believers deal with the admittedly strange things asserted in scripture and doctrine: a man who is God, a God who is One in Three, and so forth. I wrote as one pulled toward faith but not fully certain, aware of an immensity beyond this world but not comfortable with pat explanations of it, deeply respectful of science but dubious about the capacity of the five senses of one erect-walking primate (even augmented by powerful instruments) to fully and finally explain the universe.
My interviewees mostly came to faith because of powerful experiences, not convincing arguments. They did their best to understand these experiences, and for them religious tradition offered accounts of them that were eloquent and convincing, but not always in the strict terms of logic. I was struck by how often they rejected both mere rationality and mere anti-rationality, opting instead for an attitude of respectful awe before the universe. Prayer and meditation testified to a desire for a change of consciousness, a going-deeper into the mystery, not necessarily a clear and final certainty. They, like me, were and are “on the path.”
Are religious people the only ones who can possess this desire, the only ones who can feel this awe? Of course not. And I wouldn’t dream of denying the horrors perpetrated by religious bigotry. I would simply add that every suggested substitute for religion, emphatically including science, has blood on its hands too—and that healthy religion is nothing more (and nothing less) than a tool for maintaining and commemorating the evolving encounter with mystery.

Common Good Books Reviewed on Yelp

2008-03-22T16:53:00.001-07:00

I just found out about this site and so far I like what I've seen. Especially this.

Thanks, Lacey and Sean.

More of Us Online

2008-03-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

We've been working hard over here in our basement home (Look for our ad in The Onion: "Your Underground Bookstore." See we can be funny if The Onion comes a callin') trying to get our name all over this internet. Oh, and selling books.

You can now find us at:

tumblr

Facebook (You must be a member to view the page, but anyone can join. So join.)

MySpace (Be patient with us on the MySpace page. It's just so cluttered that I get overwhelmed when I'm on it, so I have to take frequent breaks and go update the Facebook page.)

So, pick your poison. And if you want to learn about events and are old-fashioned and only use email rather than the above mentioned online social networking sites, sign up for our e-newsletter to the right of this post. See it?

2008-03-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

A funny response to fake memoirs (see post below) from Salon.com.

There's a Category for This: Fiction

2008-03-04T15:13:00.001-08:00

Apparently some folks out there have forgotten that there is a different section in bookstores that has for some time now accommodated stories that are not actually true. These people are caught up in the seemingly unending love of the Memoir. I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but sometime recently the Memoir seemed to lodge its way into the #1 spot in readers' hearts. I'm also not sure why exactly this is. In my opinion if it's good, it's good, doesn't matter what section it goes in in the bookstore. But some people apparently love to label things so much, and for a while now, Memoir has been the IT label. And then we end up with stories like this.

Random Fact

2008-03-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

As we were searching for a book for a customer this morning we learned something we did not know: Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. President born in a hospital.

2008-03-02T10:37:00.001-08:00

Old news, but still should mention it here. (Sorry, I didn't work at all last week.) Robert Bly becomes Minnesota's first poet laureate...who else?

2008-03-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't even know this was possible. Over 5,000 tickets sold in two cities...for a poet?!

2008-02-21T14:51:00.000-08:00

An interview with John Ashbery at Guernica Magazine.

2008-02-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

Martin found this on galleycat. It's ridiculous and funny. In support of his new novel, The Learners, Chip Kidd's got this on YouTube:

People LOVE Common Good Books!

2008-02-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

In Honor of Valentine's Day/Suggested Readings for Procrastinating Romantics

2008-02-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

Elmer suggests:

The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

Suggested Short Stories from Joe. These short masterpieces show the thematic possibilities of love in an unconventional light. A mother and daughter bond after a divorce; a young girl raises pigeons in an inner city D.C. neighborhood. These stories prove that love can be complicated, difficult, and messy. Just like real life:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

The Girl Who Raised Pigeons by Edward P. Jones

The Fat Girl by Andre Dubus

The Kid's Guide to Divorce by Lorrie Moore

Suggested Poem From David:

"Having A Coke With You" by Frank O'Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonneor
being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

(Not the correct line breaks, due to Blogger limitations. It's still good.)

Read & Love, y'all.

20th Annual MN Book Awards Finalists Announced

2008-02-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

Some names that have come up a few times here since this blog began appear on the list for the 20th Annual MN Book Awards as well: Garrison Keillor, Patricia Hampl, Kevin Kling.

Charles Baxter's The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot is in the General Nonfiction category. His new book, The Soul Thief, comes out on Tuesday. Here's an excerpt from the first chapter, and you can pre-order here. (If you read the bio from Ploughshares and the first chapter of The Soul Thief, notice what the person on the West Coast says after reading one of Baxter's early novels and the way Jerome Coolberg describes Nathaniel Mason when talking about his name. A little insight into the working mind of this author, eh?)

Others on the list are Leslie Adrienne Miller for The Resurrection Trade and Eireann Lorsung for Music for Landing Planes By, both books of poetry; The Wet Collection by Joni Tevis--a nonfiction collection that I know at least one of the judges is very excited about; and William Kent Krueger for his novel Thunder Bay.

Winners will be announced on April 12.

2008-02-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

With the closing of Zander Cafe our community is down one important business. As our economy slips into that dreaded "R" word that no one really wants to mention, but is all too real; now, more than ever, there is a need to focus our attention on where we shop and why we shop where we do.

The fact is independently-owned businesses help the local economy. A study done by Civic Economics and published by Livable City in Austin, Texas showed that every $100 spent at chain stores puts $13 back in the local economy, while the same $100 spent at a locally-owned store puts $45 back into circulation in the area. With all the talk of tax rebates and economic stimulus package and everyone wondering just what to do about the situation we find ourselves in, here we have something concrete that can be done to help the economy.

We've all heard the arguments for buying local and independent: knowledgeable sales people; inventory chosen by that staff to represent the desires of the customer, rather than by a corporate office only concerned with bottom-line issues; quality of product; et al. But these are only discussion points for the dinner table if we don't put them into action and actually start buying from the people who have literally set up shop in our communities in an effort to not only advance their businesses, but to advance the communities where they put those businesses. A quick scan of home addresses of local business owners in any area would show an important point: the owners (and many times, most of the staff) live where they have chosen to work; they are invested in ways that chain retailers are not.

So, here in Cathedral Hill we're--is mourning too strong a word? If so, we're thinking of a neighbor who had been a staple of this neighborhood, but who has now shut down operation. In times of economic despair, the big businesses will survive; they have the money backing them to outlast the rough tide. The same cannot be said with any certainty for the smaller, independent shops.