August 2011 - Vol 6, Issue 1
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Summer's in full swing at M&Q. Beat the day's heat in our AC or stop in on your next evening stroll around the lakes. We'll make it worth your while.

In this month's newsletter:

  • A new novel from Nicholson Baker
  • Graphic novelist Anders Nilsen visits M&Q
  • F Scott Fitzgerald in his own words
...and much, much more. Read on.

Friday, August 26, 7:30pm--Steve Brezenoff launches his new novel Brooklyn, Burning

In the store: $16.15
Online: $13.46 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $17.95
Available August 26
When you're sixteen and no one understands who you are, sometimes the only choice left is to run. If you're lucky, you find a place that accepts you, no questions asked. And if you're really lucky, that place has a drum set, a place to practice, and a place to sleep. For Kid, the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, are that place. Over the course of two scorching summers, Kid falls hopelessly in love and then loses nearly everything and everyone worth caring about.

Brooklyn, Burning (available August 26) is a fearless and unconventional love story that addresses the challenges of teens questioning their gender or sexuality. Throughout the entire book, Brezenoff never identifies the gender of his two main characters, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about Kid and Scout.


Watch the book trailer here.

Steve Brezenoff is the author of two young adult novels, The Absolute Value of -1 and Brooklyn, Burning (both published by Minneapolis-based Carolrhoda Lab, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group). Born in Queens, Steve spent much of his twenties and early thirties living in Brooklyn. He writes about Greenpoint, the northern-most Brooklyn neighborhood, in vivid and unmistakable detail. Steve left his apartment in Greenpoint when he moved to Minnesota with his dog, Harry. It was in that apartment that he proposed to his wife, Beth (the reason he moved to Minnesota). He lives in St. Paul with Beth, their son, Sam, and Harry.

M&Q is packed full of the summer's best new books. Here are several we especially like.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

In the store: $23.99
Online: $20.21 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $26.95
Available August 9
The author of the cult hit The Magicians takes readers back to Fillory, where the Brakebills graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying new challenges.

Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

The Magician King is a grand voyage into the dark, glittering heart of magic, an epic quest for the Harry Potter generation. It also introduces a powerful new voice, that of Julia, whose angry genius is thrilling. Once again Grossman proves that he is the modern heir to C.S. Lewis, and the cutting edge of literary fantasy.


The House of Holes: A Book of Raunch by Nicholson Baker

In the store: $22.50
Online: $18.75 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $25.00
Available August 9
"[Baker's] dirtiest work yet: a 200-plus-page tour of a sex-fantasy theme park... It may be the raunchiest novel ever published by a major American house."--New York Magazine

Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a hole in a golf course. Luna meets a man made of light bulbs at a tanning parlor. So begins Nicholson Baker's fuse-blowing, sex-positive escapade, House of Holes. Baker, the bestselling author of The Mezzanine, Vox, and The Fermata, who "writes like no one else in America" (Newsweek), returns to erotic territory with a gleefully over-the-top novel set in a pleasure resort, where normal rules don't apply. Visitors, pulled in via their drinking straws or the dryers in laundromats, can undergo crotchal transfers, make love to trees, or visit the Groanrooms and the twelve-screen Porndecahedron. It's very expensive, of course, but there are work-study programs. In charge of day-to-day operations is Lila, a former hospital administrator whose breast milk has unusual regenerative properties.

Brimful of good-nature, wit, and surreal sexual vocabulary, House of Holes is a modern-day Hieronymous Boschian bacchanal that is sure to surprise, amuse, and arouse.


Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant by Karen Liebowitz

In the store: $27.00
Online: $22.50 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $30.00
Available August 9
Mission Street Food is a restaurant. But it's also a charitable organization, a taco truck, a burger stand, and a clubhouse for inventive cooks tucked inside an unassuming Chinese take-out place. In all its various incarnations, it upends traditional restaurant conventions, in search of moral and culinary satisfaction.

Like Mission Street Food itself, this book is more than one thing: it's a cookbook featuring step-by-step photography and sly commentary, but it's also the memoir of a madcap project that redefined the authors' marriage and a city's food scene. Along with stories and recipes, you'll find an idealistic business plan, a cheeky manifesto, and thoughtful essays on issues ranging from food pantries to fried chicken. Plus, a comic.

Ultimately, Mission Street Food presents an iconoclastic vision of cooking and eating in twenty-first century America, brought to you by the folks at McSweeneys.


Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar

In the store: $19.80
Online: $16.50 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $22.00
Available August 23
Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until they meet Mona, sitting in her yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina hotel. As soon as Nuri sees her, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri's father with whom Mona falls in love and whom she eventually marries. And their happiness consumes Nuri to the point where he wishes his father would disappear.

Nuri will, however, soon regret what he wished for. His father, long a dissident in exile from his homeland, is taken under mysterious circumstances. And, as the world that Nuri and his stepmother share is shattered by events beyond their control, they begin to realize how little they knew about the man they both loved.

Anatomy of a Disappearance is written with all the emotional precision and intimacy that made Hisham Matar's first novel, In the Country of Men, an international bestseller.


Enjoy a cool night out at your favorite bookstore. Visit M&Q for these great events--no reservations required.

August's Events
Tuesday, August 9 Ellen Baker reads from I Gave My Heart to Know This, and Sarah Stonich reads from Shelter, 7:30pm

Tuesday, August 9 Books and Bars discusses Room, 7:00pm at the Aster Cafe (125 SE Main Street, Mpls)

Thursday, August 11 Caitlyn Kelly discusses Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail, 7:30pm

Thursday, August 18 Anders Nilsen discusses his new graphic novel Big Questions, 7:30pm

Friday, August 26 Launch party for Steve Brezenoff's Brooklyn, Burning, 7:30pm

Visit www.magersandquinn.com
for details on all our upcoming events.

Tuesday, August 9, 7:30pm--Ellen Baker reads from I Gave My Heart to Know This, and Sarah Stonich reads from Shelter

Two writers tell their tales of northern Minnesota.

In the store: $23.40
Online: $19.50 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $26.00
Available August 2
First, Ellen Baker reads from I Gave My Heart to Know This. In January 1944, Grace Anderson, Lena Maki, and Lena's mother, Violet, have joined the growing ranks of women working for the war effort. Though they find satisfaction in their jobs at a Wisconsin shipyard, it isn't enough to distract them from the anxieties of wartime, or their fears for the men they love: Lena's twin brother, Derrick, and Grace's high school sweetheart, Alex. When shattering news arrives from the front, the lives of the three women are pitched into turmoil. As one is pushed to the brink of madness, the others are forced into choices they couldn't have imagined--and their lives will never be the same.

Ellen Baker has worked as a costumed living history interpreter, a curator of a World War II museum, and as a bookseller and event coordinator at an independent bookstore. Her previous novel, Keeping the House, won the 2008 Great Lakes Book Award. She's online at www.ellenbakernovels.com.

In the store: $22.45
Online: $18.71 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $24.95
Available Now
Then, Sarah Stonich reads from her memoir Shelter. Sarah Stonich's family had once owned an island in Lake Vermilion that was lost after the Depression, and while her father still managed to give his daughters the quintessential Minnesota cabin experience, it was on a patch of leased land. Long after her father passed away, a newly divorced Stonich finds herself yearning for a piece of land to call her own, that perfect spot on a lake, tall pines, a sense of permanence, a legacy for her son, and a connection to her paternal heritage. Stonich finally builds a small cabin of her own, but when "progress" threatens to slice her precious patch of land in half, she must come to terms with the fact that a family legacy is no less valuable with or without a piece of earth.

"At times an adventure story, a sweet romance, and a laugh-out-loud monologue, Stonich's memoir is an ode to family, homeland and Mother Nature. Shelter is the kind of book that will cling determinedly to memories as a welcome stowaway on our own Northwoods pilgrimages."--Lindsay O'Brien, Duluth News Tribune

Sarah Stonich is the author of acclaimed novels These Granite Islands and The Ice Chorus, stories which have left their marks on readers worldwide. Sarah has recently completed Vacationland, a novel in stories connecting a dozen characters to the same remote resort. She is currently writing Fishing With RayAnne, her third novel, and is researching a fourth, American River, a family saga set along the banks of the Mississippi, She lives in Minneapolis with her husband Jon. Visit www.sarahstonich.com for more.


Thursday, August 11, 7:30pm--Caitlin Kelly reads from Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail

In the store: $23.25
Online: $19.46 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $25.95
Available Now
After losing her job as a journalist, Caitlin Kelly was hard up for cash. When she saw that The North Face--an upscale outdoor clothing company--was hiring at her local mall, she went for an interview almost on a whim.

Suddenly she found herself, middle-aged and mid-career, thrown headfirst into the bizarre alternate reality of the American mall: a world of low-wage workers selling overpriced goods to well-to-do customers. At first, Kelly found her part-time job fun and reaffirming, a way to maintain her sanity and sense of self-worth. But she describes how the unexpected physical pressures, the unreasonable dictates of a remote corporate bureaucracy, and the dead-end career path eventually took their toll. As she struggled through more than two years at the mall, despite surgeries, customer abuse, and corporate inanity, Kelly gained a deeper understanding of the plight of the retail worker.

In the tradition of Nickel and Dimed, Malled challenges our assumptions about the world of retail, documenting one woman's struggle to find meaningful work in a broken system.

A regular contributor to The New York Times since 1990, Caitlin Kelly has also written for USA Today, New York Daily News, Toronto Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Glamour, and More. Born and raised in Canada, she has lived in the U.S. since 1988.


Thursday, August 11, 7:30pm--Anders Nilsen discusses his graphic novel Big Questions

In the store: $40.46
Online: $33.71 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $44.95
Available August 16
"Nilsen uses spare renderings to create a haunting narrative that will leave you wondering whether you've read a book or walked through a dream."--The Washington Post

A haunting postmodern fable, Big Questions is the magnum opus of Anders Nilsen, one of the brightest and most talented young cartoonists working today. This beautiful minimalist story, collected here for the first time, is the culmination of ten years and more than six hundred pages of work that details the metaphysical quandaries of the occupants of an endless plain, existing somewhere between a dream and a Russian steppe. A downed plane is thought to be a bird and the unexploded bomb that came from it is mistaken for a giant egg by the group of birds whose lives the story follows. The indifferent, stranded pilot is of great interest to the birds--some doggedly seek his approval, while others do quite the opposite, leading to tensions in the group. Nilsen seamlessly moves from humor to heartbreak. His distinctive, detailed line work is paired with plentiful white space and large, often frameless panels, conveying an ineffable sense of vulnerability and openness.

"Nilsen is an exquisite draftsman with incredible patience for textures."--Glen David Gold

Big Questions has roots in classic fables--the birds and snakes have more to say than their human counterparts, and there are hints of the hero's journey, but here the easy moral that closes most fables is left open and ambiguous. Rather than lending its world meaning, Nilsen's parable lets the questions wander where they will.

Anders Nilsen was born in New Hampshire and now lives in Chicago. He has a BFA in painting and illustration from the University of NewMexico in Albuquerque. He is the author of Dogs and Water and Don't Go Where I Can't Follow.


Monday, August 29, 7:30pm--James Reeves discusses The Road to Somewhere: An American Memoir

In the store: $22.50
Online: $18.25 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $25.00
Available August 15
"The inspiration is so simple: Head out at random into America and see what you find. James A. Reeves found the America no one seems to be looking for anymore, and he also found himself."--Roger Ebert

"On The Road for a new century."--Michael Lesy, author of Wisconsin Death Trip

One day James A. Reeves realized that he no longer understood his country or what he should be doing in it. There was a time when the road to manhood was clear--go to war, find a job with a big company, wear a tie, and start a family--but then the wars got strange and companies changed. He decided to go for a drive to clear his head. What resulted is a scattershot journey spanning five years, forty thousand miles, twelve speeding tickets, and several moments of unexpected kindness through the neon corridors and dark corners of America.

James A. Reeves is a writer, educator, and designer. He has taught courses in design, research, history, and visual culture at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. He lives in New Orleans.


In the months ahead, M&Q will be hosting great authors including
  • Henry Emmons (October 5)
  • Russell Banks (October 18)
  • Alan Hollinghurst (October 27)
A complete listing of all our events is always available at www.magersandquinn.com.

The 48th annual Uptown Art Fair kicks off at noon on Friday, August 5, and continues through Sunday, August 6. Over 360 talented artists from around the world will display their work. Browse thousands of pieces of sculpture, painting, ceramics, jewelry, and more. This year's fair also features food and beverages from over 20 vendors, and expanded outdoor wine garden, and interactive art activities at the Family Imagination Station.

Download a free Metro Transit pass and get more information at www.uptownartfair.com.

Several recent bestsellers are now available in paperback. Here are a few of our favorites.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

In the store: $13.45
Online: $11.21 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.00
Available Now
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.


F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography edited by James L West III

In the store: $13.50
Online: $11.25 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.00
Available Now
F. Scott Fitzgerald proposed a collection of his personal essays to his editor Maxwell Perkins twice during the last decade of his life. Perkins was unenthusiastic on both occasions, and in 1940 the great writer died without having published an autobiographical memoir of any kind. Now, this comprehensive collection reveals the author in his own words.

A Short Autobiography charts Fitzgerald's progression from exuberant and cocky with "What I Think and Feel at 25", to mature and reflective with "One Hundred False Starts" and "The Death of My Father." Compiled and edited by Professor James West, this revealing collection of personal essays and articles reveals the beloved author in his own words.


Secret Historian by Justin Spring

In the store: $16.20
Online: $13.50 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $18.00
Available Now
Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very funny) detail. After leaving the world of academe to become Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street, Samuel Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his name and identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat pro-homosexual pornography under the name of Phil Andros.

An extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, provided Justin Spring with the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. More than the story of one remarkable man, Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation.


To the End of the Land by David Grossman

In the store: $14.35
Online: $11.96 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.95
Available August 9
David Grossman's novel of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time from one of Israel's greatest writers.

Ora is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from Israeli army service when he voluntarily rejoins. In a fit of magical thinking, she takes off to hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the "notifiers" who might deliver the worst news a parent can hear. Recently estranged from her husband, she drags along an unlikely companion: their once best friend Avram, who was tortured as a POW during the Yom Kippur War and, in his brokenness, refused to ever know the boy or even to keep in touch with them.

Now, as they hike, Ora unfurls the story of her motherhood and initiates the lonely Avram in the drama of the human family-a telling that keeps Ofer alive for both his mother and the reader. Her story places the most hideous trials of war alongside the daily joys and anguish of raising children: never have we seen so clearly the reality and surreality of daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, the burdens that fall on each generation anew.

Magers & Quinn Booksellers and Penguin Publishing have an offer to help jumpstart your book club. One lucky winner will receive copies of four great novels--and a totebag to carry them in. Everyone can pick up a free copy of Penguin's sampler, What the World is Reading, while they last.

The books free books are

Stop in the store all this month to enter. The winner will be chosen August 27.
We've got the first batch of 2012 calendars in the store right now. We have calendars featuring birds, bugs, and art by Charley Harper, Georgia O'Keeffe, or Mark Rothko, to name just a few. Take your pick while the selection is at its best.


Books & Bars isn't your mother's book club. We provide a unique atmosphere for a lively discussion of interesting authors, fun people, good food and drinks. This month's meeting will be Tuesday, August 9, at the Aster Cafe. Doors open at 6:00pm; the discussion begins at 7:00pm. Call 612/379-3138 for table reservations.

In the store: As low as $8.99
Publisher's price: $14.99
Available Now
August's book pick is Room by Emma Donoghue. To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.


Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide a unique atmosphere for a lively discussion of interesting authors, fun people, good food and drinks. You're welcome even if you haven't read the book.

Books & Bars is presented by Jeff Kamin and Magers & Quinn Booksellers, sponsored by Aster Cafe, Metro Magazine and Fulton Beer.


Magers & Quinn is the largest independent bookstore in the Twin Cities. Stop in today or check our inventory on our website any time.

We'll be back next month with more great book news.

Until then,


David Enyeart
Magers and Quinn Booksellers

Write us: [email protected]
Call us: 612/822-4611
Or visit our website: http://www.magersandquinn.com