Ok, so it's not a new book we like, but it's worth your attention. After showing to packed houses at The Balboa Theater, we finally have copies of this very cool documentary of our late and lamented Playland at the Beach.  With vintage footage of the Fun House (remember that slide?), Laffing Sal, the Diving Bell, and of course the Big Dipper, take a trip to the foggy west end of yesteryear.

Tiger: a True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf)
Green Appler Jeff M says:"Tiger is an incredible work on many levels.

It's a natural history of the strange and remote Russian Far East. At the same latitude as the south of France, this area suffers brutal Arctic winters.  During the last ice age, however, it was a glacier-free oasis, and the animals that share territory here are not found anywhere in the world.  It's also home to the Amur tiger, the world's largest and rarest cat.

It's also a socio-political study of a border region with a dwindling population of desperately poor people left behind after the state subsidies (which supported their factory towns) ended in the early 1990s.

It's also a page-turning, non-fiction thriller, wherein an underfunded cop must work with villagers who mistrust him to hunt a preternaturally cunning and destructive beast which has taken to obliterating (!) local residents.

Tiger is my favorite book of 2010 by a wide margin.  I can't recommend it highly enough!"

The Grand Design (Bantam)
Stephen Hawking (along with Caltech physicist Mlodinow) returns,  pondering the ultimate questions of life (with plenty of color illustrations too): When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing?  Here is the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language even you (yes, you) can understand.

City of Veils (Little Brown)
Green Appler Martin says: "I was completely overwhelmed by this novel.  Zoe Ferraris does an incredible job of showing the lives, both inner and outer, of her characters, with compassion and honesty.  While this is technically a murder mystery, it's really a look at various cultures in Saudi Arabia today, and how everyone--both male and female, conservative and 'liberal,' is adjusting to today's world with all of its contradictions."

Room (Little Brown)
Green Appler Martin says: "Emma Donoghue has caught lightning in a bottle with this book.  Room breathes new life into an old familiar genre, and in doing so, surpasses any and all expectations you might have.  I do not usually re-read books, but within a month of picking up this book. I had read it cover to cover twice."  Oh, and it's been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Zero History (Putnam)
With the publication of Pattern Recognition in 2003, William Gibson abandoned the future, and settled in the present day for his speculative fiction. It didn't change the quality of his stories, it just grounded them in what is actually possible today. Zero History is the third in the Bigend trilogy, (named after an odd financial genius with a lot of different interests who runs the show in all three books). Zero History (named for a character who has no address or history, and thus cannot be traced online) has a lot of different themes running through it, although the primary themes include cutting edge fashion and independent military contractors. Only William Gibson could get those two to intermingle, and do it well. ZH is a great read, giving us a bit more insight into Gibson's fascination with, and concerns about, surveillance, viral marketing, hacker culture, addiction and recovery, and the Russian Ekranoplan aircraft. As I said, only William Gibson. Zero History can be read independently of it's two predecessors (Pattern Recognition and Spook Country) but having read those two will give you more insight into this novel.
PS. Mr. Gibson was kind enough to stop in last week, so we have a few signed copies available, but be quick about it; they won't last long.

Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (Belknap)
If a trial were being held arguing the merits of the e-book vs. the printed book, one of the arguments in favor of the latter would be "the book as object": that tactile sense of wonder one gets when holding a beautiful object in one's hands.  Dickinson is hereby entered as Exhibit A.  Vendler does a close reading of 150 of Emily Dickinson's poems, and accompanies each with an essay explaining how to read each one. She explains Dickinson's intricate, fast-changing metaphors, her emotional extremes, her metrical oddities, and her frequent dissent from organized religion.  The collection anticipates readers who will open it up at random, read through at leisure, or else search for a specific poem: it may overwhelm those who attempt to read it straight through. Yet that depth, that concentration on single poem after single poem, is one source of its strength: riddling, idiosyncratic, sometimes coy, and extraordinarily intelligent, Dickinson's poems respond almost ideally to the analysis Vendler is best equipped to give.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat (Harper)
The title and subtitle say it all: why do some animals (the friendly cow, for example) make the carnivores among us hungry, while others (the horse standing next to that cow) we wouldn't think of eating (unless we're French).  Other questions Herzog takes on: Does living with a pet really make people happier and healthier? Why is it wrong to eat the family dog?  With insight and humor (and a refreshing lack of preachiness), he looks at the full spectrum of human-animal relations, blending anthropology, evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, and philosophy.

The Wave (Doubleday)
By Susan Casey, the author of the fantastic Devil's Teeth (about great white sharks and the Farallon Islands) comes this book about giant waves, those elite surfers who ride them, and the ships that collide with them.  We're talking adrenaline-pumping "man vs. nature" stuff here, people.  Enjoy the rush.