Welcome back to the literary homage to my honeymoon in Spain and Portugal. Last week, we looked at books set in and related to Barcelona. This week, it’s on to the capital, Madrid, but let’s start with a few books that apply to all of Spain.

Giles Tremlett is a British journalist who has lived in Spain for twenty years. After the horrible train bombings of 2004, he undertook Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past. This travelogue explores how the train bombings, the Spanish Civil War, and Basque and Catalan nationalism have shaped the country today. It’s not all dark, Tremlett also looks at cultural elements like the influence of flamenco music, the effect of tourism, and droll comparisons between the Spanish and the British. This book is a great introduction to the country as a whole.

James Michener loved Spain. Instead of giving it his usual historical fiction treatment, he wrote a massive travelogue, Iberia nearly 1000 pages long. Published in 1968, it’s somewhat out of date, but a surprising amount holds up. Regardless, Michener’s love for the subject shines through. Whether Michener is recounting history, eating tapas, staying in paradors, attending bullfights, viewing art, or simply watching the people, his enthusiasm carries the day.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of al-Rassan is my personal favorite book about Spain. It’s historical fantasy that renames the locations, but this is clearly and vividly medieval Spain. It recounts the triangular relationship of a woman doctor, a solder, and a philosopher/poet/politician during times of turmoil. The intricate relationship between Christians, Muslims, and Jews is well-treated in the context of an exciting, often heart-rending adventurous epic. Kay is a powerful storyteller, and this may be his best book.

Andromeda Romano-Lax’s The Spanish Bow is fiction inspired by the life of Pablo Casals. It follows an underprivileged orphan who plays the cello through his discovery in a small Catalan town, tutoring in Barcelona, and tours as an adult, particularly to Madrid. As he becomes involved in a volatile trio with a pianist and a violinist, he also witnesses the rise of history: the Civil War, Franco, and WWII.

Gioconda Belli’s The Scroll of Seduction alternates between past and present, chronicling the story of a female student who becomes the lover of a professor, who seduces her–ironically–with tales of his historical obsession: the alleged madness of Queen Juana of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her manipulation by Philip of Hapsburg. The historical part of the tale is particularly effective.

No discussion of Spanish-set books is complete without mentioning Arturo Perez-Reverte. Popular in both Europe and the United States, Perez-Reverte specializes in intellectual historical thrillers. There’s almost always exploration of a particular area of interest: book collecting in The Club Dumas, fencing in The Fencing Master, or sea salvage in The Nautical Chart, for instance. He also has a swashbuckling series set in 17th-century Spain following the adventures of Captain Diego Alatriste.

Rebecca Pawel writes a series of historical mysteries set in a more recent era. They follow Carlos Tejada Alonso y Leon, a member of the civil guard in the tense setting of Franco’s Spain just after the Civil War. The first book Death of a Nationalist, is set in Madrid, while later entries follow the young officer as he is sent on to other postings in Salamanca, Granada, and Northern Spain.

Madrid is now home to Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica. Readers can follow the history of the events that inspired the mural through Dave Bolling’s new historical novel Guernica or through nonfiction with Gijs van Hensbergen’s Guernica: the Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon, which studies the bombings at Guernica, Picasso’s painting of those events, and the impact the painting has carried.

Finally, C. J. Sansom’s Winter in Madrid, a work of romantic suspense set at the beginning of WWII follows Harry Brett, an Englishman sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, a school friend who now controls a shadowy business empire in Spain. At the same time, Sandy’s girlfriend Barbara, a nurse,  goes looking for a former lover who joined the International Brigade to fight for the leftists and disappeared. Sansom builds suspense with deliberation in this atmospheric tale.

There’s one more stop on my Iberian literary trail: Lisbon. Come back next week for book choices for a Portugal-themed meeting.

I’ve been peeling off stickers. Lots of stickers. Forty-five of them to be exact, one by one, shiny silver and slightly bigger than a quarter. They’re fiercely determined to stick to the covers of my new releases, all announcing the same thing, “Compliments of the Publisher.” No book leaves the showroom of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s annual fall tradeshow without a sticker.

  Getting them off is another matter. It’s a tedious process if you value the cover of the book, and in spite of the most careful handling there are always some books that come out with a little less cover than when they started. Why such an aggressive adhesive is inflicted on poor paperbacks is anyone’s guess, but being a lover of books, those dang little suckers need to come off.

  So I’m kneeling on the carpet in front of the buzzing space heater in my small, book-packed spare room, slowly peeling off the stickers, one by one, surrounded by piles labeled by small cards with boldly-lettered months, from NOW to OCTOBER and NOVEMBER, around the sofa and down the side of the bookshelf right up through MARCH 2009, as I sort through two big bags full of advance reading copies of new books that looked too good to leave behind. Believe me, when you’re toting them all the way home, from the hotel to the parking lot, from the trunk to the house, it only takes one trade show to teach you the virtue of leaving the marginal and the almost-good in Portland right where you found them.

  I’m so excited I forgot to have breakfast. I’m having my own little Christmas morning in here, all toasty warm, in a ring of new books. I already know that time will be cruel, and I won’t be able to read anywhere near as many of them as I want. Still, not knowing which ones will transport me, which ones will disappoint me, which ones will thrill me or bore me, makes all of it gleefully suspenseful. Books bring out the child in me. I regret to see that I’m almost finished emptying the second bag.

All right, now I’ve sorted all the advances into their appropriate months of release. I’ve gone through each book, setting aside all the ones I really won’t read, all the tomes over five hundred pages, no arty writing, no angels, no serial killers, no mutant female praying mantises (you think I’m kidding). I’ve got it down to the top thirty new books coming out this fall, mostly novels with a few yummy memoirs thrown in, as selected by yours truly.

NOW:

To Siberia by Per Petterson, the author of Out Stealing Horses.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

The Train of Salt and Sugar by Licinio de Azevedo, from Mozambique

Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq by Farnaz Fassihi

OCTOBER:

Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

What Makes a Child Lucky by Gioia Timpanelli

Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson

Three Musketeers by Marcelo Birmajer

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre

NOVEMBER:

The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna, from Finland

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan

Couch by Benjamin Parzybok

DECEMBER:

Two Rivers by T. Greenwood

Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg

JANUARY:

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

FEBRUARY:

Ghosts by Cesar Aira

Safer by Sean Doolittle

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

The Siege by Ismail Kadare

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

MARCH:

My Abandonment by Peter Rock

The Believers by Zoe Heller

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

All right, enough. That took all afternoon. Time to enjoy a little reading, now that I’ve sorted through all the best and brightest. At this point, you know as much as I do about what’s coming out this fall. Let’s hope we’re about to find some excellent new ones for our reading groups!

It happens. A book you’re dying to read turns out to be less than you expected. That’s just part of reading – that’s just part of life – but it’s still a comedown. So my second guilty pleasure of the week turned out to be not so much of a pleasure, after all.

  Rutu Modan is a prodigiously talented Israeli author/illustrator whose graphic novel, Exit Wounds, was just about everyone’s favorite graphic novel last year, and it’s only human nature to want more of what we love. Unfortunately, Jamilti and Other Stories, the latest gorgeously produced Drawn and Quarterly publication from Montreal, is a collection of earlier pieces, so it’s more Modan, all right, but also less. In story after story we can see the confident artist of Exit Wounds finding her style, experimenting with color, perfecting her storytelling skills. They’re the early works of a genius. With the emphasis on early works.

  Of course, after her knockout graphic novel, I expected to find storytelling brilliance, and I wasn’t completely disappointed. The first piece, “Jamilti,” is like a Chekhov short story. Two fiancées get in an argument in a taxi, and when the girl gets out, she’s caught in a terrorist explosion where she encounters a seriously wounded young man who gives the bride-to-be a haunting kiss. It’s subtle, textured, and provocatively open-ended, as is the other standout story, “Homecoming,” where a small plane circling the kibbutz could be a terrorist attack or a frightened young soldier in a stolen plane trying to come home.

  But they’re just two superb moments that give a taste of the expertise to come in Exit Wounds. Speaking of which, have you experienced that graphic masterpiece? Now, there’s what a graphic novel wants to be, with a grabber of a story, expertly told and visually exhilarating.

  A woman in uniform serving her military duty tells Koby, a young taxi driver in Tel-Aviv, that she has reason to think his estranged father was blown up in a recent bombing. How she convinces Koby to help her find out what happened to his father, and what they discover about his father and about each other, is Chinese boxes-within-boxes of secrets and lies. The two central characters are both so likeable and complex – and constantly fighting – that they’re straight out of classic comedy, except that they feel utterly real and you ache for their confusion, played out against the tortured, explosive backdrop of Tel Aviv.

  Author/illustrator Modan works in big, bold colors, wisely knows what to show instead of tell, and generates perpetual surprise. The volume is visually rich, handsomely produced, witty and heartbreaking and humane, with a jim-dandy ending. Every member of our book group loved Exit Wounds. We discussed it passionately for the whole meeting. Skip Jamilti, and treat yourself to a graphic novel that has made many converts to an underestimated genre.

  Okay, that’s enough children’s books and graphic novels. Pictures! I love them. Well, I’ve got two big bags of books for adults waiting for me in my little home library that I haven’t even unpacked. Time to grow up and take a look and see what I actually brought home from that Portland book tradeshow…

The Circular Staircase by Mary Robert Rinehart (Bobbs-Merrill, 1908)

Back on September 7th, Ted Balcom asked “Do We Neglect Authors Once They’re Dead and Gone?”

I am about to venture off to Bouchercon: the World Mystery Convention in Baltimore.  A brilliant friend of mine named Roger Sobin decided it would be fun to do a panel in which the participants would explain what a Bouchercon would have been like one hundred years ago in 1908. 

Because a Bouchercon has many author guests of honor, it was decided to invite Mary Roberts Rinehart to address the crowd this year.  Our actress will cover Mary’s rather interesting life.  She was forced to turn to writing The Circular Staircase, her first novel, because her physician husband lost all the family’s money in a stock market crash in 1903.  While becoming a fashionable writer of both novels and short stories, she also raised three boys, served as a WWI war correspondent, may have invented the Bat Signal, started Farrar & Rinehart with her sons and went public with her breast cancer, educating women every where, when talking in public about this subject was not commonplace. 

She is credited with two major achievements:  getting people to say the butler did it because of her novel The Door (oops, did I just spoil that one for you?) and formulating the Had-I-But-Known school of writing wherein the romance and the Gothic novel are mixed with suspense to create a mystery only explained when the first person narrator puts it all together by revealing some arcane piece of information, that if revealed at the beginning, would have instantly reduced the novel to a postcard.  Oh, and the narrators (usually women) get to do cool things like open doors in a deserted house when they hear a noise even though they are all alone and should run screaming the other way. 

When I train on mystery reader’s advisory and we get to this school of writing, I always take great glee in reading Don’t Guess Let Me Tell You by Ogden Nash wherein are the lines:

Sometimes the Had I But Known then what I know now I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor

I decided it was time to read The Circular Staircase.

While not all the authors that Ted worried about in his column should fall into the neglected pile permanently, The Circular Staircase may be a candidate.  The main character is Rachel Innes, a woman who rents a country house that appears to be haunted.  The plot is ridiculous, with the most irritating course of action being how the main character, Rachel, continually decides not to tell anyone crucial pieces of information, actions that directly lead to the deaths of others.  While Rachel is a bold and determined woman, she is a bit of a dunce when it comes to personal safety.  She stakes the claim, “Were I a man I should be a trapper of criminals.”  She fails to find any gold on this claim because the nefarious creature behind all the bad things that are happening eventually reveals himself by falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his neck, losing the wig that has been his one mode of disguise (not unlike Clark Kent’s glasses). 

To Roberts’s credit, there is lots of intentional humor in the book and a few well written passages.  I loved this passage:

I knew one once, more than thirty years ago, who was like that:  he died a long time ago.  And sometimes I take out his picture, with its cane and queer silk hat, and look at it.  But of late years it has grown too painful:  he is always a boy—and I am an old woman.  I would not bring him back if I could.

Even if your book discussion group decided an old Had-I-But-Known-er would be fun to read, this book has to come with another caution.  All the African-American characters are referred to as darkies, and Rachel herself reveals “it was always my belief that a Negro is one part thief, one part pigment, and the rest superstition.”

Hmmmm.

So when it comes to book discussions, one always has to balance the strengths of a title against the weaknesses.  Remember that sometimes it is the weaknesses that lead to the best discussion topics.  But, also sometimes, it is just best to let sleeping dogs lie and read the current hot author.  Whatever ridiculous things they are writing that we are oblivious to today may not be revealed for one hundred years. 

Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson

Despite having been trained by the best (Ted Balcom), I make one crucial decision each year regarding my mystery and crime fiction book discussion group.  I do not read the books prior to their selection as titles that the group will share. I love to live on the edge.

We began our new season of mystery and crime fiction book discussions with this title from England:  Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson.  Back in 2004, a Booklist reviewer who shall remain nameless (Mary Frances Wilkens—now I need to watch my back at the next PLA!) said, “Sampson, a journalist living in Beijing, makes a grand entrance into the mystery genre with this stellar debut novel…Remember Sampson’s name; it’s about to become an important one in crime fiction.” 

Maybe yes, maybe no.

My group was lukewarm to this title as a mystery.  Part of the problem is that the character of Robin Ballantyne, a single mother of infant twins, is so down that she cannot get anything right.  Therein might lie some comedy, but the light touch is not significant enough to stave off a feeling of failure and depression. 

The irony of this is that we spent most of the night talking about what was wrong with Robyn and less about the other aspects of the book.  And, we talked for the full ninety minutes. 

We did touch on the fact that it seems to a number of people that this book was not particularly about London.  We touch on the fact that some loose plot lines (the long lost stalking father figure) are never explained. 

But we kept coming back to Robyn.  Why would she try to get her job back without washing her hair first?  Why does she deliberately make dumb decisions that do nothing to free her from suspicion?

To my great surprise at the end of the night, about one third of my attendees wanted to read the next book to find out what happens to Robyn.  Is that just because she kissed a cop?

Mary Francis Wilkens says, “The story is told in the first person, and Robin’s narrative voice is immediately compelling. She is portrayed with humor, subtlety, and dead-on accuracy, first as a woman seeming to come apart at the seams and then as an inspiring modern heroine drawing on untapped inner strength to overcome both commonplace and extraordinary adversity.”

I think what this says is that even though the book proved to be a mystery that will most likely not stand the test of time, the character is what drew the readers into this book and made them want to talk about her.  Flawed characters may be the best for a book discussion. 

However, please do not quote me on that. 

How can I rationalize that with 43 advances piled up on my Must Read Soon table, not to mention two big bags of unread advances (19 books in one, 26 in the other) from the fall tradeshow in Portland not even unpacked yet – how can I admit that two new books arrived in the bookstore yesterday and immediately, without a second thought or a twinge of conscience, I propelled them to the very top of the pile?

I could hardly wait to get home last night! How can I rationalize what I’m doing right now, sitting here at home this morning when I should be at the bookstore, enjoying a sick day in my reading armchair with my cat in my lap while my poor fellow bookstore employees are dealing with four hundred identically-dressed, souvenir-purchasing Japanese high school girls on an international fieldtrip to campus?

  I should be at my cash register, but I’m not. I’m blissfully enjoying Aya of Yop City, the delightful sequel to Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s gorgeous chunk of Ivory Coast comic reality, Aya.

  I’m so glad to find myself in the company of that same charming cast of characters again, four families of stereotypes that are straight out of classic comedy but given a unique Ivorian twist, with plenty of bright African hues and musical slang. Here again are Aya’s two girlfriends and their harried fathers and exasperated mothers, their boyfriends, some employed, some not, with the entire economic spectrum of Ivory Coast, from the servant girl to the big boss’s son.

  Aya herself never gets involved much in the action. She’s the sensible, caring center of the story, around which her more passionate, flustered and flawed friends and family members battle and swirl in secrets and dramas and plot complications.

  My mouth muscles ache from smiling so much. I’m literally grinning like an idiot while I read through the panels. What is it about this graphic novel that generates such unmitigated pleasure? There’s a joy of life that radiates from this impoverished ghetto that transcends poverty. Abouet’s complex characters all have realistic flaws. Though they may be all stereotypes, the characters are just human enough to ring true.

  The enjoyment became so intense that during the final third I began turning the pages slower and slower, savoring each layout and spread of color and images, one visual feast after another, punctuated by Oubrerie’s periodic, shockingly lovely full-page spreads. With the simplest dots and lines on the faces of the characters he conveys all kinds of subtle innuendoes, as the plot complicates and takes one unexpected turn after another.

  The original Aya ends with a perfectly-planted little plot bomb that immediately sent me scurrying back to the beginning of the book to marvel with newly-opened eyes. This new Aya of Yop City goes for a similar concluding surprise, and it’s a doozy, because it’s not at all what you’re expecting, and very nicely set up while you’re busy watching another plotline heading for disaster. But this second volume is clearly a transitional volume on its way to somewhere else – several different threads are left unresolved (who are those mysterious lovers meeting in the dark? What scheme is the Parisian up to now?) not to mention what feels like a missing grand finale centerpiece, the upcoming beauty pagent of Yogoutou which has yet to occur, in which all the girls in the story will be competing against each other for the cash prize to help their families, all except for sensible, realistic Aya, who would win if she entered but is secretly training her maid, Felicite, to compete.

  Ever tried using a graphic novel for your reading group? Persepolis was such a huge hit for our group that I effortlessly include one each year – Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, and Rutu Modan’s superb Exit Wounds have been, along with Aya, the standouts in a field of thrilling new growth. The best graphic novels and memoirs are absolutely as discussable as their non-pictorial kin! If you haven’t allowed yourself to discover the unexpected, nonverbal depths of a graphic novel, the subtle pleasures when a plot point is covered by art instead of words, you couldn’t have a better opportunity than the Aya books. They’re comedies with bite about real moral and economic issues, delivered through visual artistry that’s positively exhilarating, composed with balance and wit.

  And now, here I am, the day after the book’s release, at the end of the second book and in dreadful suspense for the next installment. Who will win the beauty pageant? How has Albert enraged his sister? Who is Albert meeting in the dark? Will Mamadou finally get a job? Will Ignace’s family be destroyed by the shocking revelation at the end of the book?  And let’s just hope Bintou isn’t pregnant!

I’m starting to feel guilty. At this very moment four hundred identically-dressed Japanese girl tourists are trampling over my fellow book store workers, buying armfuls of college T-shirts and key-chains, presenting their fathers’ Visa cards, and me – I’m here at home in reading heaven.

Just how useful is the word classics?

Until now the name of Seattle’s city-wide gay reading program, scheduled to begin in January at Dunshee House, has been the Gay Classics Book Club. I’m rethinking that. I’m suspecting maybe that word classics might be limiting, off-putting, might in fact be wisely dropped. In fact, I’ve been rethinking a lot, and it’s no time for rethinking. It’s time to get going on advertising, not changing the name and reading list.

  Dropping the word classics doesn’t endanger anything. I’m sufficiently classics-oriented in my tastes so that the program is in no jeopardy of losing its focus on the best of gay literature. But by leaving out that word, I open the selection to the best in more recent fiction, and can possibly accommodate film adaptations and author appearances. I’m still determined to tackle the greatest of gay literature – Andre Gide’s The Counterfeiters, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, E. M. Forster’s Maurice, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima – but maybe those treasures should be held back until the second year of the club.

Maybe a better name would be simply the Gay and Lesbian Book Club. Maybe first I need to gather a core of committed members, engage a team of stalwart readers in honestly sharing their thoughts about books together.

Besides, if I can include a couple more recent works involved with addiction and recovery, Dunshee House stands a chance of partnering with the Shift Recovery Network at Multifaith Works, a fine program under one of Seattle’s largest umbrella organizations for gay health care. I’ve got my eye on Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s hilarious, heartbreaking I Am Not Myself These Days, his account of life as an alcoholic drag queen in love with a crystal-addicted hustler. A delightful, profoundly revealing memoir, and a favorite of mine!

  But I don’t have forever. Before we can launch our advertising campaign, I need to decide on the selections for the first six months. Until now the opening selection, because of the immediate name familiarity, was Gore Vidal’s novel, The City and the Pillar, an early realistic portrait of gay life that so offended The New York Times Book Review that it refused to review any novel by Gore Vidal for fifteen years. Historic, yes. Literate, yes. But is it the novel to start with?

  Maybe not. Maybe what we need is the defiance and upbeat, two-fisted energy of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle. Maybe that would be a smarter opening gambit. Unlike the “victim of society” school of much early gay fiction, her semi-autobiographical 1973 bestseller is a refreshing dose of take-me-as-I-am gay self-esteem. Molly Bolt goes after what she wants and gives the finger to society.

  I’ve just finished reading Rubyfruit Jungle for the first time, and I can see why it took the world by storm. It’s got a dynamite opening, one side-splitting prank after another as Molly Bolt out-Hucks Huckleberry Finn in sheer orneriness, locking her mother in the root cellar, substituting rabbit pellets for raisins, outrageous and loveable and eerily modern in her defiant self-confidence. Unfortuantely the second half of the book isn’t quite as much fun. The supporting characters become a little more cartoony, and the trim, irresistible, witty, wise Molly becomes pretty full of herself. When a smitten older married woman says, “…are all homosexuals as perceptive as you?” something inside this reader groaned. Fortunately, the book’s last-chapter returns to the mother who raised her and provides an emotional finale that rings true. But just in time.

Well, okay, if not that one, then what other guns have I got?

  I noticed that the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in Portland opened with the film adaptation of a highly-praised gay comic novel, Michael Downing’s Breakfast with Scot, about two rather yuppie-looking gay guys who find themselves suddenly raising an eleven-year-old boy who’s a flaming queen. I watched the movie preview online. I laughed. Funny premise, and if the film opens here in Seattle in a timely fashion, this might be a good starter. It would come with its own publicity.

  That’s next on my reading list, unless – well, unless I try Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I’ve never read it, and even though I get the funny feeling I might not be crazy about her later work, that first rather honest-looking, semi-autobiographical novel has been highly praised, is appealingly short, and looks literate and promising.

Really, I should read them both. And I ought to try Junky and Queer by William Burroughs, and I truly ought to give Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar an actual read-through. If only there were time for them all!

But in order to create the postcards and posters and newspaper ads to promote this book club, I’ve got to come up with the first six titles, the best combination of books with the widest range of inclusiveness, the winning team to launch a successful club.

Time is running out. Enough blogging, I’ve got books to read.

When you read as many books as I do, you develop a special fondness for any novel that surprises you, that catches you off-guard with a new way of looking at things, that dares to be a little more honest, a little more daring. When I stumble on a new author with real insight or a new novel that rattles my thinking and surprises my emotions, I rejoice.

I’m rejoicing. 

Nada is one of those books. It first appeared in Spain back in 1945, the first novel by twenty-three-year-old Carmen Laforet. Sixty years later, it’s finally available to us in a tight, supple new translation by Edith Grossman, the world’s most respected living translator, currently in a beautifully-packaged Modern Library paperback. Nada has been a Spanish classic since it blew people’s minds back in 1945. It’s still blowing minds. I’m only amazed that it’s taken sixty years for a translation to get here.

  Well, it’s a lucky reading group that takes on this fascinating, mysterious, unique novel. What’s it about? Ostensibly, it’s the story of eighteen-year-old Andrea who comes to the city of Barcelona to live with relatives while she goes to the university. Period. You could call it a growing-up novel: there are the family characters inside the house, and the university friends outside the house, two circles of plot that intersect fatefully in more ways than we suspect.

  But the real plot of the story is only hinted at. It’s lurking under the surface. You find yourself thrust, with Andrea, into the midst of a feuding, furious cast of characters in the house on Calle de Aribau – austere, religious Angustias, sexy, dangerous Roman, violent, drunken Juan and his battered, tough-as-nails, beautiful wife Gloria. What are they all so angry about? Like Andrea, you try to find out.

  Occasionally you piece together a clue from some careless comment. You put together two facts. Then another, and there’s a revelation, and then a surprise. When you’re finished, you look back on the story and say, “Ah…” as it all seems to unfold logically, once you have enough information and can interpret it correctly. I don’t know about other readers, but I simply came to my own sensible conclusions about what was going on, who was vulnerable, who was at stake, Ena, the baby, the grandmother, poor battered Gloria. Someone was bound to get hurt.

I was just wrong about who it would be. 

Okay, shut up, Nick. That’s all I’m going to say, and that the story always defied my expectations. It’s a growing-up novel with repressed passion bubbling up between the words. The characters are fascinating – volcanic Roman, vulnerable Gloria, pathetic, desperate Juan. They become mythic. You never know what they’re going to do next, whether they’re going to burst into tears or punch someone in the face.

It all takes place in Barcelona – but this isn’t the pretty, sunny Barcelona of tourist poster fame, but a dark and brooding city, tormented by rain and shadows. Three teenagers stumble into happiness, fall in love with each other, and briefly manage to sustain it before Andrea’s two worlds collide. The only novel I can compare it to is Wuthering Heights – the emotional brutality, the moody unpredictability. I did not know where that plot was going right up to the final surprising, satisfying chapter.

Nada will be the October book club selection for University Book Store in Seattle.

My only regret is the book’s ridiculous introduction by that superb novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, who thick-headedly misses the point and reduces the entire novel to repression and politics. Yeah, sure, Mario. Stick to writing great novels like The Bad Girl, my favorite novel of 2006. Smart readers will skip the dreadful introduction. Read it afterward to laugh.

I’m getting ready for a big trip. Being a librarian, and a bookworm, this requires the checkout of a few travel guides. Last night my fiancee became mildly upset when one of the stacks of these books fell over and nearly killed her. “Do we really need this many books for one vacation?”

I smiled, batting my eyelashes furiously (and knowing I had an equivalent number of books still on hold) . “You can’t really depend on just one book. They’re all written from different points of view,” I said, as I finished clearing the pile from her legs and began to help her out. I even managed to restrain myself from sorting the books… just yet. “I’m just want to make sure our vacation is perfect.” I think she bought it.

I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for travel books. Browsing through them is almost as good as a vacation. Well maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I like to look through them and dream about a kind of magical, trouble-free trip where I travel from sight to sight seamlessly, staying at all the hotels and eating at all the restaurants I can’t afford. As a librarian, it makes me mildly ill when I see people who seem satisfied with one out-of-date DVD and won’t even look at the books as they “plan” their vacations.  I hope they’re on guided tours, otherwise they are going to make a lot of mistakes and miss many of the less obvious treasures.

Planning a trip well requires understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the various travel guides. DK and Fodor’s “see-it” line have great pictures (that can be very useful when you are trying to decide whether to walk out of your way to see a “great” piece of art or when trying to recognize which building is the one you’re hunting for) but the trade-off is that they have less space for information about the sights. Fodor’s and Frommer’s are good on the sights, but if you’re a budget traveler, you’ll find you can’t afford most of the hotels and restaurants they recommend. Let’s Go or Rough Guide serve best for young travelers looking for nightlife, outdoor adventures, and cheap places to eat and sleep. Rick Steves’ guides and the Unofficial line are some of the best for providing practical hints at how to navigate complicated sights and the rare travel books that actually admit occasionally that a sight is overrated or a museum is dull. Access guides have a more geographical organization than others. The Top 10, 25 Best, Time Out, and Essential series are all convenient to carry but focus mostly on the highlights, while other series, such as Lonely Planet, have more depth on history, architecture, and culture that some travelers crave. These are just a few of the differences between the various series.

Getting the most out of a trip depends on knowing what is NOT included in the book you choose and knowing when to be a little skeptical about a particular point of view. It requires using books in combination. For some especially important trips, I’ve even made photocopies of particular sections, knowing that I didn’t need the whole book (you can also toss the photocopies as you get past particular destination and lighten your load).

As I reorganized the fallen stack later, it occurred to me that this might make a great topic for a monthly book group meeting, particularly if your group has plenty of travelers. You might even want to assign different brands to your various readers to make sure you cover a wide swath. You could also do this in conjunction with the reading of a book set in a particular locale.

Here are a few questions to get you started in your evaluation:

• What price range do the restaurants and hotels recommended in your book tend to fall in? Are there adequate options for true budget travelers?
• Is your book well illustrated?
• Imagine that you were trying a few common travel tasks: taking a day trip from a city you’re visiting, navigating from the airport to your hotel (without an expensive taxi), or selecting the location for an evening out and buying tickets in advance. Does your guide include enough information to complete the task?
• Imagine that you only have a short time to view a large sight like a museum. Does your guide provide practical advice about the museum’s highlights and how to navigate them?
• What information does your guide include to help you understand the history and culture of the place you are visiting?
• Does your guide include any self-navigated walking tours?
• If you have books about the same location, compare the prices for various sights, major hotels, and restaurants. Compare the hours that the sights are supposed to be opened. Compare the recommended itineraries and the sights marked as the very best. Are there significant variations between the books? Do you see any trends in these variations?
• Have you ever tried to use a travel book which turned out to be widely inaccurate?
• What kind of people wrote the book you chose? Were their backgrounds described?
• Does your book include many opinions or recommendations, or is every sight presented neutrally?
• How do the maps in the books compare?
• What are the best features of the book you evaluated? What features are unique?

 Now if I can just get my fiancee to watch the stack of DVDs I checked out. I’ll be back next week with more about the trip itself!

I’m secretly packing my suitcase in the spare room, so my cat doesn’t see it. I’ve learned from bitter experience. He knows exactly what the suitcase means. Every year I travel down to Portland for the annual Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association tradeshow, for three days of sampling the autumn titles of all the major publishers, dining with authors and reps, staying in a hotel room, and leaving Buddy to the kindness of friends stopping by twice a day to give him a scoop of food. When Buddy sees my suitcase being packed, he immediately climbs into it and blatantly, aggressively pees on it. I now pack behind closed doors, waiting to fold my clothes until my cat is patrolling the yard looking for any careless rodent activity.

Okay, I’m going to miss him. It’s what I hate about the book tradeshow every year, being away from the constant humor and affectionate demands of my feline, and when I come back there will be a probationary period during which I’m only tolerated, culminating in a moment when he startles me with a swat. I know it’s coming. It comes every year. I make sure he doesn’t come near my eyes. Still, even though he’s a tyrant, I’ll miss him, and as soon as the final breakfast is over on Wednesday morning, we’re going to be in that car heading home, with the car trunk stuffed full of book bags bulging with new books.

Speaking of new books, I’ve stumbled on two delights, both by women.

  I’ve just finished reading a compelling new graphic memoir this afternoon, Alissa Torres’ heartbreaking American Widow. It’s her story of marrying a Colombian boy whose green card was running out, of their happy year together culminating in her pregnancy when he finally starts his new job on September 10, 2001 at the World Trade Center.

American Widow is a non-linear emotional tour de force, never capitalizing on its subject matter, more concerned with the broken promises of the Red Cross and the barrage of often callous bureaucratic aid for widows and survivors. With an boldly graphic, frame-shattering style of artwork by Sungyoon Choi, her story is about the nightmare engulfing 9/11 survivors in the aftermath of the tragedy, learning how to negotiate the strings of red tape and broken governmental promises while dealing with Eddie’s absence. Twice real photos of Eddie Torres are inserted into the text. It’s a real cry from the heart. I read the entire thing in a single sitting.

  Currently I’m a third of the way through a Spanish classic written in 1945 by Carmen LaForet called Nada, recently translated by Edith Grossman and released as a Modern Library paperback in February. As it happened, a university employee came into our campus bookstore asking for a copy of Nada to read for her book club, and just seeing the handsome cover broke my last resistance – it reads in a thrillingly modern style, as young Andrea tells her story of going to live with relatives in Barcelona while attending the university. Like Andrea, the reader walks into a house full of raging tempers and secrets, brother against brother, screaming matches and throwing chairs. Along with Andrea, the reader gathers a clue here, a clue there, as to what’s really going on, what lingers from the terrors and crimes of the Spanish Civil War, who fought on which side. I have no idea where this fascinating novel is going.

That’s the book I’m bringing with me to PNBA tomorrow morning, when somehow I’m going to be packed and ready to go when Brad drives up at 8 a.m. We’ll check into our Portland hotel room tomorrow, talk to publishers’ reps and other booksellers. All day Tuesday will be the tradeshow, a convention room filled with tables piled with copies of the new fall line-ups in books, far more than any sane man can carry. I only take ones I’m sure I’ll read, and that usually involves a shoulder-bag and a book-bag full.

I’ll let you know what I find. Here’s hoping I’m about to discover some real gems that will bring book lovers genuine joy.

While attending a reading Saturday night, I was struck with an idea for my book group to enhance a discussion, but I’m not certain we’d have time for book chat when all is said and done. The event I attended was a deft mix of author reading, discussion of the author’s work and performance of four short pieces by a chamber quartet of works selected to go with the literature.

Now you might think that this is an expensive idea that will eat a programming budget. But what made me think this could work is something a member of the chamber group said. She told the audience that while all the musicians were members of the Kansas City Symphony, they were performing that evening as part of the Community Connection program where Symphony members work with area arts organizations, especially libraries (!), to bring classical and contemporary music to the community.

If your city has a symphony or chamber group, this might be a great way to marry literature and music in a program and enhance awareness of two different, yet related, groups. Consider asking if a small quartet or duet could play some music they deem suitable for a book group selection. Getting the author to read aloud from the work and then discuss it might not be possible, but that’s okay. After the musicians play a composition or two, everyone, readers and musicians, conductors and facilitators, can discuss how the music informs the reading and why or why not it fits with the selected title. The conductor might want to address why a particular piece was chosen for the performance or why another piece was rejected. What connections do the musicians and/or readers see between the written and musical works?

For those interested, this particular reading featured four Kansas City Symphony string musicians playing works from Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, and Antonin Dvorak and readings and discussion of The Last Cattle Drive and other works by Robert Day, facilitated by the author.

It was an intriguing way to mix my two favorite mediums, books and music.

  I stopped reading The Book of Murder seventeen pages from the end.

Finishing it doesn’t really matter. I’ve stopped believing. All I can do is seriously ponder what would drive such a smart author toward the worst ending in recent memory. Guillermo Martinez is a stiff, formal writer with a Borges-like drollery and restraint, and for a mystery about mathematics, like The Oxford Murders, his tone is exactly right and his formality is an organic part of the book’s many delights.

That same stiff style doesn’t exactly work in his new book, though on the surface the two novels are similar. Both deal with perception. Both deal with murders too subtle for easy detection.

In The Book of Murder, Luciana contacts the narrator ten years after serving as his typist during a time when the narrator’s hand was in a cast. She was the treasured typist of the famous author, Kloster. The narrator remembers the few months she worked for him, his desire for her, their kiss on the last afternoon. Well, Luciana has aged poorly. Now unattractive and with every appearance of being seriously mental, she tells the narrator how she brought a sexual harassment suit against Kloster, how Kloster’s wife has left him, his baby daughter has died, and now in revenge Kloster is going after everyone who means anything to her – her boyfriend, her parents, her brother, all cleverly killed so that no one knows they’ve been murdered.

The execution of this somewhat far-fetched plot is so formal it’s almost like Greek tragedy. The characters talk in blocks of text. The language is elegant and grammatically correct. Though this weighed, academic style certainly kills some of the immediacy, the mathematically clean way the plot is laid out intrigued me enough to get through the artificiality. Because when Kloster is confronted by the author, Kloster re-tells the same story from his own point of view, with loony Luciana as the antagonist destroying his happy home.

It’s like watching an ant farm. You see the plot from Luciana’s point of view in the first part of the book, and you see all the ways in which supposedly Kloster is killing every member of her family. Then the ant farm is turned around, and you see all the little tunnels and pathways on the other side, from Kloster’s point of view. Each blames the other for destroying his/her life.

Well, I’m turning the pages. It’s a clever idea. It’s definitely got my interest. I can’t figure out who’s lying. Which is it? We’re given two sets of intersecting facts. Is Luciana insane? Is Kloster diabolical? The ending of his previous book, The Oxford Murders, is so realistic it’s like a slap in the face. No such luck here, friend. Without giving anything away, I’m sorry to inform you that the plot takes a totally unprepared-for supernatural turn and gives us a solution straight out of Stephen King.

Of course, there are still those last seventeen pages. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Martinez makes it all good in the end. Maybe the supernatural hasn’t really been at work. Maybe there’s a simple, satisfying, diabolically clever solution. I’ll never know.

Guillermo Martinez, the Argentinean writer whose literary mystery, The Oxford Murders, became an international sensation in 2005, has written a new novel pursuing the same obsession as his first novel: the very nature of believing someone has been killed, and the nagging doubts of imperceptible murders.

  He’s got a unique spin going on mystery writing, and he plays on some very real issues. Some truths can’t be proved. Some part of the truth is always beyond reach. If you doubt that, he’ll convince you. Martinez finds the perfect vehicle to pursue his philosophical concerns in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Okay, I don’t know what it is, either, but for three hundred years, people have died trying to solve this most ancient problem in mathematics. In Martinez’ novel, a stolen paper provides the springboard for a possible proof, and because of it, people are beginning to die.

It’s a short, tight, fun novel if you haven’t already discovered it. Join the twenty-two-year-old graduate student from Argentina as his stay at Oxford turns into a treacherous puzzle. Watch the mysterious mathematical genius, Arthur Seldom, pit his wits against Inspector Petersen of the Oxford police in their pursuit of a serial killer, which leads them from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem to Pythagorean mysticism. Believe me, it’s not difficult to understand in the least, even for a mathematical ignoramus like myself.

It’s a thrilling, intellectually-teasing homage to the great mystery classics, an elegant tour-de-force that’s part Arthur Conan Doyle, part Jorge Luis Borges. It’s dizzyingly original and refreshingly smart, and believe me, it’s got an ending you’ll remember long after you close the book.

  Well, Martinez pursues a similar path in his new novel, The Book of Murder, due in bookstores in a couple weeks, and maybe this will become his personal wrinkle on the detective genre. I’m halfway through it, and intrigued. Once again the murders themselves are uncertain. Luciana, the attractive young typist who helped the author ten years ago when his hand was in a cast, has now returned to him in a frantic state, decidedly less attractive and convinced that her former employer, Kloster, now an internationally famous author, is systematically murdering everyone she holds dear.

Luciana sounds like she’s losing her mind. Or is she? 

Kloster is always somehow on the edges of her world, lurking nearby as her boyfriend, her parents, and her brother meet deaths that appear to be accidental. And maybe they are. Maybe Luciana is mad as a hatter, and can’t deal with coincidence and mortality. Well, now she’s really flipping out, nearly hysterical with fear, because she’s seen Kloster outside her grandmother’s old folks’ home, and he’s been invited to her younger sister’s school. She’s asking the author/narrator to intervene for her with Kloster and beg him to stop. And the fool has just agreed to do it!

I had my doubts at first, but now I’m hooked. It’s a slightly surreal Borges spin to have murders that may or may not be murders. Besides which, Luciana could just as easily be the killer as the former employer she’s accusing. Martinez is dancing right down the razor’s edge of ambiguity, and, well…

Enough! I’ve blogged enough for one night – I’m going back to my book.

Take eight steps, and you’ve crossed my kitchen. Turn around when you get to the microwave, and eight paces back. Seven paces if the suspense starts building. Okay, sometimes six if it gets really intense. Six paces, going faster and faster.

  I’m reading the last 50 pages of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Total Chaos, and I can’t sit down. I’ve tried. Buddy made the unfortunate mistake of thinking he could curl up in my lap purring while I finished the book. That ended when I discovered who Batisti’s daughter was married to – oh, my God! My entire body flinched. My cat went flying. The scratches on my leg have finally stopped bleeding.

From now on, I’ll pace safely down the middle of the kitchen. Buddy crouches on his favorite bookshelf, watching me.

Another shocking revelation. I have to shout. Izzo has pulled the rug out from under me so often I don’t believe in rugs anymore. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. I’m very nervous and anxious. I’m chewing on a fingernail. The good cop has suicidally determined to see it all through to the end. Thank goodness this is a trilogy! At least I know there are two more books in the series, so surely Fabio lives. Because right now I’d say he had about a zero chance of surviving this. And he’s not even trying. He’s lost everything that matters. He’s doing what’s right, even if it gets him killed. And it will, because he has enraged, powerful enemies. Bad cops on one side, mafia on the other. It’s the set-up for a tragedy. He can’t survive this.

Right now he’s parked outside the apartment house of the third rapist, the only one left alive. There’s a light in the window. The guy is home, but is he alone? I’m hoping Fabio will wait for backup before going up there when I notice that one of my fingers is bleeding. Dang, I’ve got to stop chewing on myself! I take a very brief Band-Aid break, and then I’m back to pacing ferociously. Nothing’s going to stop me now. I’m seeing this through to the end. The door of the rapist’s apartment swings open. It’s not the rapist. Shock after shock. I had everything wrong. I didn’t even know who the real villain was. Fabio, you’re in over your head, turn back now. If he goes to that villa, he doesn’t have a prayer. Don’t go there, Fabio!

Tonight I’ll be turning the last page.

I know I should be repentant. There’s no justification for reading this book. Sure, I roared through it in three days, but I needed those three days. I should be sensibly working my way through my pile of advance copies. I’ve got gems to read – the new Argentinean novel by the author of The Oxford Murders, and Home, the new Gilead-companion novel from Marilynne Robinson. Those books need to be read at once. I’ve got to be on top of things. I’m running behind. My reviews are late.

  Instead, to my horror, I see a red book waiting like a hellish temptation beside my armchair. I’ve quietly brought home from the bookstore the second volume of the Marseilles trilogy. This is absurd. I don’t have time for the rest of the trilogy. I absolutely cannot read another one. Will someone please knock this book out of my hands? I need an intervention. I’m out of control.

I’m in reading heaven.

Those heavy, gray clouds outside my window promise rain any minute. That’s fine with me. I can deal with a wet Labor Day. It just means I’ll be peacefully reading alone, which is exactly what I want. Yesterday I helped a friend paint his room. Saturday I hosted a friend from out of town. I’ve turned in my review to Shelf Awareness. I’ve been good. Sure, I’ve got another review overdue, and a meeting tonight, and a table piled high with advance reader copies, but so what?

Today is for me. Me and Jean-Claude. 

I’m going to spend this rainy gray day in an armchair by the window irresponsibly reading a book that has nothing to do with new publications or promotions, the book I most want to read at this moment, the first volume of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles trilogy, arguably his most famous book and the one which launched his meteoric career and came to define the genre of Mediterranean noir, Total Chaos.

  Buddy just jumped into my lap, curled up between my legs and started purring. Okay, fine, we’re in this together.

Here we go, and it’s got a grabby beginning, all right – the taxi won’t go into this neighborhood where the central character wants to go. I’m already on edge. By the end of the Prologue, as the guy I thought was the central character is riddled with bullets, I realize he’s not the central character at all.

He’s the pretext. He’s the situation.

So far the story has been narrated in third person, but with the numbered chapters the tone switches. Now there’s a narrator, and as he reveals in the first chapter, he’s down on his knees beside the body of his childhood friend. There it is: the novel’s dark situation in a nutshell. Already I’m swept into this tragic tale of three boyhood friends – two of whom have become criminals, both of them in love with the same girl, and one of them, Fabio Montale, has become a cop. Manu has been gunned down three months before the story starts – his death has been ordered by a crime boss, we don’t know why. To avenge his friend, Ugo has come back to Marseilles and kills the crime lord, but by the end of the Prologue, Ugo is shot to death by the gung-ho captain of the organized crime police squad.

Wham – I’m so caught up in caring about these characters that reading this novel has become effortless. The pages are turning themselves. Poor Fabio is reeling, he’s lost his two best friends within three months…

  Hmmm, it isn’t raining. In fact, it never did rain. It got sunny. It’s bright out there. Well, who cares? What matter is the weather in Marseilles.

As I lunge into the third chapter, the trajectory of the novel suddenly comes more sharply into focus. Fabio, the narrator, explains how central to all Marseilles life is a sense of honor. We realize slowly, as does the horrified old woman next door, that now Fabio is the only one of the three friends left alive, and if there is any honor to avenge, that duty falls to the good cop, even though the culprit is a police captain. All of this, along with the abduction of the Arab girl with whom Fabio has been secretly teetering on the edge of an affair.

The phone is ringing. And ringing.

Here’s an example of the kind of guy Fabio Montale is: a gang of teenage Arab boys has begun terrorizing the subway by taking over a car with loud music and drums. Fabio begs the police not to use their usual strong arm tactics (“They’re just kids!”) and instead Fabio gets on the subway, sits down in the midst of them, opens a newspaper, and says, “Couldn’t you make a little less noise?”

One of the most electrifying lines of dialogue I’ve read in years. I nearly leaped out of my armchair. Buddy lunged from my lap. And along with that thrilling, heroic jolt of character integrity, and a claw scratch across my bare leg that’s beginning to bleed, I found myself suddenly faced with a grim and guilty realization.

The bus I needed to catch to my meeting tonight just passed by my house three minutes ago.

Fine, well, I’m going to stop glancing at my watch. I’m going to stop turning my head in the direction of the clock. I’m going to forget all about the time, and go back to Marseilles, where a lone cop who’s a genuinely good man looks like he’s about to get caught between big time criminals and his own police force.