Imagine you’re hosting a literary Thanksgiving. Who’d be at your table? We’d invite Herman Melville (natch), and sit him next to Rebecca Solnit. Her new book Orwell’s Roses would necessitate George himself be invited. Certainly we’d love to invite Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. Guests of honor would be Joy Harjo (Poet Warrior) and Louise Erdrich (The Sentence). Plus Colson Whitehead (Harlem Shuffle) and Nikole Hannah-Jones (The 1619 Project), making for lively conversation. Pass the cranberry sauce, please! With exciting new work by Richard Powers (Bewilderment) and Anthony Doer (Cloud Cuckoo Land) among many others, this fall’s literary harvest is bountiful, sure to keep us well fed for months to come. We can’t wait to share these titles, and more with you. Let us know who you’d like at your table!
Archive for the 'Books we love' Category
Enjoy a literary Thanksgiving
Published November 23, 2021 Books we love , Bookselling in the 21st century , cooking and food Leave a CommentTags: Colson Whitehead, Joy Harjo, literary Thanksgiving, Louise Erdrich
Lucette Lagnado , Brilliant Memoirist
Published July 27, 2019 Books we love , Bookstore Lore , Community , In Memoriam , Memoir , Sag Harbor , Uncategorized , Writing Leave a CommentTags: Arrogant Years, Children of the Flames, Douglas Feiden, Lucette Lagnado, Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
To read Lucette Lagnado’s captivating memoir The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit is to enter a world, a city, a family of exquisite beauty and complicated history. It illuminates a story of Jews in old Cairo, a family’s struggle with misfortune, banishment into exile in Europe, who eventually rebuild a home in New York. But even as the family manages to start a new life, how much have they lost along the way? To read this memoir is to encounter a paradigm of the genre. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit won the 2008 Sami Rohr prize for best book of Jewish Literature, and garnered much critical acclaim.
To have befriended Lucette Lagnado and her devoted husband Douglas Feiden has been one of our greatest pleasures as proprietors of Canio’s Books. So it is with deep sadness that we mark Lucette’s passing on July 10. A brilliant writer, tenacious reporter, deeply compassionate woman, she wrote passionately about health care issues and the elderly for The Wall Street Journal. Her first book, Children of the Flames describes heinous medical experiments perpetrated by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Her second memoir The Arrogant Years tells her mother’s story entwined with Lucette’s own development as a headstrong young woman just coming into her own. Lucette’s words and work will live on indefinitely. Her indomitable spirit and warm heart we will always cherish.
Got Moby?
Published April 24, 2019 Books we love , Bookstore Lore , Community , Current Events , Fiction , Reading events , Sag Harbor , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Alec Baldwin, Capt. Ahab, Harris Yulin, Herman Melville, Moby Dick marathon, Quequeg, Sag Harbor history
If you’ve groaned whenever someone mentioned Melville’s Moby-Dick, if you’ve tried to read it but couldn’t, or if you’ve run screaming away from it, we want you! One of the reasons we continue the marathon reading tradition, begin around 1983 at the bookshop, is to introduce this leviathan beauty to new readers. Sure we love the book. Sure we cheer when it mentions Sag Harbor (twice). But we really love the way it calls to new readers even in 2019. We want to give folks an easy way in to the language, the poetry, the vast sprawl of the book. Come listen for a bit. Hearing the great work read aloud makes quick converts. You can’t help get swept out to sea with Ishmael, Quequeg, Starbuck and Capt. Ahab. This year’s event will be our best-ever. It’s Melville’s Bicentennial! We’re honored actors Harris Yulin and Alec Baldwin will read. We want to be sure you’ve Got Moby, too. June 7 through 9. See our 2019 MOBY-DICK MARATHON EVENTS SCHEDULE
Just One Book
Published December 20, 2018 Books we love , Bookselling in the 21st century , Environment , Poetry , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Action for Conservation, Jackie Morris, Robert Macfarlane, The Lost Words
If we could recommend just one book for all on your gift giving list this holiday season, it’d be, with a doubt The Lost Words written by British nature writer Robert Macfarlane and illuminated with gorgeous illustrations by acclaimed artist Jackie Morris. This oversized art book collects nature words, simple ones like “fern”, “ivy”, “magpie” and “starling” and spins poetry around them, splashes pages with greens and gold and rich earth tones in stunning displays. Collects these words and paints them on outsized pages, reweaving them into the language. Why? Because they were left out of the recent junior edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. In their place, words from the world of technology crept in. But careful readers noticed and objected and turned their concern into action, creating a charity dedicated to inspiring young people to become advocates for the natural world. A portion of book sales is donated to Action for Conservation. Just one book. But with so many important words to say. Copies available at Canio’s. How many should we reserve for you?
The Only Poll You Need to Know About
Published November 3, 2016 Books we love , Bookselling in the 21st century , Community , cooking and food , Current Events , Memoir , Politics Leave a CommentTags: Breakfast in America, Chicago Cubs World Series Championship, Craig Carlson, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Pancakes in Paris, presidential elections, Romney, Trump
Undone by the relentless vacillations in this year’s presidential election polls, to say nothing of that nail-biting late-night extra-inning rain-delayed World Series Championship win by the come-from-behind Chicago Cubs (whew!), I just had to consult our Parisian pollster and restaurateur Craig Carlson.
Do you know his amazing memoir, Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France? This highly recommended read takes us on a wild ride from Craig’s “crazy” idea of opening an American-style dinner in Paris, to realizing that dream complete with pleasures, pitfalls and panic-attacks along the way. Sort of like those Cubs, rallying after near elimination! Craig is victorious with three popular Breakfast in America locations in the culinary capital of the world! Craig read at Canio’s in September, and yes, we even served pancakes with Vermont maple syrup.
So how is the Breakfast in America “presidential election” going in Paris? Back in 2012 his restaurant offered customers “an election” choice between two blue-plate specials: the Romney Omlette and the Obama Burger. They kept count, and announced the overwhelming winner: the Obama Burger by a landslide!
This year he’s featuring a choice between the Hillary “Hot & Nasty” Hamburger served with hot sauce, a nod to Secretary Clinton’s penchant for Tabasco, and the Trump “Totally-Rigged” Wrap with a “wall” of tortilla chips. The count right now: 34 hamburgers to 4 wraps. Voila! That settles it for me! Bon appetite and happy reading!
Walt is coming!
Published May 19, 2016 Books we love , Bookselling in the 21st century , Bookstore Lore , Community , Current Events , Poetry , Reading events , Sag Harbor Leave a CommentTags: Darryl Blaine Ford, Huntington, Leaves of Grass, marathon reading, Montauk, Walt Whitman, Whitman Birthplace, William Walter
“Starting from Paumanok”, and continuing all day in Sag Harbor, community readers will gather at Canio’s on Saturday, May 21 from 10 a.m. until around 6 p.m. to read from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Don’t miss a chance to meet “Mr. Whitman Long Island,” aka Darrel Blaine Ford, who in his eighties and with a long white beard bears a striking resemblance to America’s most well known poet. When he was only a child, Mr. Ford took a very long bicycle ride from his home near the South Shore to the Whitman birthplace in West Hills. Whitman himself trekked up and down Long Island from Brooklyn out to Montauk with regular visits to his sister in Greenport.
On Friday, May 20 at 6 p.m. learn more about Whitman on Long Island with speaker William T. Walter, president of the Whitman Birthplace who will join us at Canio’s and set us on the right path for our all-day reading on Saturday.
Finally, pick up a copy of Leaves, a tin of Whitman’s green tea blend, or if you’re reading with us, you’ll receive a commemorative button. And don’t miss our after-party, Saturday evening….after all, we’re celebrating Whitman’s birthday!
Poet Grace Schulman Honored
Published February 9, 2016 Books we love , Community , Current Events , Poetry Leave a CommentTags: Frost Award, Grace Schulman, Marianne Moore, Poetry Society of America
We’re thrilled to join in celebrating poet Grace Schulman, winner of the 2016 Frost Medal, the highest award given by The Poetry Society of America. Grace has been a frequent reader at Canio’s Books, and we can’t think of a better person to receive this honor. Her poetry, essays and literary criticism have long been among our favorite works and are always highly recommended by our staff. Her poems about the East End landscape, about New York street corners, about jazz, aging and love are living examples of what poetry aspires to: transforming the lived experience into art.
Grace joins highly esteemed previous winners of the Forst Award: Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Lucille Clifton, Charles Simic, Marilyn Nelson, and Kamau Brathwaite, the 2015 recipient.
Grace Schulman is author of seven volumes of poetry including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, The Paintings of Our Lives, and most recently Without a Claim. She is editor of The Poems of Marianne Moore. Her essay collection is First Loves and Other Adventures. Grace has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award for Poetry, and a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, the former director of the Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y, 1974-84, and former poetry editor of The Nation, 1971-2006. A lifetime of achievements, indeed! But what’s more, Grace is someone who lives out her name. Congratulations, Grace!
The Canio's Books Blog 