Smell of an Earlier Time

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"The books in the shelves in front of me, sure enough, are. . .mainly books of Japanese poetry. Tanka and haiku, essays on poetry, biographies of various poets. . . .When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages-- a special knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers." 

                                                 -- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Birthday Book Hunt

 We had the recent pleasure of helping a neighbor find a few dozen books from his wife's to-read list for her birthday. Some were easy - classics we always stock. Others (like the Infinite Jest pictured) just happened to burst through our doors in the nick of time. Better than an Easter egg hunt by far.

Goodnight, Store.

with Claudio Villa

Reblogged: Moody Books

I was just delighted by the organizational principle of this list.

Some books I like that you might like.

by Jessica Stanley on January 23, 2013

“If you name an important book there is a very good chance I haven’t read it. I’m not against important books. I hope to write one someday. But I read what I like, before I read what’s important. That’s who I am.” Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Here are some books that I like that you might too. They’re organised by mood – that’s not always how we choose to buy, but it’s always how, in the end, we choose what to actually read.

The links all go to Amazon so you can see more info. But since most of them are old you can easily get them secondhand or on Ebay. Or at the library!

Oh and they’re all by women.

You’re thinking about growing up.

• Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
• Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Frost in May by Antonia White
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
• Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta
• Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
• Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

You want happiness, warmth and comfort.

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
• Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

You want a new gang of female friends.

• Big Girls Don’t Cry by Fay Weldon
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
• Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble

You want to feel gripped.

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
• Possession by A.S. Byatt
• Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
• How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
• A Wrinkle in Time  by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Giver  by Lois Lowry

You want to cry.

• What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali
• The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

You want something that feels modern, revolutionary.

• No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life by Sheila Heti
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould

You believe in art and love.

• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• Stravinsky’s Lunch by Drusilla Modjeska
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
• The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide by Janine Burke

You want Downton Abbey in book form.

• The Light Years (the first volume of the Cazalet Chronicle, read them all!) by Elizabeth Jane Howard

SEASON'S GREETINGS

Hello, young lovers, wherever you are.

 Our heart goes out to you, as the transplant patient said to the surgical team. 

Blondes have more fun.

ALL THIS AND MORE IN OUR VALENTINE WINDOW, NOW WASHED AND DRIED FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE!!

Manager of Style

Store manager Jessica took a sabbatical last spring and spent time doing research in China. Here she is on the left, just days before losing her favorite Chinese bazaar-bought sunglasses, pirated knockoffs of an Italian design. Sunglasses are of no use in the store. Please don't wear them in and put them down on a shelf, only to forget them while distracted by the store's phenomenal depth and awesomely rich inventory, all chosen by hand and selected to enhance your shopping experience and add dimension to your experience of the world. This is our mission statement, the sunglasses stuff to the contrary notwithstanding. We do have a lost-and-found department, but Jessica didn't put it on her extraordinary map as seen in the preceding post. You have to ask at the desk.

A small sample of things we always need-
and this gives you an idea of our inventory.
Updated 11/13/06

AUTHORS-
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
John Steinbeck
Truman Capote
Ayn Rand
J.D. Salinger
Kurt Vonnegut
Mike Royko
Studs Terkel
Nelson Algren, Dawn Powell
Martin Luther King,
David Sedaris, Annie Dillard
Charles Bukowsi, Richard Brautigan
Chuck Palahniuk, John Fante
Cormac McCarthy, Tom Robbins
James Ellroy, Salman Rushdie
Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac
Mark Twain, Marcel Proust
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hunter S. Thompson
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, James Joyce
Herman Melville, Derida, Lacan, etc.
Douglas Coupland, Edward Gorey
William Gibson, John Betjeman, poems
Orson Scott Card , Philip K. Dick
Neal Stephenson, Haruki Murakami
James Baldwin
Martin Luther
Patricia Highsmith, John Calvin
A.A. Milne, Thomas Merton
Beatrix Potter
Walt Whitman
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Emily Dickenson
Robert Caro, Virginia Wolfe
James T. Farrell, Gertrude Stein
Joseph Campbell
Bertrand Russell, Augusten Burroughs
C.S. Lewis
Edward Said
Kahlil Gibran, Sylvia Plath
Jack Kerouac, John Irving
George Orwell, Aldous Huxley
Philip Roth
Jose Luis Borges
Pushkin, Gogol, Kafka, Camus, Collette,
de Beauvoir, Sartre, Tolstoy, Dumas
Tom Wolfe
Edward Abbey
Paul Theroux
Ian Fleming, Rex Stout
Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak
Noam Chomsky, Barbara Tuchman
Dashiell Hammett
Raymond Chandler
Patrick O’Brian
Ray Bradbury
BOOKS-
In Cold Blood
Lolita, Lenin’s Tomb, Krakatoa
Devil in the White City
The Sun Also Rises
The Kite Runner, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged, My Book House series for kids
The Power Broker, Bobbsie Twins , Nancy Drew
Division Street America
The Master and Margarita
Helter Skelter, Paris to the Moon (Gopnik)
The Joy of Cooking and any Julia Child
The Monk, Boss, Clout
Unsafe at Any Speed
Silent Spring, Making of the Atomic Bomb
A Sand County Almanac
1984, Encyclopedia of Chicago
Brave New World, Amazing Adventures/Cavalier/Clay
Duveen, North Shore Houses
Watership Down , Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Patriotic Gore, Chicago High Rises
Narnia books, Chicago Apartments
Harry Potter books
Catch 22, A Confederacy of Dunces
To Kill a Mockingbird
Red, Blue, Green Mars
SUBJECTS
Architecture
Chess, Illustrated kids books, fairy tales, etc.
Elvis
Rock and Roll, folk, opera, classical, country western
Swords and Guns
Books -repair, restoration
Writing
Magic
Gambling- horses, cards, games
Hitler, Stalin, other dictators and villians
Nazism, Fascism
History of South and Central America
Colonial histories in general- world wide
Histories about all countries
Korean War, Vietnam War, WW One
True crime Sci Fi
Astrology
Martial Arts
Artists: biographies, shows, catalogues, monographs
The Beat Generation
Poetry and dance
Chicago and vicinity
Zen and all world religions, sects, cults