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Weekly Words about Books FEBRUARY 10, 2013
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ON VALENTINE'S DAY,
SHOW YOUR VOLUMES OF LOVE
| There are many ways to show your sweetie that you care this week (note to my family: a tie is not one of them), but for readers, what could be better than a new good book? Your local independent bookstore is a great place to shop for Valentine's Day, and here are two brand-new titles (due by Tuesday) that could make heartfelt impressions.
EVERY MONTH, INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS around the country send in short reviews of their favorite new books to the American Booksellers Association,  which creates an Indie Next list for each month. The list features the 20 titles that received the most recommendations from booksellers and spotlights the #1 title. For February, independent booksellers' favorite new book is The House Girl by Tara Conklin. It's a rich and fascinating novel with two remarkable heroines who live a century apart, and Conklin, a former corporate litigator, intertwines their lives to tell a story that combines art and history with love and family secrets. Here's one bookseller's review:
"Lina, a young, ambitious New York attorney in 2004, never knew her mother. Josephine, a young house slave in 1852, never knew her child. More than a century apart, their lives connect in unexpected ways. Corporate law offices, art museums, antebellum homes, and the Underground Railroad provide the setting for a story filled with secrets, betrayals, and love. Does the 'House Girl' title apply to both women? The paths of these strong women will have the reader marveling at the layers Conklin has created to tell their intertwined stories."
- Beverly Bauer, Redbery Books, Cable, WI
| I'M A BIG MYSTERY/THRILLER FAN and like just about everything - whodunits, police procedurals, legal thrillers, crime dramas, you name it. If the characters are good, I don't care if they're wisecracking P.I.s, angst-ridden Scandinavian cops, strong laconic avengers, plucky amateur detectives, or anyone else who can catch the bad guys. And while I always look forward to the next installment of series featuring favorites like Jack Reacher, Harry Bosch, or Kinsey Milhone, there is something special about discovering both a new protagonist and new genre.
Which brings me to Ghostman, written by a young recent Reed College grad named Roger Hobbs who has created one of the most interesting lead characters I've come across in a while. The name he uses is Jack, but he tells us that's  not his real name, and he's a self-admitted armed robber, but that's not his real game. He's a guy who fixes things that go wrong (in this case, an armored truck robbery gone bad) by making them disappear. Jack agrees to sort out the botched hold-up for Marcus, a criminal he hates but to whom he owes a favor, and the book moves back and forth between Jack's investigation and flashbacks to the planning and execution of a spectacular bank robbery that was the cause of Jack's debt to Marcus. I'm not going to go into more detail, but if you're intrigued by now, I'm confident you will find this a terrific page-turner. If you're not intrigued but know someone who loves a good mystery, buy Ghostman for them and wait for the thanks you'll surely receive when they finish. And trust me, it won't be a long wait.
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WHY BOOKS
MAKE BETTER GIFTS THAN FLOWERS
| | Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and I loved this post on the website of the Brookline Bookmith in Massachusetts:
Folks, let's talk about something serious for a minute. I'm going to get right to it. In order for you to give flowers to your sweetie on Valentine's Day......you first have to kill the flowers. Sever them in the prime of their brief, radiant life. Or worse, hire some mercenary floral assassin to do the dirty work for you. What sort of monster have you become? You'll never be able to wash their chlorophyll off your hands.
Need an alternative to veg-icide? Why not save the roses and give your loved one the gift of reading?
Bookstores also use more than words to convey the Valentine's Day spirit, as this display created last year by Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland clearly shows.
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WHERE TO FIND A BOOKSTORE
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Many of you already have a favorite local bookstore, but for those of you without such a relationship, this link will take you to a list of Northern California indie bookstores by region.
If you live or work elsewhere, you can click here to find the nearest indie bookstore by simply entering your postal code.
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A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
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My name is Hut Landon. I'm a former bookstore owner who now runs the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) in San Francisco.
My goal with this newsletter is to keep readers up to date about new books hitting the shelves, share what booksellers are recommending in their stores, and pass on occasional news about the book world.
I'm not into long, wordy reviews or literary criticism; I'd like HUT'S PLACE to be a quick, fun read for book buyers.If you have any friends who you think might like receiving this column each week, simply click on "Forward this email" below and enter their email address. There is also a box in which to add a short message.
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