New Books, October 2010

I haven’t been writing but that hasn’t stopped me from reading and buying more piles of more books.

• J.M. Coetzee, Age Of Iron (1990) – I just keep buying his books. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Sasha Issenberg, The Sushi Economy: Globalisation and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (2007) – Oh, this doesn’t look good. But I remember wanting to buy it at the airport in April 2008, I believe, on my way to Reno, NV. And I couldn’t pass it up, seeing it there again. I generally don’t like a simplistic globalization parable and I also don’t like sushi fetishism (e.g. the ‘rules’ on how to eat sushi without offending the chef. This is just orientalism, no?) but I do really like eating sushi. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Carol Off, Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet (2006) – I could probably imagine most of what this will tell me! But I remember working at Purdy’s, I remember learning all about chocolate so I will read this for who I was 10 years ago. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Jill Ker Conway, The Road from Coorain (1989) – Sharon Butala recommended this memoir of a woman growing up in Australia. From Tanglewood Books on Broadway. I met my mother and sister for dinner on Burrard and just happened to have 30 spare min to spend in a bookstore beforehand.
• Steven Levy, Crypto: How The Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2001) – I have been working on writing something about computers and books. This is billed as ‘cryptography’s Soul of a New Machine’ and if it is even almost that good I’ll be thrilled. From Tanglewood on Broadway.
• Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face (1994) – The prequel of sorts to one of my favourite books from last year. Anne Patchett wrote Truth and Beauty as a memoir of her friendship with Lucy Grealy who wrote her own memoir ten years earlier. Also recommended by Sharon Butala. From Tanglewood on Broadway.
• Jenny Diski, Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World (1997) – Another prequel. I read Stranger on a Train this summer and here at last is her first memoir from three years earlier. From Tanglewood on Broadway.
• Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1967) – Another recommendation from Sharon Butala. I am buying up her whole recommended reading list and soon I might start to read them. I am also buying up all of these old Nabokov books in matching Vintage editions and soon I might start to read them. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966) – I think my friend Maja recommended this? An old mystery. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Henning Mankell, The White Lioness (1993) – I think my friend Stacy recommended this? A new mystery. About South Africa and Sweden. I am hoping for narrative force. The only books I am reading right now are novels and all I want is narrative force. From PulpFiction on Main. Why do I continue to list that when almost all of my books come from PulpFiction on Main.
• John McPhee, The Control of Nature (1989) – My own copy for my own shelf, after I borrowed and read my friend Maja’s last summer. I am taking an earth science course and I just feel so smart because I already read this book. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Thurston Clarke, California Fault: Searching for the Spirit of a State along the San Andreas (1996) – I looked at this on the shelf for months but finally bought it for the sake of my earthquake class. I’ve known about the San Andreas since pre-school, at least. I remember bringing a Time-Life book, Continents in Collision, to Cornerstone Montessori preschool in Newton for show-and-tell. Is the world’s most notorious strike-slip fault enough of a hook to hang this book on? At the very least, another book for my California shelf. From PulpFiction on Main.
• Lorna Jackson, Cold-Cocked: On Hockey (2007) – I just read this and it is fantastic. The first hockey book I have read that was written by a human, for humans, out of an honest impulse to explain it all. It says On Hockey and it is about the Vancouver Canucks in 2003-’04 but of course it is memoir at the core; one of the best personal narratives I’ve read this year. From PulpFiction on Main.