Featured Titles

Wow, is this cool.  Seriously, the images and the message are really great.  Let’s start with the images.  You can see the richness of the colors on the cover and that richness is carried throughout.  Lush is a word that comes to mind.  Von Buhler built the scenes as little 3D stages and then added in the flat animals/princess (condensed version) so that they have this striking depth paired with stark flatness–3D and 2D in one.  The effect is really really cool.  And the story: it starts with the Aesop’s fable about belling the cats but then goes off on its own trajectory.  There is a whole upstairs/downstairs, haves/have-nots dichotomy depicted with mouse and bat living under the house in drab, dank settings and the princess and her cats living upstairs in the lap of luxury.  Mouse and bat try numerous methods to bell the cats so that they can enjoy the good life as well and after failing multiple times (in funny scenarios) they finally concoct an idea good enough that it just might work.

Then there’s that book called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Penguin Classics has a brand-new deluxe edition of it in paperback ($16.00), replete with very snappy graphic novel-inspired cover design and French flaps. It’s impressive-looking and a whole new excuse to re-read what many regard as the definitive American novel (that “many” absolutely includes me) — because Huck Finn only gets better and better with each successive visit back to its evergreen pages. Buy one or both of these titles for yourself or as the ideal gift(s) for the Twain lover in your circle. E-books are just never going to be able to match the quality and enduring appeal of real, immaculately produced paper-and-ink books — like these two!

This book is on display directly in front of the counter and I’ve been hearing about Chuck Klosterman for awhile so I decided to read it. I guess I kind of didn’t want to be part of the Kult of Klosterman, but he is an enjoyable, sincere and witty writer. Under the guise of pop culture commentary, he discusses how people communicate and relate to general society. In this vein, his seemingly blase and frivolous insights are actually insights into human nature.

The first chapter’s discussion of Prince’s seemingly “beavershit crazy” interview mandates of not allowing reporters to tape or take notes reveals that Prince wanted to be understood as a human, not a celebrity taken out of context. Prince wanted the media to take away only the essence of what he was trying to say, not a soundbyte that could manipulate his meaning.

From Kurt Cobain to even David Koresh and the Unabomber, Klosterman seems to value hermetic messiahs. He praises alternately praises and is confused by Cobain’s unwillingness to grow up. Klosterman writes that Cobain was “inflexible about teenage ideals normal adults would never seriously consider.”

Of the many ironic tidbits that Klosterman shares, the most ironic is yes, the essence of the book. While his heroes run away from the seemingly cruel grip of pop culture, Klosterman’s destiny is to become enveloped in its warm embrace. “The Internet is not improving out lives,” Klosterman writes. “It’s making things (slightly) worse . . . But I love the Internet. I Love the Internet.  . .  My apologies, Ted [Kaczynski]. Your thirty-five-thousand-word document makes sense to me, but I cannot be saved. You’ll have to blow up my hands.”

Although I have not read his other books, its interesting to see an alternative writer such as Klosterman facing his aging hipster status and realizing that all false idols hit the dirt one day and that in the end all that remains is our collective yearning to both belong and to be acknowledged as individuals. My felicitations, Chuck. I love the Internet, too.