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Weekly Words about BooksApril 20, 2014
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Three New Nonfiction Titles That Inform and Inspire
| The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi. Rolling Stone journalist Taibbi offers up a scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis. He calls it the Divide and argues quite persuasively that our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. This Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by some in the superwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime -  but the Divide is impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.
And that's what Taibbi lays out for us, comparing the untouchable 1% and the criminalized poor. First he uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy by billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. Then it's on to the other side of the Divide, where he takes readers to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system, which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights. The Divide is an at-times enraging but important piece of advocacy journalism.
The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan. An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from a talented young Yale graduate. Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at The New Yorker. Tragically, less than a week after graduation, 22-year-old Keegan died in a car crash. In the ensuing days, as family, friends, and classmates organized a memorial, an essay she had published in the Yale Daily News on the eve of graduation went viral with more than 1.4 million hits. That's the title essay of this collection, which is undoubtedly attracting attention as a graduation gift at this time of year.
Here's the first paragraph of the now-famous essay:
"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness. But if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place." A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren. One of the leading new voices in
Washington, the senior senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard law professor has written a memoir that will interest her many fans and introduce her to many others. Starting with a c hildhood of struggle in Oklahoma City then moving to success in academia and politics, Warren traces a fascinating life that began with dreams of being a school teacher and led to her becoming a prestigious law professor with an increasing interest in bankruptcy laws and their deleterious impact on the struggling middle class.
She also writes about her rabble-rousing political life. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She later served as Assistant to the President for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Obama. That service helped seal her reputation as a consumer advocate and champion of the middle class and led to her successful Senate run. This is an unabashedly partisan autobiography, but Warren is a rising star whose passion and political beliefs are, for many, worth knowing more about. |
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California Bookstore Day Showcases Independents' Vitality
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On Saturday, May 3, an array of 93 independent bookstores in California will participate in California Bookstore Day, a celebration of bookselling and reading. The event is being billed as a series of 93 parties, with each participating store offering events and activities throughout the day. In addition, unique books and art pieces created exclusively for California Bookstore Day will be on sale in the stores. The event comes at a time when independent bookstores are showing continuing growth and stability, with increasing sales and new stores opening across the country. The hope is that this first California Bookstore Day will grow into a larger, perhaps even national, celebration. For those of you who live in California, I urge you to visit the website and find a participating store near you. For the rest of you, we'll keep you posted on plans for growing a larger annual Bookstore Day.  |
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WHERE TO FIND
AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE
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.
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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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