The Last Lecture review

If you have internet access and you’re familiar with the video of Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University, you may not get much out of this review.  The book is an extension of the lecture itself however, so it is certainly worth reading!  For anyone not familiar with the impetus of the book, it stems from a tradition at Carnegie Mellon of inviting professors to deliver a message of ultimate importance in a series called “Journeys.”  Pausch had already been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when he was invited to give his last lecture, so it took on more meaning than the series intended.  Pausch delivered an inspiring lecture on achieving childhood dreams that has gone on to touch innumerably more lives than those that packed the hall that day.  A computer science professor, he must have been delighted by the way the video has been propagated online.  As a father of three young children, Pausch directed his comments to leave a legacy for his kids, and that legacy has become something of a phenomenon.

I can’t really say that I took away any new life lessons from reading the book, but that isn’t saying it didn’t resonate with me.  His mentality of overcoming obstacles was similar to my own (“Brick walls are there to keep out those who don’t want it enough”), and I was impressed by how far that mindset took him.  I could also identify with his experience playing football and his “recovering jerk” status.  Like Pausch I have two sons and a daughter, and this book has prompted me to ponder the legacy I am leaving for them, which is one of the primary services of reading.  This happens to be a terrific New Year’s Eve read!

Sashenka review

Simon Montefiore, the author who gave us Young Stalin, now gives us a fictional female revolutionary, Sashenka.  Sashenka is perfectly positioned in history – the teenage daughter of a Jewish oil baron in Petrograd, she joins the Bolshevik party prior to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.  After the October Revolution she takes dictation from Lenin, marries a party stalwart, and hosts a May Day party at their dacha attended by Stalin and Beria.  Sashenka leads an exemplary proletarian life, editing a magazine for Soviet housewives.  She is described by many of the male characters as being an unforgettable beauty, and that is her undoing.  Sashenka is placed upon a pedestal by the men around her (including the author), and the only way off is a tragic fall.  The only means of survival in Stalin’s Soviet Union was to draw as little attention as possible; those individuals closest to Stalin received the most intense scrutiny, and thus faced the greatest danger.  Sashenka was too memorable, too beautiful to survive in such a cruel society.  Her children did survive, hidden from the NKVD by someone inside the vast, powerful organization, and because of them a young historian is enlisted to penetrate the thicket of archives in the 1990s to uncover Sashenka’s ultimate fate.

Events transpire too quickly in this book.  Sashenka wants to join the party, so she does.  She wants the street cred of being arrested, and she is.  Her well-connected and wealthy parents want her released as soon as possible, and she is.  Men want women, and they get them.  A young historian is hired to find Sashenka’s children, and she does.  There is no dramatic build up in the events, so Montefiore resorts to melodramatic language, especially in dialogue and at the ends of chapters.  Montefiore’s extensive research and his love for research are evident, as is his love for his heroine.  Even in her callous demise Montefiore preserves her beauty, like a statue on a pedestal.  As a result of this adoration Sashenka comes across like a statue, an artistic creation, a representation of a woman but not a real person.

Merry Christmas … to me!

Okay, so two of the four books are actually for my son (I suppose I ought to verify whether or not he reads my blog), but the other two are for me!  And since the image is too small to read the titles, I’ll just tell you that the four books are Alcatraz versus the Scrivener’s Bones and Elantris by Brandon Sanderson and The Candy Shop War and Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague by Brandon Mull.  A week ago we were fortunate enough to have both Brandons as well as Robert C. Steensma, author of Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City, signing books in our store as part of our annual Staff & Faculty Night.  The event was a success for the store and for me personally, as I now have signed hard cover copies of every title currently available from Brandon Mull and Brandon Sanderson!

One More Year review

Two of the stories in this collection have been featured in The New Yorker, so I was excited when I saw a review copy of One More Year by Sana Krasikov arrive in the mail.  These tales of Russian and Georgian immigrants hoping for better lives through love in its myriad muddied forms are honest and unflinching.  Arranged marriages, affairs, and acceptance are commonplace as Krasikov accurately portrays the challenges of women who seek refuge in the attention and arms of all types of men, from the insolent to the impotent.  Although culturally-specific, these stories of love fostered and squandered resonate across international borders.  Krasikov, who has drawn comparisons to Jhumpa Lahiri and ZZ Packer, belongs to the same bilingual and bicultural class as Lara Vapnyar and Anya Ulinich.

Hand-selling Books

Like Steve Carell’s character in “Dan in Real Life”, bookstore employees pride themselves on hand-selling books.  Unlike Dan they do it for a living, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude romantic entanglements similar to the one that made the movie so enjoyable.  The nature of hand-selling is getting to know the customer’s preferences and introducing them to a book they can fall in love with, after all!  Sales reps from publishers provide the same service to bookstore employees, making recommendations based upon each store’s unique clientele.  This requires developing a personal relationship that goes far beyond ad copy in a catalog.  Some of our reps have forged those candid relationships with us, only to have them sundered by the current retail climate.  Henry Hubert, the independent rep who shared with me The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr, was forced into another line of work when his expenses exceeded his income.  It’s not just the independent reps who are cutting back, however.  Scholastic cut Dawn Kehret’s position when they couldn’t get enough volunteers for early retirement.  Larry Yoder was forced to retire a year early by MacMillan.  We will get new reps who may be every bit as enthusiastic and capable as Henry, Dawn, and Yoder, but they won’t have the same rapport with us.  They won’t have as much time to develop that relationship, either, now that they will have larger territories to cover.  We still have John T. Lake as our Pearson rep, but he is now responsible for every account west of Chicago as a result of restructuring.  This does not bode well for the publishing industry.  Books need publishers, so the houses must be fiscally responsible, but bookselling needs the personal touch, too.  Hand-selling books is absolutely critical in lean times, at every level.  We’ll miss you, Henry, Dawn, and Yoder!