When I recently heard Ray Bradbury’s comment that a Kindle smells like burning plastic (see NPR) I thought of the transience of this digital media. Ours is the age of impermanence, to say nothing of its toxicity. Some months ago we got a call from someone who sounded familiar. A frequent customer, he had found a book on the street in New York inscribed by a poet from Sag Harbor. Did we happen to know this man? Yes, we did. Vince had been a loyal customer before moving into the city. A published poet, essayist and Whitman scholar, he gave several readings, led an in-depth poetry workshop and championed John Ciardi’s seminal works. The caller had picked up Vince’s copy of Cellini’s autobiography. A note scribbled in the flyleaf indicated that Vince’s ancestors came from the same part of Italy as did the caller’s. Though he made his living as an accountant, the caller also wrote poetry. He said he felt as if he’d found a long lost family member he never knew. All this from a few notes marked in a book, and picked up by a passing stranger one afternoon. The caller had prepared a letter including several poems, some he’d written in honor of his grandfather whose passport photograph he’d copied onto the page. All this, gentle reader, to say our books are our passports into that boarder-less country, the territory of our shared human experience. They are the currency of our community.
Archive Page 8
How do you gift wrap a download?
Published December 2, 2011 Bookselling in the 21st century , Bookstore Lore , Italian literature , Poetry , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: book books, digital media, found books, Italian ancestory, John Ciardi, Ray Bradbury, serendipity, Vince Clemente
Enduring Irene with Lucette
Published September 6, 2011 Bookselling in the 21st century , Memoir , Uncategorized , Writing 2 CommentsTags: Arrogant Years, Jewish Family Exodus, Lucette Lagnado, Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Old Cairo
Lucky for us we had a pre-publication book launch with award-winning writer Lucette Lagnado the weekend before the storm hit Sag Harbor. Her lucid new memoir The Arrogant Years has just been released. During five long days without electrical power at home, we read Arrogant Years feverishly by the flickering light of an oil lamp. The book charts the course of Lucette’s mother’s early hardships as a young girl in Cairo. Despite many obstacles, Edith is one day given the key to the pasha’s library, something like being handed the key to heaven for one who so loves books and for whom books were a literal means of sustenance.
Lagnado’s first memoir, the riveting Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, has been a Canio’s bestseller since its release in 2007. And now Arrogant Years: One’s Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn, earns its place close to our heart. Written with the drive of an experienced investigative reporter, one whose love of literature shapes every chapter, Lagnado’s Arrogant Years is a courageous look at the struggles both she and her mother faced in navigating a world often treacherous for two particularly gifted women. We have signed copies of both memoirs by Lucette Lagnado and highly recommend them both. Those long days without power would have been much bleaker if it weren’t for Arrogant Years to pull us through.
Pre-Irene, Katrina and Stephen Event Rescheduled
Published August 27, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a CommentWe’ve rescheduled our event with Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen Cohen. They will speak about “The Obama Presidency on the eve of 2012” on Thursday, September 1 at 6 p.m. Please join us then. Meanwhile, hope you’ve lined up your batteries, good books, bread, wine and other necessities. We wish our customers be safe through this storm. Check in with us as soon as Irene has moved on.
Everything Beautiful…Begins Here!
Published August 2, 2011 Bookselling in the 21st century , Bookstore Lore , Novelists , Reading events , Writing Leave a CommentTags: Everything Beautiful Happened After, literary fiction, Love Begins in Winter, Proust, Secret Lives of People in Love, Simon Van Booy
When you begin with influences like Proust, Joyce, William Maxwell and Anne Michaels, you understand the highly literary, moody, imaginative and slightly melancholy world created in Simon Van Booy’s new novel, Everything Beautiful Happened After. Simon spoke at the shop recently about his literary influences and read from his new work finding just the right accents for George, the linguist from Kentucky, and Henry, the British archaeologist. The delicate web woven around these characters and the lovely Rebecca, a painter from Paris, is strung with willowy sentences that span emotional valleys like a lifeline. The setting is one summer in Athens that marks these characters for life. The novel feels like the natural progression from Van Booy’s previous story collections, Love Begins in Winter and The Secret Lives of People in Love. It’s been our pleasure as booksellers to observe such a fine young writer develop his unique voice with such grace, sensitivity and style.
Were you stuck in summer traffic and missed the event? Despair not. A few signed copies are still available. Stay tuned for an upcoming workshop with Simon at Canio’s; see http://www.caniosbooks.com
Safina suggests a moral imperative
Published March 28, 2011 Current Events , Environment , Reading events , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Blue Ocean Institute, Carl Safina, climate change, ecology, nature writing, Sea in Flames, The View From Lazy Point
Carl Safina’s eloquent new book The View From Lazy Point: a Natural Year in an Unnatural World isn’t just a view from that idyllic place on eastern Long Island. It’s a view that takes in the northern Arctic, down to Antarctica and through the tropics. As he told a tightly-packed house Saturday night, you can see the whole world from just one place. But Safina, world-renowned ecologist and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, actually traveled these places and saw for himself the ice melt, the loss of habitat, the disruption and displacement of climate change. The book is a lyrical report from the field, a lament, but also a paean to this Earth, the one truly sacred place, as Safina describes it. What’s needed to protect and preserve our precious watery home is nothing short of a moral imperative to do so. Our major institutions, economic, religious, Safina said, have become decoupled from reality, from the world as we know it today. Yet perhaps it’s in the fields just outside the walls of these monolithic and crumbling institutions where we might be able to sew not the grapes of wrath, but the seeds of peace.
Mr. Safina promised to return to Canio’s Books later this year to read from his forthcoming Sea in Flames:The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. From our small corner of the planet, we are honored to host these events while the world is a better place for the work of Dr. Carl Safina.
What do we do with all the books?
Published March 21, 2011 Bookselling in the 21st century , Uncategorized Leave a CommentIt seems lots of folks have been spring cleaning lately, based on the flood of phone calls we gotten that run something like this: “I’ve got books, lots of old books here (in the attic, basement, garage). Are you interested?” Or “I’m moving and I can’t take these books with me.” Or “my husband’s great uncle, a professor of linguistics, left him a house full of books. Do you want to take a look?” Books take up space, they tend to weigh a lot when grouped with other books, and when you’re not reading one, well, it just sits there. What to do with them? More and more, we’re thinking of books as inert objects. The only “screen” they provide is inside your own imagination. And that seems not to be good enough. A tip from our inventive brother John, led us to artist Brian Dettmer who “re-purposes” books. He’s got some imagination! See his fascinating work at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5QGsiiUmc&feature=related. While I don’t agree with all of Dettmer’s ideas about the fading value of books over time, I do find his work interesting. He and others are raising questions about the role and function of books in our lives in the near future. Would that old refrigerators and outdated computers could be “re-purposed” so beautifully. And how about outmoded nuclear power plants. What do we do with them?
Not everyone has escaped to Mexico or the Caribbean this winter. Last week a woman from up island, way up, headed east on a sunny bright day for a long leisurely drive to Canio’s Books. She had the day off– unexpectedly. It was her birthday, as well as George Washington’s. The bookshop, some 80-odd miles from home, was her destination, the poetry wall in particular. After a long browse, she selected some fine birthday books. She’d met in the shop a surfer/poet/emergency room doctor who prescribed a few titles. And she chatted with the proprietor, and lamented the demise of the bookshops, large and small. She’d been in one of the big chains recently, in Manhattan. It looked empty, she said. The vacuous space once filled with pyramids of books now was stacked with electronic devices. The open space loomed. This woman knew from bookshops. She’d worked at one of the finest in Boston years back. As the woman headed on her way to lunch, and into another year of reading poetry, it gave us an idea: why not celebrate your birthday at Canio’s? Invite a few friends; we’ll supply tea and cupcakes, or more. Stage a celebratory reading of works by your favorite author. As Canio’s Books celebrates its 30th anniversary, we’d love to help you celebrate yours, whatever the decade, or occasion. Happy Birthday to all our well read customers! Here’s to many more.
Canio’s Literary Costume Party – Celebrating our 30th Anniversary
Published November 9, 2010 Bookselling in the 21st century , Bookstore Lore , Reading events , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: literary costume party
Our Favorite Cast of Characters
Thanks to all in the community who turned on their creativity and turned out to celebrate Canio’s Books’ 30th anniversary at our literary costume party, October 30. It was great evening spent with such witty friends:
Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, and their friend Maggie, a ghostly-faced Girl of the Streets got the party off to a great start. Alice B. Toklas, complete with “pot brownie” prop stopped in, and Picasso showed up too. All the while, a tall dark Death waited at the door. Undeterred, Charlotte’s Web; Tinker Belle and Peter Pan floated in…and a most distinguished red-masked man had us all guessing. A beautiful Elizabeth Barrett Browning character appeared in the full bloom of love; and later, the poet Paul Oppenheimer, in a period tweed jacket, warned us: “The Battle is to Rescue Life from Abstraction.” Rob surprised us all bursting in with a hearty “Bon Appetite” and wearing a floral apron and brandishing a rolling pin. Julia Child would have been proud. Who knew Leo Tolstoy was a bee-keeper! Our party was not only fun, it was educational!.
A dashing F. Scott Fitzgerald attended wearing an elegant tux, and an earthy Patti Smith, with signature black ribbon at her neck rocked the house. Sherlock Holmes spied on the crowd and Anna Karenina read plaintively. Our host, one adorable Cat in the Hat kept the party moving. And wherever there are writers, there’s bound to be at least one Run-on Sentence. This one counted Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at somewhere over 11 thousands words sans punctuation.
It would have been impossible to pick one winner, best costume, when so many were so creative ! Thanks to all for your enthusiasm and your generosity. Donations to Canio’s Cultural Cafe will help keep the literary party going!
In Memoriam Robert Long, October 15, 1954 – October 13, 2006
Published October 15, 2010 Bookstore Lore , History , Novelists , painting , Photography , Poetry , Uncategorized , Writing 1 CommentTags: Blue, Poetry, Robert Long
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LOVE POTION NO. 9
This is the most beautiful day
Of all time: 80 clear degrees,
Summer sunlight jazzing a slope of trees
Like broccoli against the so-blue sea, boats,
Tiny jewels adrift, silent on the horizon.
From my car parked in front of a church
I can watch the most beautiful boy
I have ever seen mow the lawn: he’s blond, maybe 16,
Very tan, skinny, just wearing baggy black shorts,
And all the long young muscles move
Under his warm brown skin
As he shoves the big mower around,
His kid’s angel face placid and purposeful . . .
All the way back along the fast hilly highway
Stands of evergreens and oaks soak up the sun,
The radio blares, I am happy
Thinking of the boy and the sea. Racing
The twist of roads home, the beautiful gargle
Of twin camshafts at 6,000 rpm tells me
That this is all I need: 5 p.m. melon-colored sunlight
Slanting over the silver hood. What greens
In the trees, what a rich cerulean sky, what joy
Kicking it down into third
And screaming around the curve,
Soundgarden on the radio, and the retinal image
Of the grass-mowing kid even better than Tiepolo,
Better than Brahms, reachable, ecstatic, true.
O this is the world I want without end.
— Robert Long, “Blue”
POET * FRIEND * EDITOR
Book Spotting
Published September 18, 2010 Bookselling in the 21st century , Reading events , Uncategorized Leave a CommentIt was a wildly colorful Maxfield Parrish kind of sunset tonight, all smoldering oranges and smoky fuchsia spreading behind steely dark clouds. But the young man, smartly dressed in greys and blacks, wearing a beret didn’t seem to notice as he walked along the beach road. He was reading! Not on a Kindle or Ipad. He held a hardcover book in his hands and strode along oblivious to the cars passing and the sun setting extravagantly over his shoulder. Whoever his is, he gets a prize! Reading a book in public!
A few weeks back, a young man in an uptown subway was spotted reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. It was all I could do to stop myself intruding on his privacy. I wondered what prompted him to choose this fine novel. Later on the LIRR, a woman was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Great choice in, this, it’s 50th anniversary year. Hats off to HarperCollins for throwing a nationwide celebration of the book. We hosted novelist Hilma Wolitzer at the shop this summer to speak about the book’s influence on her and other writers’ work. And tonight, Kathryn spoke about Mockingbird at the East End Arts Council in Riverhead. The talk was a highlight of their current show “Scenes from a Book” on view through October 8. Photographers were asked to depict a particular scene from any book ever written.
We’ll keep our eyes open for more people reading books in public places. What book would you like to be spotted reading?
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