i found this gem of a book when i was working our catalogs the other day and had to build a file for the paperback that is coming out this spring.

i realize that i’m way too young to remember when bozo the clown was portrayed by larry harmon but i do remember the  show when bozo was played by joey d’auria.

“Harmon had the vision and drive to take advantage of the growing television industry and make a better future for Bozo. He renamed the character “Bozo, The World’s Most Famous Clown” and modified the voice, laugh and costume. He then worked with a wig stylist to get the wing-tipped bright orange style and look of the hair that had previously appeared in Capitol’s Bozo comic books.” –wikipedia

the most vivid memory i have of the show is the bozo bucket bonanza grad prize game where kids had to toss the ping pong balls into the the numbered buckets in sequential order to win a prize.

to keep with my last blogs theme of amazing book art, the design and layout of the book is quite remarkable.  the book was designed by Meat and Potatoes, Inc.

“Kick off your shoes, take a deep breath, and pull up a seat next to your ol’ pal. You’re many fingers old now, so I can tell you things I never dared to share when you were younger.  Let’s start off by talking about love.  Yes, love.  Because as long as there’s love, there are going to be kids.  And as long as there are kids, there’s going to be a world.  And as long as there’s a world, there’s going to be a Bozo, which means there will be a me.  And this is my story.  It is also Bozo’s story.  And what a story it is…” -from the back cover

There’s a particular criticism of devoted readers that I hear occasionally — a challenge to just stop reading about things and to go out and actually do them instead. I’ve often wondered if those who make this challenge have ever read a really, really good book. I wonder this because my experience has been that very few things spark my interest in a particular subject as much as a great book. The reader isn’t sidestepping actually experiencing real life — he or she is being introduced to parts of life that are normally inaccessible. It’s the beginning of the experience, not the totality of it. Surely I am not the only one who recalls, as a child, finding that one great book that sparked one’s interest, and then the continued search for more books and more information and more access to the subject.

There’s a reason this is on my mind — I am reading Frank Brady’s new book, Endgame, about Bobby Fischer. I loved playing chess as a child — I remember learning the game sometime in the 3rd or 4th grade, and playing frequently at school and with friends. I remember reading a few “Chess for Beginners”-type books. I was never a particularly strong player (my chess zenith was beating a teacher who had once won a match against the Junior Champion of Britain whilst said champion was watching TV and eating a sandwich), but I enjoyed it. And then, I stopped playing. Not intentionally. Other parts of my life just crowded it out.

Endgame has forced me to question why I dropped chess. It’s really the story of a troubled genius, not a book about chess, but it brought chess back into my mind, and made me remember why I enjoyed it. I’ve caught myself thinking through old chess questions or problems I had, Googling for more information, and looking for chess apps for my phone. Not because I plan to make chess a central part of my life — but because a book made it interesting to me again.

I said that Endgame is not really about chess, and I think that’s true — chess is the background, not the story itself. As I’ve read it, I’ve been struck by the parallels to The Fall of the House of Zeus. I don’t know that Dickie Scruggs counts as a “genius” in quite the same way that Bobby Fischer did, but there’s no question that he saw angles nobody else did and accomplished things nobody else could. And both Bobby and Dickie, heady with their own success, ignored the cautionary voices around them and indulged their own fantasies of invincibility. And both fell hard, in their respective arenas.

I know I’ve rambled a bit here, but sometimes I feel like that’s the appropriate response to a book — to ramble from thought to thought, to ruminate and consider. Some books throw everything into sharp contrast, and demand an immediate response, but other books are quieter. They may not change your life, but they can still add something to it.

Well, it seems as though Cleopatra has finally met her match and her name is Stacy Schiff. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, let me enlighten you. Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow at the center for Scholars & Writers, and received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

And to put the icing on the cake, yesterday, the New York Times came out with their list of the Top Ten Best Books of 2010 and Cleopatra was right there!

As Schiff said in a recent interview:

“Cleopatra was born a goddess, became a queen at 18 and at the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. Having inherited a kingdom in decline, Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all.”

She continued:

“I wanted to take a story we have completely mangled – few as effectively as Cleopatra – and make this both a factual book and a readable book, for people who are not trained historians. I wanted to make her approachable but also strip away the incredible gossamer myth floating around her all the time. After Eve and Mary, Cleopatra may be the most written about woman ever.”

I think it’s fabulous when such a well known, respected writer takes on a person whose life has been completely misunderstood and gives them their due. Certainly, we all think we know a lot about Cleopatra; she looks like Elizabeth Taylor; wore an incredible amount of eye liner and seduced a lot of really famous men–Julius Caesar and Marc Antony for starters. And oh yeah, she committed suicide by bringing a poisonous asp (snake) into her bed. Truth is, only the barest of facts are known about her and from an historical perspective, her life can be proven in only the tiniest of bits and pieces. Schiff has uncovered every one and the result is a definitive biography on a truly fascinating woman. -Norma

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (Penguin, 2010)

This is not your daddy’s biography on Washington…it’s Ron Chernow’s.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe some of his former books will. His first book was The House of Morgan which won the National Book Award. He followed that with biographies on Alexander Hamilton and most recently, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller,  Sr. Both of those were nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography.

In an interview with The New York Times recently, Chernow explained what prompted him to undertake this newest subject matter. He had learned that there was an ongoing project at the University of Virginia dealing with Washington’s papers that was begun in 1968 and to date has filled roughly sixty volumes with information, much of it new. Chernow felt this was the time to write a “cradle to grave” biography of arguably the most important person in our nation’s history.

When one thinks about the lives of other famous American patriots like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin there comes to mind a good bit of knowledge–both important and antidoctal. We know enough to have a full picture of them as patriots and men but not so much with Washington. What pops in our heads is: cutting down the cherry tree, his wooden dentures and crossing the Delaware. And he really doesn’t look very interesting in that portrait that hangs on the wall of every elementary school room.

Chernow was determined, though, to flesh out this person not many of us know. Washington was an accomplished horseman, an elegant dancer, a hunter and an extremely vain man. He worried to death over what he should wear to his inauguration! He had a very difficult mother, was infatuated with an older married woman named Sally Fairfax and left strict instructions in his will that his slaves at Mount Vernon were to be freed upon Martha’s death and that’s only the beginning…

I am a history buff so this book looks fascinating to me but even if you are not, as Americans, it would behoove us all to know more of our nation’s past and those people who played a particularly important part in its creation, none more so than George Washington. -Norma

Well, I know one thing. I won’t be forgetting this book or this man for a very long time. I also think that everybody needs to read it and here’s why.

It seems to me that we are living in a very strange time. There are wars happening all around us and to us–the economic world we knew just a few years ago is gone. There are vast oil spills in our oceans and meteors that seem to be passing awfully close to earth. We have world class athletes who have all taken steroids and lied about it under oath and politicians who don’t seem to know what in the world they believe and will change their minds or their party if it will be beneficial. Everyone strives for political correctness so no one wants to take a stand on whether or not a mosque should be built down the street from Ground Zero. I’m not sure which side is right but I get dizzy watching everyone hop back and forth, terrified to land. No one wants to be definitive for fear of offending someone else.

Where are all the great leaders? Those rare men and women who stand out in times of great world crisis? Beats me. I don’t think I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of anyone even remotely ‘great’ in quite a while. I don’t mean to be a cynic, it’s just the truth.

Well, Bonhoeffer was great.

I’m not going to tell you everything that happens in this book but suffice it to say, in the end, he dies. Well, so what? A lot of people died in WWII; many were hung in concentration camps. What’s the big hoopla over one more? Well, Bonhoeffer was both ordinary and extraordinary. He was an academic, a renowned theologian, a pastor who loved people more than he cared about how ‘good’ they were or whether they agreed with him or not. He understood that love was the most important thing of all….love for God, one’s family and one’s country. Bonhoeffer loved Germany and he was not alone. I came to realize that there were so many godly Germans that the horror of all that happened is more horrible than I could have ever realized because those German people weren’t that much different from you and me. I tend to see them all with horns and certainly the unadulterated evil that took place is more than I can begin to digest.

If history is to teach us lessons not to be repeated, then please, oh please, let us learn. Let good men and women bravely stand up for what they believe. Let feelings about mosques and those who think differently from us be viewed from a sense of love and compassion and not doggedly on what we think is right or wrong. A people divided will ultimately fall.

There is bravery and self sacrifice on every page of this book. There is faith and forgiveness and redemption shown in the words and the lives of ordinary people. There is raw evil and indescribable beauty. There is greatness shown forth in all its glory and there is proof that one man can make a difference.

I wonder what I would do if all that happened to Bonhoeffer happened to me. I pray that it would matter to me, that I would stand out and not blend in, that there would be something in me that made people feel closer and not farther apart and that I would welcome difficult things realizing that I was so inconsequential but at the same time, absolutely vital.

I hope you read this book and come away affected. We don’t allow ourselves to be nearly affected enough. -Norma

All I can say is wow.

I have been noticing this book for several weeks but I felt it too intimidating to actually read. Then my dear friend and bookstore colleague, Pat, told me she was reading it and not wanting to be outdone, I decided that I would as well! The book is: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. I was somewhat familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I knew he was a Christian pastor and important theologian who somehow died in a concentration camp in Germany during WWII.

I’m only five chapters in but I am completely hooked. There is so much more to this man than I could have ever imagined. Right now, I am immersed in his childhood and enjoying the stories of the Bonhoeffer home life which was in every sense idyllic. Dietrich’s parents were both extremely bright and well connected. On the maternal line, there had been influential artists, musicians, professors and members of the German royal court. On the paternal line, there were lawyers, doctors, professors and pastors. Dietrich’s father was a very prominent and well respected psychiatrist and his mother was also extremely bright and talented. The parents seemed to be in close agreement as to the raising of their children but it was Paula, who would teach them in the early years of their educations. She was very religious and felt it vital that her children be well schooled in all aspects of the Bible. The elder Bonhoeffer was not religious, thinking himself too intellectual but wanting his children to exhibit the morals and values that he felt could be learned from religion. Their life was filled with great love and respect for each other. Dietrich was one of eight children; all of whom showed intellectual prowess and varying degrees of artistic and musical talents. The love and wonder of these early years show no fore-shadowing of all the heartache that is to come.

I have long been interested in WWII and have thought for hours of how in the world did all that happen? How did Hitler gain such immense and pervasive control over an entire country? How did a few brainwash millions? How could seemingly ordinary people be convinced to carry out and condone atrocities which are unspeakable?

So far in my reading, I have learned a lot. I am piecing together a picture of pre-war Germany and of the German people that is putting better perspective on my questions. I am struck by the Germany which WAS and was later LOST. Before Hitler, before Germany declared war against Russia in 1914, Germany was a land of cultured and brilliant people; the country of Martin Luther; a religious and ordered place where music, opera and civility abounded and always was steeped in a strong sense of nationalism for their beloved country. But how does this Germany become that Germany?

I know that one day Dietrich Bonhoeffer will proclaim that he “believed it the plain duty of the Christian—and the privilege and honor—to suffer with those who suffered.” He will preach that ‘not to act’ is in fact ‘to act’ and that it is a Christian’s duty to make a stand for what he believes. I know that Bonhoeffer will make staggering choices that will cost him his life. All the cataclysmic pieces which need to fall are falling into place as I read page after page.

I’m going to blog about this book in installments. It’s too good and too important to tackle as a whole.

To be continued…

-Norma

As I was straightening some bookshelves this week, I came upon a new memoir: Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. Everyone knows that I am a sucker for memoirs, especially sad ones, so I grabbed it and started reading. It is the story of a friendship between Gail Caldwell and Carolyn Knapp.

If Knapp’s name seems familiar to you, she wrote several bestselling memoirs a few years ago. Her most popular work was, Drinking: A Love Story, which was on the New York Times list for several months. Knapp was, as she put it, a ”high-functioning alcoholic” as well as an award-winning journalist and Ivy League graduate from a prominent New England family. She appeared to be a happy and successful young woman but drinking had slowly taken hold of her life. Sadly, she would die from lung cancer at the age of forty two.

Knapp and Caldwell met when they were middle aged and a unique friendship began. Both were writers who had struggled with alcohol and also shared a great love of books.

Gail Caldwell is chief book critic for the Boston Globe and in 2001 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.  She opens her memoir with“It’s an old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that.” She also wrote, “Death is a cliche until you’re in it.’’ How true, how true.

This book begins with Knapp’s death but Caldwell chronologically unfolds the back story of their relationship; telling how Knapp was the perfect friend but even funnier and more interesting than one could have imagined. They shared a passion for dogs and spent many hours talking while taking their dogs on long walks.

“What they never tell you about grief,’’ Caldwell writes, “is that missing someone is the simple part.’’ Seemingly small things take on huge proportions. For instance, she can’t force herself to throw out her set of keys to Knapp’s house. “These are keys to locks and doors that no longer exist, and I keep them in my glove compartment, where they have been moved from one car to another in the past couple of years.’’

As one reviewer put it, “Maybe the story of Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp’s friendship is an old story. But it is also a holy story. A familiar yet emotionally complex story that can bring a reader to tears.” For sure. -Norma

I went to hear Mary Karr read at Lemuria Wednesday night.

I was familiar with her name but had never read any of her memoirs or poetry. Her latest book, LIT, had caught my eye with its fabulous front cover and knowing she was coming soon, I picked it up last week.

I finished it in two and a half days. When I walked in to hear her, I had only finished the book a couple of hours before. As often happens, it can take me a little time to transition back into the present world after being so “immersed” so I was still somewhat dreamy and emotional when I arrived.

I knew who she was immediately.

I wanted to fall on her and say, “Are you alright? Are you happy? How is Dev?” She was my friend. She just didn’t know it! I cared deeply about her. I longed to sit down and flip through so many passages that had moved me or made me laugh. But I also felt like maybe I knew too much about her…too much of her. I knew her sins; her terrors; her doubts and hopelessness but also her strength, determination, courage and wit. I admired her refusal to repeat history with her own child and the incredible willingness to open herself to wonder about previously unthinkable things like faith. Without ever meeting her, I felt like we were on hallowed ground.

Strange, isn’t it? That someone’s words can move us and affect us so strongly. But that’s the power of great writing and of great memoirs especially.

It wasn’t so much MARY KARR who got to me…but the ME that Mary Karr got to…that made all those feelings come to the surface. Great writing that also happens to be “true life” seems able to penetrate our defenses in a unique way. Even if those experiences have nothing to do with any of my own life experiences. I can still take them in, still be moved by them and on special rare occasions even be changed by them.

I think that is why the outrage was so huge when we learned that James Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces” had been partly untrue. We felt betrayed, made fools of, swindled. Why such a gigantic reaction? It certainly appeared to be out of proportion. Why do I care what James Frey made up or what was true? I think it was because he had touched us somewhere way down deep; scraped the scab off some long ago feeling of wanting to redeem ourselves and make our life count. I know that I want to count.not that I’d ever tell you perhaps but books can put a name on feelings and a voice to thoughts that we are too afraid or embarrassed to utter ourselves. Thus is their power.

In Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen writes,

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

I could never put those gorgeous words down on paper but I know that feeling, I resonate with that longing and those words have stayed in my soul for years since I first read them.

Karr ends her book with some more words that I hope will be just as hard to forget for they bring to life a sense of wonder and renewed hope that fills her soul and can teach mine.

“Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we’re formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back, which can galvanize you like steel and make resilient what had heretofore only been soft flesh. It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath on you. Even unto death.”

Read LIT.

Also: here are Billie and Lisa’s blogs on Mary Karr.

-Norma