As 2019 comes to an end, readers are looking for stories and writing that can help them understand a fracturing world, experts from three Salt Lake City bookshops agree.
For its annual Holiday Books show, RadioWest gathered Betsy Burton, owner of The King’s English Bookshop; Catherine Weller, the new book buyer for Weller Book Works; and Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books, to discuss their favorites from the year and for gifting.
Host Doug Fabrizio began by asking what’s on the minds of their customers. Readers are “now looking in a different way at books — not just to escape into, but books that can patch their world together,” Burton said.
There’s nothing like confusing times, Weller added, “to make people want to hit pause and take a second to delve a little bit deeper.”
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Weller Book Works has “seen a big resurgence in issues-oriented books. And that doesn’t just fall into my choice [current affairs and political science] sections. It also folds into fiction, too. You see ... people appreciating fiction for what it can do, which is help people see through a different lens.”
To hear more about their selections, including in picture books, children’s books and in a special lightning round, find KUER’s recording of the Nov. 29 show at radiowest.kuer.org, which also has full lists of their choices. Among their fiction and nonfiction titles for adults:
“Erosion: Essays of Undoing” by Terry Tempest Williams • Williams’ new book is one of the Utah author’s best yet, Sanders said, and “one of her most activist books yet in her long and storied career.”
Her theme of erosion feels especially relevant now, Burton added: “Erosion in a personal way of her life; erosion of the Earth, God knows; inability to stop that erosion because of what’s going on; erosion of our democracy; erosion of our Constitution. ... And so into this theater comes Terry, whose life already had eroded [through leaving an endowed position at the University of Utah and the death of a brother].
“... And what erosion does, according to Terry, is undoes, and then, becomes. And this is the hope that is always in Terry Tempest Williams books.”
“The Body: A Guide for Occupants” by Bill Bryson • “Every single chapter is like a chapter in a wonderful novel. You’re totally engaged and entranced. You learn more about the body than most of us who don’t study medicine will ever know,” Burton said. “It’s a wonderful present for almost anyone.”
“Underland” by Robert Macfarlane • The book “is subtitled ‘The Deep Time Journey,’ and it is all things, or many things, underground,” Weller said, mentioning sections that describe a railroad tunnel that leads underneath the “tourist” level of catacombs in Paris, trails of fungus that interact with trees, nuclear waste repositories and salt domes. “It’s absolutely fascinating. ... It’s a great book to delve into in the cold months.”
“The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood • Customers say “Oh, no, no, I can’t take a dystopian novel, please,” Burton said. “And I’m here to say that this is no dystopian novel. This is its opposite. This is women fighting back.”
The characters include a protester who lives in Canada; the daughter of one of the commanders; and an enforcer, she said. “All of these women are plotting the overthrow of Gilead. It reads like a thriller. ... It gives you faith, not the opposite, which is good.”
“Country” by Michael Hughes • This mystery “is about The Troubles, but it is also a retelling of ‘The Iliad,’“ Burton said. “And it has that extraordinary cadence ‘The Iliad’ has, just this powerful, powerful storytelling.”
“Out of Darkness, Shining Light” by Petina Gappah • The story begins with explorer David Livingstone alive and then “the people who work under him, slaves one and all,” Burton said, carry his body across the African continent after his death. “The voices are funny, sometimes in a Jane Austen-ish way. They’re wonderful. And through it all, you see the slave trade, not up close, but everywhere, nonetheless,” she said.
“Nothing to See Here” by Kevin Wilson • Lillian, who took the rap for her roommate’s drug possession at a fancy boarding school, is summoned years later to care for twins — who are the children of a senator who has married the now-very-wealthy former roommate, Weller said. The twins, “it turns out, just spontaneously combust. They just burst into flames when things get really emotional,” Weller said.
The story of how Lillian “bonds with these twins, how she becomes protective of them, how she processes her own lack and betrayal that has happened in her life” is followed by “the twist that needs to happen,” Weller said. “... The arc is perfect.”
“Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” by Andrea Lawlor • “Think of this as a very, very smutty ‘Tales of the City,’” Weller warned. “It is about a man who is sometimes a woman. ... Paul can willingly transition from one sex to the other. ... In both manifestations, he is gay, so he is pretty thoroughly queer.”
Paul is “in pursuit of connection and love and just meeting and experiencing the next person over and over again,” she said. “If you don’t mind [the very explicit sex], you’re going to love it, because it truly is a literary novel too.”
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk • This is a mystery on one level, Weller said, “but it is also a wonderful ode to William Blake. It is the tale of a woman who lives in the forests of Poland taking care of rich people’s dachas and translating William Blake. She is as thoroughly immersed into connection with the natural world as Blake is. So when people start turning up dead in the small community in the winter time, it’s very easy for her to conclude that the animals are killing them, and why.”
“Hollow Kingdom” by Kira Jane Buxton • “If you thought that the zombie novel had been done in every possible manifestation,” Weller said, “I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. This is narrated by a crow who is out to liberate the animals who are locked in the houses of people who have turned into zombies in Seattle.”
“Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power” by Pekka Hamalainen • Hamalainen describes the history of the Lakota “from its roots as an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe in the late 1600s, to a river people in the 1700s and then evolving yet again into a people that is horse-mounted and fearsome warriors,” Weller said. “... This is a big, bracing, beautiful book. It is vigorous in its scholarship and yet really easy and enjoyable to read.”
“Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters” by Rebecca Solnit • In these essays, Solnit “delves deeper in to the question of representation in story,” Weller said. “Who gets to have the point of view, who gets to have the picture drawn of them in the writing; that choice allocates power right there. ... She’s seminal reading for people who like to understand the shifting culture wars and shifting perspectives.”
“Cicada” by Shaun Tan • This is a book for kids, Weller said, but Tan’s illustrations — “so evocative of longing and isolation” — are really for adults. Cicada, an oppressed salary man, er, cicada, has a suit, a briefcase and a lonely cubicle. “Until one day,” Weller said, “magic happens. It’s good for anybody who is suffering a lot of burnout.”
“Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism” by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova • Rather than talking about this book, Sanders read chapter titles, presented as rules: Be a pirate. Do it yourself. Take back the joy. Make your government crap its pants. (“I censored that,” Sanders noted.) Commit an art crime. Spot an abuse of power. And more. “I just I can’t say enough about this book or her taking on the powers that be,” Sanders said.
“Permanent Record” by Edward Snowden • “All I can say about this book is you should read it for yourself, and I’m so scared by it that … I don’t think I can carry this phone around anymore, I don’t think I can get near a computer,” Sanders said. “The things that our government is doing to us, I don’t know how we got in this situation and why we tolerate it. If you read this book, you’ll probably go electronic free next year.”
“An American Sunrise” by Joy Harjo • Harjo was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States this year and is the first Native American poet selected for the post. “It’s important that we’ve recognized her work as not only a woman, but a Native American woman," Sanders said. "I think this is the path back to empowerment.”
“One Long River of Song” by Brian Doyle • The novelist, who often wrote about nature, died in 2017, and this book offers “short and easy pieces” that are “are all over the map,” said Burton, who read an excerpt about the mechanics of first kisses. “I think this, of all the books that I know of at The King’s English this year, is kind of the perfect present for absolutely everybody.”