Ravenswood Used Books

2012-01-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

(must not neglect this blog...)

2011-09-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

High school senior LIly Gentner, a neighbor and valued customer, is applying for admission to some prestigious colleges. She's at the top of her class at Lane Tech, a gigundous high school just down the street. Clearly, Lane does not have a history of cinema requirement where Lily would have run across Howie Morris in his High Anxiety role. Otherwise she would have been sensitized to the use of the shibboleth in this essay, written by her, submitted with the applications, and reproduced as follows with our best wishes.
Lily's essay: "I am not a fan of new books; I don’t understand why anyone would pay extra for a book with no character. My nerdy side, pretty much my only side, enjoys sitting on my front porch with a book, surrounded by nighttime summer humidity. There is a tiny store, just a short bike ride away, where these porch-companions stay, waiting to complete their transition from another reader’s home into mine.
Even after dozens of visits, I still don’t know what the store is called; the front windows are always too completely filled with books to make room for a sign. Visible from across the street, these books nearly always succeed in calling me through the front door and away from my intended destination. Just inside, seated behind a counter and engulfed in books, resides the owner, a little old man with a welcoming smile and a tired dog. I step past its sleeping head and into a warm, thick blanket of books.
The walls, although they must have passed some kind of building inspection, seem to be made solely out of old hardcover books- the kind with ridged spines and small, gold titles printed horizontally. The aisles, barely wide enough to walk through with a backpack, will wrap their arms around you as your eyes flit from title to title and shelf to shelf. The shelves themselves, however, are hidden, swallowed by the very books they support. The place is pleasantly overgrown, just as ivy covers an old brick wall. "
I usually begin with the shelf devoted to classics. On a good day, there won’t be anyone trying to squeeze past me to the door, and I’ll be left to peruse my titles in peace. A deep breath makes apparent the pervading scent of literature. The smell of clauses, punctuation, and the yellowing pages on which they dwell travels up my nose and brings forth a feeling like that provided by the heated air of a Christmastime home. I run my fingers over the tightly packed titles, their varying sizes making for a bumpy trail. I glance across the rows, sometimes removing a layer of books to see the one behind it; eventually, though, something will snag my attention. The sound of its cover as it slides past the others and into my ready hand makes me even more appreciative of the absence of background-music and bustling crowds.
While I read my purchases (almost always more than I had intended to make), I note the phrases underlined by previous owners, I feel the spine that has been creased by the love of another reader, and I enjoy the thought that the book once lived on another bedside table, but has found its way onto mine. As I flip the already-turned pages toward conclusion, I begin to anticipate another visit to my tiny, favorite store. "

2011-06-06T16:12:00.001-07:00

ALERT!! ALERT!! IMPORTANT COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!! The bookstore has just acquired a LARGE COLLECTION of material relating to the world wide SLAVE TRADE from its early history into the early twentieth century. Books by scholars, historians, novelists, and activists, from Steve Biko through Cornell West and M.L.K. jr. Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, merrie olde England, sad New England, and the old plantation. Our books are NOT on line and are sold to nice people who walk in, call, or send the money. That is all.

2011-03-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Tribune was kind enough to publish a review of the store in its Saturday March 19th. edition. Here's the web page link to the article, but it might not last forever. Good to see you here. Please come again. It's always a pleasure. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/ct-books-0319-bookplace-ravenswood-20110319,0,669224.story

2010-09-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Jim Mall and Ravenswood Used Books,

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame has announced its 2010 inductees, they are: Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Studs Terkel, and Richard Wright.

We at the Chicago Writer’s Association, the underwriters of the Hall of Fame, thought you would be interested in knowing that November 20th of this year will mark the first induction ceremony which will be held at the Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium (3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Chicago).

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame greatly appreciates all efforts made in response to this request. Your support will help ensure the long term success of this important part of the Chicago literary community.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at this email, or Donald G. Evans, the Executive Director at 773-414-2603(day or eve) or at his email donaldgevenas@hotmail.com

Thank you,
Robert Grassel
Manager of Promotions and Ticket Sales
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
************NOTE:
I am sorry to report that this notification was received with a grammatical error which we have corrected. We have also deleted email addresses originally included, having suffered severe damage to a facebook page subsequent to publication. Photo credits to Ms. Jessica Schrock, dog guardian. J.M.

2009-11-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a selection of poems recently submitted by our friends and members. Work is published as received without editing or proofreading. All submissions are published. Thanks to the poets below for contributing and to the rest of you for being here on the page.
_________________________________

Me and the Magdalene

by Grant Tarbard

She could bend the farthest
than any girl I've ever seen
ankles about ears
knickers about knees
her hips were the saviour
of a wretch like me
Those lightning eyes
were just the summit
of her icon topography
She spoke of lust
She spoke of the moon
She spoke to the sounds
of the Seventies
Summit/icon
those lines etched on her lips
I'm a prisoner in vision
a floundering ship
bailing with the good china

Hiccups, lollypop and a rose tattoo
Hard frozen vanilla
beaten with a dessert spoon
Hunchback’d over a bowl of sloppy cereal
my eyes fixate on her as she leaves the room
Coffee cup between palms
coarse wiggle, a sip of house maid's brew

The flower,
white tulip I think it was,
lies amongst the wreaths
from the road traffic accident griefs
petals down to the dinner taste of bloodied meats
Kiss the Magdalene upon the feets
as she weeps,
she weeps,
she weeps down on her knees
upon these scenes
We meander home amongst the leaves
trodden soft and wholly young
Carried home
to coffee cup between tender palms.

© Grant Tarbard (2009)

--------------------------------
High Priestess
Goddess of Jade, Lee Su, cruel messenger of death,
            Behold your servant.
Your maiden sings the pleas, promises of your city,
            Offerings, she brings.

Bali, Isle of the Lost, fair land of the Lady,
            Remembers the Goddess.
Bali, of the sea of storms, dark with gales,
            Sends your priestess.

Angel of Death, the High Priestess dances,
            Turning in her silk;
Servant of the Temple, covered in black robes,
            Black cloth of Bali.

Jerome Brooke
----------------------

Prince of Mindanao
Prince of Mindanao, splendid in bronze,
            Marching, so young, so pure.
Vassals bow before your horse, the warband,
            Does salute you, bright in azure.

Gold and silver, robes of silk, gleaming bronze,
            Vassals before you bow.
Girls beg for mere copper coins, peasants mutter,
            Reap as you sow.

Bring the fire, young and immortal, dear one,
            Prince of the lie.
Your arms will surely weaken, false friends,
            You too will die.

Prince of Shades, see your lady, at your feet,
            Captive of seeming.
Beauty she sees, a god among us, love gazes,
            Love pure, fleeting.

Love below you, eyes of a peasant,
            Girl in rags, low of the land.
Hate, envy, pity, all weave the web,
            Pass on with your band.

Jerome Brooke
--------------------------------------

                  War Leader
            Through the waste marched the warriors,
                        Silent was the band.
            In the swift, hot wind, were seen the men,
                        Quiet in the sand.

            Gold, red gold, at their feet, gems,
                        Cast far, far away.
            Swords no longer shone, as on parade,
                        Dull this fearful day.

            My prince looked, saw this lost line,
                        Lost, dead on this dark day.
            Men of the Queen, lost by fate,
                        Found where they fell, and lay.
Jerome Brooke
-------------------------------------------------

Laura (1944)

I watched the movie twice, now wonder if I could
play the part, win his heart, get him to forget his
hand-held game of pinball, and, stepping through
the light and shadow pattern of the slatted window
blinds, have a chance at living happily ever after.

Morgan Harlow
--------------------------------------------

Dream in October

The warm evenings have left me sleepless.
My dreams steeped in humidity
Of strange men who I have never seen before
Yet some how know of me.

Like the man who poured concrete over the sea
I begged him to thin it out
Or the shore would set, forever, unmovable.
And the sea birds would suffer,
Legs held as fragile prisoners
While their wings beat mercilessly to fly

Climbing down a rocky embankment with a hand hoe,
He stirred the sea as I requested
And I felt a shiver from the waves
As they broke free from their concrete statuary.
A cry of gulls and a small sigh from a sandpiper
Broke the balmy silence

The sky turned grey in the nearing twilight
And I offered him my hand as he climbed
The jagged rocks, causing him to stumble, slightly
Dislodging a large stone
Where a small fire was exposed
That had been burning undetected.

And so we stood.

In silence we looked across the sea
As the fire rose up, scorching a small cabin.
There were slight breaks in the heavy clouds
Causing subtle illuminations.

Sarah Higdon
October 12, 2008

__________________________________

Lincoln Park 4:30 a.m.

Once ferocious, it cowered behind the steel bars
Amongst the squeals of taxicab tires
And the unfamiliar smells of vagrant men
Whose urine stained clothes sent off primal signals
Telling it, Animal, but not of its kind.

A rustling of dry leaves, and the darting of a tail
Caused it to involuntarily salivate
And for an instant, it forgot its imprisonment
Pouncing forward and feeling the cruelty of pavement
Scraping its feet, sharp and foreign

A hollowed out log and a stainless steel bowl
Were all it had to navigate around.
Breathing heavily, it edged itself into a corner
Clammy and stressed, tail pressed between its legs

Its ears prick up to a familiar sound
A brother lost somewhere in the night
And it connects to its origins through an unexpected vessel
An ambulance on route to some unfortunate ending
Howls in harmony.

Sarah Higdon

2009-07-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

THE LATEST POST featuring poems by the
friends and members of the Facebook Group
"Ravenswood Books!", a group which is open
one and all, no application fees or vetting committee.

_________________________________________

Postcard from UW-Madison

At der Rathskeller, if you leave a plastic spoon in your coffee
you risk finding it later, melted, at the bottom of the cup.
That could drive you batty, you’ll be running across
the street to where the real bats live in gothic Science Hall.
On the subject of gothic, the opening scene in James Hynes
The Lecturer’s Tale I’ll always imagine taking place at
Library Mall, where Angela Davis spoke and hippies splashed
and waded in the fountain pool. At the Memorial Union
I waited an hour one day for a friend who didn’t show. In
winter we’d walk out on the frozen lake from the Terrace.
I’d ring Carillon bells before doing that again, content now
to view the lake from Observatory Hill, site of a pre-Columbian
bird effigy mound. Then to the Marching band practice
grounds, where I once read Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian
Gray, and cried I know not why. P.S. Bucky says hi!

Back Country Roads

Ol’ Ratty’s making his rounds, looking for
a bird or an egg that may have fallen.
And over there the turkey patrol, like a
parody of illustrations in a children’s book,
gray cautious ganders, nitpicking their way
through the dry grass and flowery weeds.

Morgan Harlow
__________________________________
Disposable Furniture

I dreamt I was in
heaven where
I met a
guy at a bus
stop who said
heaven or
not --
the only
thing worth
buying is
disposable
furniture

by: Jayne Lyn Stahl

6/7/09
_____________________________

Christine Courtman

They say the end is worth the ride
Though riding may be grim.

They say we start out fat with thought
and end up oh-so-slim.

They say that at the end of all is joyous, dancing Light....
I hope they're right!

LUNCH

Time is short.
In fact, it's naught.
Pay no mind to its passing

Luncheon on the lawn is served
For those who are unmassing.

-----------------------------

Robert Abel
A Man With an Interesting Life

Places lived: Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris,
New Zealand, San Bernadino, New York,
Seattle, London, Phuket and Woods Hole.
To name a few. Oh yes, Sydney.
Parents: mother, a Yankee conservative from
An old wealth family, streets in Boston
Named for several. A romantic.
Father, a southern outlaw, liberal,
Fight promoter with alarming friends,
Harrassed by the FBI, poor, rich, then poor again.
A hustler. Loved his ’39 Chevy coupe.
Wives: one, but divorced. She worked for the CIA.
One son, a marine biologist. Two grandkids.
Lovers: he was a sucker for “Asian” women,
Thais, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese,
And had several of each,
Thanks to a good income and the happy accident
Of medications which overcome impotence.
He once sang in a movie and even dated
Shirley Temple, before her political decline.
He owned a donkey in Bali
And had to outrun a jealous love rival
With a kris and a very bad attitude.
Was beaten senseless in a Samoan bar
And had bad dreams forever afterwards.
Sports: golf, which he hates.
Pastimes: Reading. Writing a novel.
Grandchildren. Political chatter
(a liberal dis-satisfied with most liberal pols)
Trying to understand computers. Eating out.
Favorite foods: curries, Wellfleet oysters, raw,
Australian wines, martinis.
Prospects: he is seeing a doctor today
For awful symptoms.
His golf game will not improve,
Nor his love life.
His novel is very funny.

_____________________________

Our apartment is filthy;
Old, creaking, falling apart.
The centipedes, they are creeping in,
While I sit here listening to cellos
And violins. We are still young,
Though our responsibilities are slowly,
But surely, aging us.
I make an effort not to worry, stress, freak out,
But it's hard with every little thing
Hitting me, kicking me, poking me
On all sides.
Then, I read that one book, hear that one song,
Or watch that one movie, and then the flood gates break down
And every teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy little worry,
stress, tear flows out of my eyes and mouth.
How do you deal with it?

Stephanie Cascio
_________________

Kenny Lee

Why go and fix your bed
For just your lovesick head
Only to re-awake
As someone you're afraid of

In an abandoned ship adrift
You've forgotten how to how to steer
Nothing left to do
But lean into the wheel

You've got one checkered past
But no one ever dare ask
You somehow don't come across
Through all the blood that gets coughed up

You're a vampire on the hunt
But your fangs are mere veneer
Nothing left to say
But lean into the wheel

Beneath a stilted smile
You can see your doom for miles
But all around the clock
The machines will operate

With or without your love
They're turning around the gears
Nothing left to try
But to lean into the wheel
_____________________________________________
A Full Stein

If Gertrude Stein were truly mine
a clinging vine would grow around my neck.
With strangulation in the offing,
choking, alternately coughing,
what the heck, I'd say,
it's just not turning into my best day,
but then she'd save my life
by cutting loose
this nearly fatal noose
and I would point at her behind,
an amply large caboose,
and go "Miss Stein, were you not mine,
your oversized rear end would turn me off
since then I couldn't overlook for love
the appetites that brought on
such excessive weight,
but it's my fate to love the larger gals
and send out dada to
my face book pals.
Fin
Jim Mall

____________________________________

_________________Specimen Days Today at 1
Nancy Grace

A specimen, he's asked for,
a small one, in a cup.
The task should be an easy one,
we're mostly fluids after all:
They flow in golden eloquence,
a liquid grammar toward the floor.
"Fill the cup," he whispers gently,
then his finger strokes her cheek.

But if she sits behind a tiny desk,
afraid to raise her hand,
unable to imagine
that the wall clock has no hands,
will it steal along her flesh
to stain a "Monday" stitched in blue,
move slowly, warmly down her thigh
inching toward her soft-soled shoe
kissing calf and knee, its underlip
ingress, egress,
inertia overcoming?

Perhaps in years to come
when fluids, yellow,
speak of scotch
and thighs are something more
than moistened skin
embarrassed by her silence,
perhaps she'll learn to think of it,
not as her punishment upon a cross
but as a source of playfulness,
a word transmorgrified
as memory ancient and perverse:
the knowledge that in all that we disparage
we live as interlocking isotopes--
swirls of light and gas and dust.

Perhaps she'll then admire
its amber hue when touched by sun,
its musicality when hitting glass,
its spiral through a lukewarm bath,
its prescient power to herald life,
its generative potentiality for mimicry
(producing "dinkle," "tinkle," "wizz," and "wee"),
but most profound, and useful, of them all:
its metaphoric capacity
to tell others what she thinks:
you really piss me off, you know

_________________________________________

Timothy Campbell
The Manifesting Shroud of Desire, Part Four
30 August – 14 September 2008, Perú

Sacred birds Nervous cliffs Tired volcanoes
Tall hats Red Cheeks Fireworks
Frescoes Plazas Terraces
Instant coffee Potatoes Pollution
Vulture Folk music Wheezing buses
Faith Empty hostels Independence
Big chickens Hijacking Spanish
River Canyon Poverty
Trepanning skulls Mules Combis
Locked gates Skull binding Sweet wines
Pay toilets Ceviche Lunahuaná
Sandals Ponchos Llamas
Rocky dunes Misty ocean Cream
Lonely Whistle Llosa
Cactus Cañete Sour
Arequipa Catacomb Flags
Lima Burro Trout
Trumpets Prayers Night buses
Poor acrobats Panpipes Five borders

Jungle Mountain Slavery
River-running Flash Photography through Thin Napkins
Alabaster Cuzco Fountain
Bleeding Indigenous Rain photo
Earthquaked Chicha Cathedral
Alpaca Cobblestone Ekokos
Sitting under the thatched roof of the Claxon Museum

Now brandishing a colonial coca leaf necklace
tightly wrapped around the Dae Woo cuy culture
remembering tall Incan shaman cells sacrificing faraway virgins
behind melting glaciers
revealing the underappreciated rituals of the pigeon catchers
cartwheeling in front of after-school ice cream children
melting dreams upon Dutchman’s shoes next to mad dogs
massaging cold cigarettes into round butter balls
swinging through Quechua-tinged condor tunnels
measuring oxygen borders skulls messages in rope lips
moving making sounds like a fire in a cardboard box
while Sisyphean guides withdraw money daily
against rotating pre-conquest vases forever out of reach

____________________________________________

That's all, folks

2009-06-05T13:53:00.001-07:00

This is the Captain speaking. Today I had an interesting book hunt excursion. I went on a call down to Chicago's Lincoln Park/dePaul neighborhood where lies some of the city's more pricey real estate. I was excited, having been told by a caller that she was disposing of her mother's estate and that thousands of books lined every wall of the house.
This can be a mixed blessing, as all dealers in used books have surely discovered. "Thousands of books" usually mean hundreds of bad books, hundreds of okay books, and tens of great books. Today was no exception.
The books were all stuffed into a smallish duplex, not bad looking from the street, but collapsing from the inside out. Crooked stairways, wavy, buckled floors, falling plaster, and dirt over everything. The decedent had gone to be with the book gods at the age of one hundred, and had lived here until the end, provided for by a caretaker who, apparently, didn't do windows.
The daughter, who had solicited my professional services, is a New Yorker, and she has returned to dispose of the house and contents. She herself had lived in the place in the nineteen fifties and watched her mother's collection grow, gathered from every source but new books sellers. All of the books appeared to have been purchased used, a good thing, but many had also been rode hard and put up wet, and that was even before being subjected to a Hoover -free environment ( a vacuum vacuum). They were, in short, pretty much of a wreck. Dirt, I hope you never learn through personal experience, kills books more often than fire or water.
These books were on open shelves that climbed to a twelve foot ceiling. The top rows had been untouched for at least twenty years and were almost invisible from the floor, so thick was the cobweb curtain that draped over the edge, filled with dirt and plaster dust. What looked like a disintegrated feather boa floated in pieces between the shelves and lay across the tops of many books. The owner had made hats, and this thing must have been part of her milliner's supply kit. Bottles and jars of beads and decorative trim also rested atop the books, covered with their own bottle and jar dust. Books were collapsing and disintegrating with the dust, the weight of it and the dryness of time and unhappiness of neglect. They rotted there, forgotten and forlorn, unremembered and unmourned in their orphanhood.
I had driven to the scene in the bookmobile, forsaking Clark the Purple Giant ( my bike) because I was kind of rushed. Parking down there in that 'hood is a killer, and I wound up using one of Chicago's newly installed pay boxes, which are hidden in the middle of the block so that you have to leave your car, walk, pay, and return before getting a fifty dollar ticket, thank you Richie Daley the Last.
I then hoofed it two blocks to the book trove, but didn't take bags with me, having assumed that I would just make a deal on the whole stash and send a truck for it, Mr. Big shot library buyer. As it was, so put off by the dirt and chaos, I bought about twelve books and promised to call back in a few days and arrange to spend more time going through things. Hundreds or thousands of books are still in boxes there, jammed into small rooms, leaving only narrow entry paths for the browser. It's worse than the store, and that's saying something, in case you haven't been here yet ( why not?).
I might expand on this story at another time, especially if there are further developments. That can wait til phase five, my memoir years.
In the meantime, please be advised that a new poetry issue is hereby proposed, and its contents will be provided by you, yeah, you, the one reading this right now. As with the last poetry issues, the late un slam National Poetry month thing, you are invited to send a poem to me at the email address on the group page (which will not publish on this blog entry, probably due to some homeland security amendment). Almost anything that comes in will be published, but it will have your name on it, so be careful. You're welcome to put it on your resume, and we pay just as much as the rest of those prestigious online poetry journals, to wit, zip. But your dean will be impressed and will not cause you to perish, bereft of publication. Drop a poem in the mail or send a query. The FB group also has its own wall where you can all communicate with me or each other.
May a piece of the bailout pie fall upon you and may you walk in the warmth of the sun god's beneficence forevermore, or until the Romulan invasion.

2009-04-30T13:20:00.001-07:00

    THE FIFTH AND FINAL POETRY MONTH POST
which features poems by the members and friends
of the Facebook Group "Ravenswood Books!"
Thanks for being here as a participant
or as a spectator. Please let us know
if you would like these postings to continue.
_____________________________________

ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER DISCOVERS PERPETUAL MOTION

    On finding himself bogged down,
    Aristotle had the insight to say to himself
     "GET UP AND DANCE, STUPID!!!
      He did and moved on.
      Hence, the earliest known affirmation that
      'Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.'"

TAKE A CHANCE

   Ouch!
   Hey, wise up!!
   Go stub your toe again!!!
   Take a chance.

Aristotle Soter
____________________________________________

Tollway Oasis

Once so ultramodern,
the machines still dispense pain relievers and candy.
Remember the Beatles' A Hard Day’s Night piped into the lobby?
We saw ourselves reflected in the glass,
modeling bright pink purses
and rabbit fur hand muffs
Aunt Phyllis bought for us in Chicago.

___________

Product Impurities

the skin off a worker
dipped in the vat
whether foul play
or accident we’ll not
be called upon
to explain it to our
television viewing consumers
sitting comfortably in rooms
where heartbreak is measured
in number of tugs
on the tissue box.

Morgan Harlow
______________________________________

Born without recollection
That I sat in your hand,
to see myself in the world,
so I can learn about love.
Or of hard candy horses- in turquoise and red,
Casting dark shadows on the brightest yellow,
they collide and turn to steam.
Nor of the field with tall flowers,
where the dry sun cleans dust.

I had the initial fear of kindness, and distrust in the voices of women.

When the moon is huge in the North,
and the sidewalk urine is sweet as honeysuckle,
the incubus clouds will swim over the sleep deprived.
There was a deer that watched me wake up in that clearing.

I must be passing through again, to leave
and come back soaked in rain.

Shizu Homma

________________________________________________________

There is ink, thank god, on your hands again

Like a dry orange, ripping skin from the flesh,
what a waste. Some days you can't pull it together enough to even try
to peel it. But you always forgo the knife. Even when you are so far
behind that you're in the negatives and you're selling the beautiful
pieces of yourself to the garbage pickers. Watch them finger
your things. It's then when you begin to count your pennies
one at a time, palm to palm.

You see, the machines are tired of operating. Gold is tired
of shining, doctors of trying, birds of flying. The laundry is piling,
the dishes teetering. At times like these, pink won't stop my mind
from thinking. Maybe if I was still blond and rainbows weren't lies.
But the dolls of my childhood are armed and lining my bedside.
They are angry and their hands are dirty.

It's like the snow will never melt in Chicago. Afraid everyone thinks
that this would be better if I weren't here. Me thinking, I would be better
if I weren't here. My time is measurable. Reduced
to a tick. It's like waking up in a dark room
in the middle of the afternoon. Tock. Realize you are the only thing
that drives the world to keep making days.

Want to know how hard my father hit me as a child? Which men
I have allowed? Keep reading. You will die, the children will die,
the plants, the light bulbs, the love will die and mingle with worms
in the dirt. But there is so much beauty in pain. White
light, weak, pale, and sweating. There is so much beauty in feeling
anything.

Megan Wheeler

2009-04-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

POSTING NUMBER FOUR OF THE FACEBOOK GROUP
RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM
Poetry continues to arrive in our in tray, and we
expect to put up at least two more postings
through April and into May. Fleet Historian Abel
has suggested that the project is worthy of
publication in chapbook form, i.e. an actual
book object, with paper and inky print. Let's hear
your thoughts on that, please, and thanks for your
continuing participation in the project. Use the Group's
wall for comments. Read on.

____________________________
An E Mail from Satan

Satan sent me an e mail:
Look, he said, anything you want.
A giant cock, authentic knock off watches,
Horny housewives lined up at your door,
Billions in clever stock manipulations,
Sex 24 hours a day while money rolls in,
A staff of fifty hand-picked servants
To run things for you while you fuck and spend,
And climb Mount Everest without oxygen.
You’ll be on every TV in the land,
AND you’ll catch world record trout,
Invent a cure for AIDS and pen an opera,
ALL IN YOUR SPARE TIME.
All I ask is a little consideration, he said.
Just sign here, he added,
I mean, sign here once you’re dead.

Robert Abel

______________
_________________________________________________

& we don't care where we kiss

we blew on our flute-rims
'til the champagne spilled into shapes,
spelling the notes we summoned into sound.

ideas pitched into existence,
under the spell of some thinness
of our blood,
they sank in the linoleum
as if they knew this was the last night
they'd be conjured up.

they sang through the gaps in their teeth.

& so did we.

& it was either the silver & gold
of our apartment keys
or the black & white
of the piano
that we fumbled around
when the next thing we knew
was we couldn't feel our fingers.

so just as champagne had once occupied
a bottle that now laid probably on some sidewalk,
our lungs let laughter occupy the room.

& with feet intertwined,
we slept a dreamless sleep
wearing shapeless grins
on our bare skin.

by Dustin Currier

____________________________________

On Reading Alfred Tennyson
by Stephanie Cascio

You are an ally of alliteration.
You sent a rolling wave over my head;
A wave of creative inspiration.
I think you may have inadvertently led
to my yearning for a life of poetry.
A life fill'd with verse and a musical
meter; and beauteous, perfect symmetry.
A life that is oh-so-fantastical.
Now I am here, writing this sonnet.
'Tis my first. Is it very obvious?
If this does not go well, I may end it;
But hopefully I make thee envious.
O Lord Tennyson, how you provok'd
my poetic genius that was yet uncloak'd.

(Yay for poetry!)
___________________________________________

Gin

She came to sex as she’d come to gin. Five
years in the convent, what did she know
about gin? Sister Emmanuel said the Devil
himself was suckled on it, and after her
third drink in the Red Kilt she knew he was
inside her like a crazed Wizard of Oz,
pushing and pumping her levers and gears.
Sister’s voice whispered, You couldn’t
lift one finger, not one pinky of one hand
if not for the Love of God. But she was
twenty-five and didn’t know anything about
love. She knew she wasn’t holy, or chaste, or
even sorry. And she knew she was alone when
the man called her beautiful, when the gin said
Baby, relax, enjoy it while you can.

--Meg Kearney, from An Unkindness of Ravens
_______________________________________

No Lap Dancing at the Nada Bing

Lives lapping at the wreck -strewn shore
wave eroded lives
purchased at the market's top
slipping into dirty froth
and lichen slimy rocks

Overlapping lives, perhaps,
but unaware until a backward glance
reveals what might have been
and now too late to change the course,

to stop and try your hand
at some enchanting conversation-

the rip tide and the undertow are furious here-

swim parallel to shore
until the ocean's bottom drops away
and things calm down

but in that deeper, older sea,
no one that you'd want to meet
all these fatties in the inner tubes
no hunks or halter tops
to catch the eye and tempt the flesh,

The floating folks
waiting for the tide
to take them in or out,
wherever.

Jim Mall
______________
________________________________________

2009-04-18T10:02:00.001-07:00

THE THIRD POST OF RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! FACEBOOK GROUP
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM WITH MORE TO COME !!!!

Here is my "clean" poem (Day 7)
Share
Today at 8:45am
On April 6, 2009 the body of 8 year old Sandra Cantu was found
inside a black suitcase floating in an irrigation pond in Tracy, California.
Sandra had been missing since March 27, 2009

My Own Beloved Child

I do not know you but I shall hold you like my own beloved child
I promise once I’ve cleaned you I will cover you like my own beloved child

From the black case I lift you and lay your modest form upon a white sheet.
Painstakingly, I comb through your tawny hair, like my own beloved child’s

Gently I hold each hand and scrape foreign matter from under your pink nails
Your tiny breathless nostrils and still breast make me ache for my own beloved child

I photograph your cuts and bruises, set your twisted limbs aright,
Map every inch of your lovely form as I might my own beloved child’s

I swab where I must, reassuring you that this will be the last assault upon you.
I eliminate all infection from you as I would from my own beloved child.

Every fiber and hair, is combed from your hello-kitty top and black leggings,
as if I were grooming the lovely angel wings of my own beloved child.

You are clean now, though no amount of wickedness could ever really stain you.
Dearest, you are my angel, my angel; forever my own beloved child.

Meg Harris

__________________________________________________________________
Winter Night

let your streets fill with water
puddle up to the grocery store, the taco cart
sell your beer past three,
drop a coin in a coffee cup.
give a man a fact: a real hand on his real lap
in a musty taxi cab
weight of a woman on his thighs
a sigh, a whiskey drink on the bed stand.

it takes a long time to hear the streets
to know screeching and romance,
the wind-whipped lovers at the corner café
hair tangled over eyes sip sip
you know I can’t love things right.

Laura Jo Hess
__________________________________________________________________

Only the Hurricane
by Timothy L. Campbell

Floods.
Tornadoes.
Earthquakes.

All nameless bringers of destruction and grief.
Only the hurricane, the sea’s mighty fury,
Earns itself a name for posterity.

Floyd.
Agnes.
Katrina.

______________________________________________________
Dream in Technicolor

Black water flowed
Through the streets
Eager crows spread their wings
I was drenched in Desire
There was fire in the trees
Syllables twisted knots
‘Round the neck of the guard
Where I ran down that train
All a-flame spinning death
Gasoline in my pores
But I ran for the life
Of my velveteen bride
All the while
Drunk with fear
Through the river with the Sirens

I saw your face
Sparkle-Lace
Drank the pain
That dripped off your tongue
While your hands
Were ablaze
“By the Swift Heavy Sun”
Was a song from a dove
That you played with my heart
Revelry, Revelry
In a rolling wave
I was saved
Crying: “Grace!”
By the words that you spoke
With your gun
A thirty-two twenty, I believe it was

You were never just
As you were
Shifting shapes in the dark
But I would have-
followed you-
anywhere.

The cattle sob
Night grows long
Over pastures too soon
Now and henceforth
West and North
By the Alabaster Sea
In some ramshackle ship
What cosmic blinks
In yonder skies!
Be you our guide through the mist?

Kenny Lee
__________________________________________________

A Woman Turing Forty Stops Wearing Underwear

President William Jefferson Clinton was on trial that year,
accused of having an affair with a collagen-enhanced
Valley Girl turned White House intern.

Two capitol guards were gunned down
Two U.S. embassies in Africa were blown up
Taliban Muslim extremists cut off the hands of Turkish thieves.

John Glenn readied himself to fly the Shuttle into space,
at 77, the oldest man to leave earth’s atmosphere.
Frank Sinatra died. So did Sheri Lewis and Buffalo Bob.

Politicians argued that no one cared --
that we’d given up our right to sue HMO’s:
We just wanted cheaper rates.

My husband spent his evenings
dead-heading the petunias in our garden.
He’d spent the mornings weeding marigolds.

He’d given up on the American press.
So had I.
They’d given up on America.

Truth seemed hard to find, sincerity scarce.
Despite mild evenings and rainy afternoons
our garden blazed with color.

I sat on the deck and counted squirrels in the trees
until the bats began to flit above the chimney.
None of them knew that I’d thrown away my bras and panties.

Neither did the shoppers at our local supermarket
nor the secretaries in my office or the clerks at the post office.
My psychologist was oblivious. So were my next door neighbors.

No one knew how close I was to anarchy
the soft and wrinkly truth of butt and breast.
I could feel them pushing through my shorts and shirt

Like weeds through asphalt, green and lanky
tipped with rubber heads,
I loved to feel my crotch against my jeans.

That’s the summer I discovered dark matter,
the pull of something invisible and obscene.

Nancy Grace
____________________________________________________

___________________

2009-04-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

SECOND INSTALLMENT OF
THE RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! FACEBOOK GROUP
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM

What Is Real

What is real is almost
a homeless man running for office
until Midwestern conservatives shake
their heads and their forefingers
spitting as they speak about verifiable
addresses and the illegitimacy of state
if they let such an outlandish thing occur.
But politics are already stolen
or stealthily bought by the highest bidder
the best-looking romantic in the city,
the shiniest cuff links but the cheapest education
the most reputable reputation for the most crooked
state in the union.

The man you lock eyes with
on the way to work each blurry morning
with the blankets piled upon his chest
three different shades of blue to protect
him from the violent Chicago wind
the broken window panes smashed in the street
the puddles at his feet not draining
along Ashland Avenue on the start of a spring morning.
Yes, there is your city official. He knows, already,
about the death of the cityscape the depth
of sadness, the leaps of boredom, hoping
maybe, this next passerby will be a rabbi, a monk,
someone more important than weak-hearted mongers
like yourself and the three people in nice shoes
who just outran you.

He coughs loudly into his elbow
and the sun is shining over a Wrigley billboard
directly onto his forehead, into his doorway haven
onto his pile of shoes, his basket of books,
his youth seeping from his wrinkled upper lip. Children
gone now, to the playground, the next state line,
the shelter, the hospital, the office building, the jail.
But this doorway is promising. It’s been three weeks now,
no policemen waking him with a baton to the skull,
no ice storms, no sleet puddles, no party buses or accidents.

What is real is remapping bus routes
so kids don’t have to cross gang lines
to get to school on time, so they can wear their own clothes
in their own way in their own streets with their heads up.
Real is cow milk in your coffee cup and football players
on your TV; crack house turned condo building thanks to
camera lens atop street lamps. Real is slicing
a drill bit through your thumbnail and riding the train
to the hospital. Real is you’re too late Chicago,
you’ve changed me.

Laura Jo Hess

________________________________________________________

If you couldn't give me your love, attention or even your friendship
The least you could do
Is give me a box of chocolates
And a long-stemmed rose

Laura Murphy
__________________________________________________________
Board the beast

Post me up and whisper to
my ear of how the wild wooden vessels of yesteryear
have murder on their breath.

And of how they wish to sickly suck
the blood from the curves
bequeathed unto me by
the lapping of the listless lull of history.

Soon I will whisper back of
barnacles and the unchanged beating of
my siren's chest and
how his beard cuts into
the softened flesh of my barrenness.

by Kendra Lea Hull

-_
__________________________________________________________

I , too, wear dead mens' clothes,

   and

   walk in borrowed shoes.

tom milligan

________________________

"I know, Myself" by Jim Joyce
My friends, if in the past weeks I’ve been cruel or disingenuous
It’s only to anticipate pending evils, those attacks against my wellbeing
By the electric man, spring showers, and Lent’s palmy grip.
If the opportunity decides to arrive, I would not deny myself the joy
of kicking one of their vertebra, clouds, or censers “out of joint”
To assure that the softness
             Of my delicate heart
Stays safe for our later enjoyment during these times of violence
Directed against me, my friends.

2009-04-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

THE FACEBOOK GROUP "RAVENSWOOD BOOKS!"
OPEN POETRY UN SLAM BEGINS!
Our National Poetry Month un slam begins!
Here are the first five poems from group members,
friends, and others who happened to be watching us.
There will be at least two more postings using the
remaining ten or eleven submissions now in.
You're all welcome to send more. Thanks for
playing along and having fun with this project.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

April

The darkest time
is when the frogs sing
in the mucky marsh
scaring the lights
right out of our heads

Morgan Harlow

________________________________________________________________

HOW I BECAME THE GREATEST POET IN THE WORLD
HOW I BECAME RULER OF THE WORLD

It was easy.

      --unfinished poem by Mark Strand

It was easy,
the goose in the bottle.

Easier than to justify,
or I would have done it sooner.

It was only to get girls,
and afterwards I discovered

old lovers kill themselves
more often than old virgins,

so I chose a reductive innocence,
crusty in my intactness.

I withdrew to commence
a series of lawsuits

against certain publications
which had, at one time,

or more than once,
rejected my work.

They all wanted it now,
that same stepchild opus.

And why were those editors
who made such a point‑‑

elaborate enclosure letters
do not impress us;

the poem must stand
on its own merits‑‑

suddenly writing me?
I knew what they didn't:

old words fare worse
than old celibates: their juices

bubble and ooze
till their pores are glazed;

they mummify
in their own secretions.
--
Tad Richards

_________________

Ensign March

The red splintered door, shade
of chokecherry, splits

the house into spheres.
You lie naked, less than sparrow, less
than cottonwood, and eye
a flickering moth. Outside, snow

strikes black limbs of oak; the sway
of branches twist eastward. Does it matter,
in this one season, who passes

or why. The steady hooves of a slow horse fill the arroyo
along with the sound of a slipping pack,
a few breathy groans. A sharpened

axe and stacked cordwood remain
neatly dry in all this falling. The rock salt
scattered over gravel beside the shed slops

the ground into a sheen. You draw a breath, a bath
and remember the dog tags in the desk drawer;
remember your body is somewhere
buried nameless.

Maureen Alsop

first published in New Delta Review
_________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
Chewed over

devoured like a pomegranate
each plump seed plucked
pulp sucked, purple spit
dribbling from the mouth

it’s in your teeth
I see it in your teeth

Megan Wheeler
_____________________________________________

Misplaced

I fear I have misplaced myself
for good this time. The She I was
has not been found curled sleeping at her mother’s
feet, nor stuck inside the white-brick schoolhouse where
I’d guessed we might have parted ways. I retraced
rutted paths and couldn’t find
my self of breadcrumbs dropped between
the years. When last I caught a foolish melancholy
crinkled near the corner of an eye
it wasn’t here in mine. I checked at each time crossroads,
and may have been found once
(or many summer onces)
at my small sister’s shoulder, mired in the sticky street
where crushed and sour, mulberry blood splashed up
our heels like bruises. But I am nowhere fast—
“to lose oneself” a warning after all and not advice
for girls who think they’re young, or pretend sometimes to be.
It’s more a matter now of finding
not where I was but why I’ve been delayed
and with whom I have stopped along the way.

--Hope Rehak
___________________

2009-04-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

In celebration of National Poetry Month
members of the bookstore facebook group, Ravenswood Books!,
have been invited to submit a poem for posting here!
They all have to be at least this good to get published.

HARD BOILED LOVE BY THE LAKE

Her eyes were like razor-sharp
ninja knives.
They ripped open
my chest

and dumped my heart, my lungs, my liver,
and my poor pulsating prostate

onto the baking hot Chicago sidewalk
where the pile of guts

lay steaming in the sun

and I stood there trying to suck my breath
through a two foot slice of bleeding meat.

Jim Mall

2009-03-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

FRESH NEW MATERIAL!
Yesterday we unloaded thirty garbage bags of books into the store, all from a little apartment in Logan Square. Lots of esoteric philosophy, old mysteries, and LOADS of lesbianology, including one on how to cure it. Plus Anita Bryant's sick little screed -with an orange on the cover. Ten Thomas Merton books, George Santayana, bios of P.T. Barnum (1891) and Mary Baker Eddy. Two of Sontag's Metaphor books, and at least one Simone de Beauvoir. Still unpacking, and there's one trip left for the last fifteen bags. I need a massage.
No cat pee, but a few dog chews on the corners. This adds character. And Farley Mowat is in there, too.

2009-03-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

YOUR BOOKS BACK ATCHA!
Here's a list of your favorite books, gathered from your own generous sharing and an occasional raid on a few Facebook pages when you had forgotten to set the burglar alarm. ( Yes!! This blog has its own Facebook Group! Sign up today!)
The first group is my own, and the rest are just pasted in as found on the desktop.
There were probably more lists buried in the stack, but this is more than enough to give you all an idea of how we're killing those few hours we spend off line.
Reading should be fun. These books are not recommended, advocated, promulgated, or otherwise pushed in your face with implications of puritanical obligation to improve yourself, even if there is room for it. And you know who you are.
* N.B. We are currently operating under the burden of a proofreader's strike, and errors may abound in the body of this post. It's really not our fault.
Kiki's Paris
Paris to the Moon
All the Pretty Horses
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Lenin's Tomb
The Sun Also Rises
Catch Twenty Two
No Country for Old Men
Poisonwood Bible
Sherman: Fighting Prophet
Lonesome Dove
Autobiography of Ansel Adams
Being Geniuses Together
Everybody Was So Young
Undaunted Courage
Battle Cry of Freedom
Band of Brothers
The Little Friend
All James Ellroy

A list that could change from day to day, but here's ten:
Marcel Proust - Remembrance of Things Past
Donald Finkel - Not So the Chairs
Donald Justice - Collected Poems
Oscar Hijuelos - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
John Clellon Holmes - The Horn
Nancy Willard - Things Invisible to See
John R. Tunis - The Kid Comes Back
Larry Hicock - Castles Made of Sound: The Story of Gil Evans
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Ross MacDonald - The Underground Man

Ulysses, On the Road, Dr. Sax, Possession, Gaudy Night, The Nine Tailors, The Stone Diaries, Mrs. Dalloway, The Four Quartets, Humbolt's Gift, Henderson the Rain King, The Sun Also Rises, Song of Solomon, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, The Courtier and the Heretic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Winesburg Ohio

Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies
Chang-rae Lee, Aloft
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book (Ivan Morris, trans.)
Arnold Lobel, Owl at Home (children's literature)

Two Dozen Favorite Novels:
1. The Plague, Albert Camus
2. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
3. Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes
4. Henderson, The Rain King, Saul Bellow
5. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
6. USA Trilogy, Jon Dos Passos
7. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
8. The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary
9. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
10. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
11. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
12. Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
13. Wang Sher-cheng, The Golden Lotus
14. James Baldwin, Got Tell It on the Mountain
15. The Story of the Stone, Cao Xuexin
16. Ulysses, James Joyce
17. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
18. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
19. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
21. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
22. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
23. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas-Llosa
24. One Hundred years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
25. Candide, Voltaire
26. Property, Valerie Martin

(and authors): Walt Whitman, Williams Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara, Fernando Pessoa, Philip Lopate, Paul Celan, William Butler Yeats, Amiri Baraka, Charles, Baudelaire, Cezar Vallelo, Federico Garcia Lorca, John Giorno, Sharon Olds, Shakespeare, Anne Carson, Kenneth Koch, Jean Baudrillard, Alice Fulton, Charles Simic, Robert Bly, Spalding Gray, Philip Roth, Wallace Stevens, Stephen Dunn, Philip Levine, Galway Kinnell, Joan Didion, Joe Brainard, Czeslaw Milosz, Tomaz Salamun, Anne Waldman, David Lehman, James Tate, Stephen Dunn, John Keats, WB Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Troubadour poets, Sestinas, Lewis Hyde, Albert Goldbarth, William Empson, Kenneth Burke, Francis Ponge, Rene Char, Denis Donoghue, David Trinidad, Roland Barthes, Matthew Arnold, Chuck Klosterman, FT Marinetti, Vladimir Nabakov, Ned Rorem, Susan Sontag, Carol Maso, Lydia Davis,

Too many to list, but among my current top contenders: Moby Dick, Last Psalm (Betsy Sholl), Kite Runner, The Human Line (Ellen Bass), My Sister's Keeper, The Poisonwood Bible, Mill on the Floss, Traveling in the Dark (William Stafford), Duende (Tracey K. Smith), Blood Meridian, The Waves, The Zoo Kepper's Wife and Reading Lolita in Tehran. I also enjoy mysteries (Jonathan Kellerman, Marcia Mueller, Agatha Christie, Ross McDonald, etc. etc.) and sci-fi fantasy (Peter Beagle, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Ann McCafferty, etc. etc., etc.)

Summerhill by Dr. Neill, Richard Scarry's picture books... that said, The Empire's old Clothes by Ariel Dorfman ( I think those Big Books are not imperialist)
Duino Elegies, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Stories of God and everything else by Rilke
I like BOTH fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
I like the Bhagavad Gita and the Holy Bible
Tin Drum by Gunther Grass and Johnny got His Gun by Dalton Trumbe (i happen to be against violence)
I will get back to you
Gotta finish Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda and Art of Loving by Erich Fromm

Alias Grace-M. Atwood
Paris Spleen-C. Baudelaire
Invisible Cities-I. Calvino
In Cold Blood-T. Capote
The World Viewed-S. Cavell
The Mystery of Black Eagle Island-E.J. Craine
Discipline and Punish-M. Foucault
Power/Knowledge-M. Foucault
The Yellow Wallpaper-C. Gilman
The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime-M. Haddon
Representation-S. Hall
To Kill A Mockingbird-H. Lee
Shutter Island-D. Lehane
A Game of Thrones-G. Martin
Winnie the Pooh-A.A. Milne
The Deep End of the Ocean-J. Mitchard
Playing in the Dark-T. Morrison
Close Range-A. Proulx
Catcher in the Rye-J.D. Salinger
Me Talk Pretty One Day-D. Sedaris
Other Stories and Other Stories-A. Smith
Arcadia-T. Stoppard
Atget-J. Szarkowski
Classic Essays on Photography-A. Trachtenberg
Stuart Little-E.B. White

blood meridian; eat, pray, love,
mary oliver. foucault's pendulum
the name of the rose. jack kerouac.

Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Nine Short Stories - Salinger
Journey to the End of the Night - Celine
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Dick
The Man Who was Thursday - Chesterton
Moscow to the End of the Line - Erofeev
What Work Is - Levine
Ariel - Plath
Exile in the Kingdom - Camus
Hunger - Hamsun

"Little, Big" - John Crowley
"Pale Fire" and "Ada, or Ardor" (tie) - Vladimir Nabokov
"Envy" - Yuri Olesha
"Lanark - a life in four books" - Alasdair Gray
"The Crying of Lot 49" - Thomas Pynchon
"The Divine Invasion" - Philip K. Dick
"Second Skin" - John Hawkes
"Spring Snow" - Yukio Mishima
"the Land where the Blues Began" - Alan Lomax
"the Invisibles" - Grant Morrison

Jude the Obscure, The Magus, The Complete Poems of W.B. Yeats, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop, Wordsworth, Geek Love, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Whitman, Steinbeck, Theodore Roethke, Graham Greene, The Bluest Eye, George Saunders, T.C.Boyle!, Steven Millhauser, William Kennedy!, William Trevor, Charles Simic, Wendell Berry (my favorite living author) Jill Paton Walsh, A Thread of Grace, Blood Meridian, Border Trilogy, Jason Rizos, A Primate's Memoir (so good, so funny, so insightful) In the Beauty of the Lilies, Margaret Atwood! Anton Chekhov! Italo Calvino! Kurt Vonnegut, Up in the Old Hotel, John Muir, Sue Hubbell, Astrid & Veronika, The Book Thief, Persepolis, Muriel Spark, Franz Kafka, Luigi Pirandello, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson, Shirley Ann Grau, Ivan Doig, Dorothy Allison, West with the Night, Things Fall Apart, Horse Heaven, Seabiscuit: an American Legend, Thom Jones, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Katherine Mansfield, On Writing, How to Read Literature Like a Professor...AND!!! In Cold Blood. But Wait! There's more!!
Bartleby the Scrivener, All the Kings Men, Waiting for Godot, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (oops already said Spark), Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Age of Innocence...more to come... Can anyone recommend a good horse book?

Another lost list rediscovered on the wall
"Little, Big" - John Crowley
"Pale Fire" and "Ada, or Ardor" (tie) - Vladimir Nabokov
"Envy" - Yuri Olesha
"Lanark - a life in four books" - Alasdair Gray
"The Crying of Lot 49" - Thomas Pynchon
"The Divine Invasion" - Philip K. Dick
"Second Skin" - John Hawkes
"Spring Snow" - Yukio Mishima
"the Land where the Blues Began" - Alan Lomax
"the Invisibles" - Grant Morrison

2009-03-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

AT THE MOVIES
Happy daylight savings (yawn)!
Today's post is not directly book related. It's about the movies, or more precisely those movies which the rigid and intolerant shop owner finds memorable and would like his staff to see some day so that they'll be up to speed on why, being super impressionable, he behaves as he does.
We talk movies in the store with each other and with our friends and customers, and today you can be included in the conversation. This is not my list of "best" or "most important" movies, and it doesn't go back in time to delve into movie history. It's just an informal list of about one hundred films which I liked enough to remember and through which I would happily sit once again, at least. Almost no current or recent films are included, and I did not agonize over this in order to
avoid omissions or to be comprehensive. It's all just pretty much a stream of of consciousness thing, in no order of date or significance.
I'm not presuming to "recommend" any of these, and there are many of your own favorite films which I have never seen and many which I saw and hated. "So it goes" ( Who said that? It's a lit quiz.)
This can be an interactive conversation, but it's mostly designed to kill some time on a dreary Chicago day. A visit to Blockbuster may brighten your perspective.I have to sit here and listen to the rain.
Don't forget, we do have a large film and drama section in the shop, and there's a shelf full of Roger Ebert's reviews, along with many others, including that right wing guy, whatshisname.

Chinatown
Jaws
The Godfather 1,2
On the Waterfront
On the Town
Singing in the Rain
An American in Paris
Get Shorty
Annie Hall
Hannah and Her Sisters
A Fish Called Wanda
Tin Cup
Waterworld
The Ice Harvest
Dave
Sweet Smell of Success
Manchurian Candidate ( first )
Seven Days in May
Some Came Running
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Sweet and Lowdown
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Downfall
From Here to Eternity
The King of Marvin Gardens
Atlantic City
Mean Steets
Five Easy Pieces
A Member of the Wedding
Wind Across the Everglades
Gone With the Wind
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Assassination Tango
Brazil
Wild at Heart
Michael Clayton
Cape Fear (first)
The Big Sleep
Top Hat
The Third Man
In the Heat of the Night
Hud
Pollock
The Pianist
The Maltese Falcon
The African Queen
To Have and Have Not
Key Largo
The Friends of Eddy Coyle
Out of the Past
Mystic River
Night of the Hunter
Moonstruck
L.A. Confidential
Out of Sight
One Eyed Jacks
Apocalypse Now
Red Rock West
The Last Seduction
The Big Lebowski
Fargo
Blood Simple
The Moderns
Choose Me
The Lady Eve
Sullivan's Travels
Seven Samurai
The Magnificent Seven
True Grit
The Searchers
Nevada Smith
Bullit
Dirty Harry
Copland
Groundhog Day
Lost in Translation
The Getaway ( both )
Taxi Driver
Big Night
Out of Africa
Surviving Picasso
Silence of the Lambs
The Cincinatti Kid
Hard Eight
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
Goodfellas
The Big Country
No Country for Old Men
Apocalypto
Laura
Viva Zapata
Mystery Train
Heaven Can Wait
Gandhi
Shampoo

2009-03-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

LIT CRIT
For you followers of Granta, the literary magazine, please note that the store stocks several back issues of this and other lit reviews, quarterlies, and related material. Somewhere in here there's a box full of James Joyce Quarterlies, but since they are buried there's no way of knowing how far back they go. With the offer of sufficient incentives we would institute a search or invite you to do it, if you carry your own liability insurance. Signing a waiver might work, too.
We are interested in acquiring private press books made by our pal the late Harry Duncan. Harry published lots of poetry under the imprints of Cummington Press and Abattoir Editions. He set up his last shop at The University of Nebraska at Omaha, following a distinguished career at the University of Iowa. Some of you may have known him.

2009-03-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

ARS BREVIS MOOLAH LONGA EST
Why can't we rant? It's the store blog, and thus should project an image of professionalism and responsible neutrality, but on the other hand, we should be a loyal and supportive friend to all members, customers, and associates. In that light, we must bring to your attention a most alarming story of dastardly deeds and bastardly misdeeds. It is a story of greed, self-centered ethical misconduct, and disregard of the arts and the well being of a struggling community. For the purpose of obscurity and remaining free of libel suits the story will reveal itself in code, open to interpretation and closed to lawyers.
In a former post we may or may not have promoted the career of a former stage- struck employee. We may even have released this person from his contractual obligations in the store so he could pursue his theatrical dreams, while at the same time making way for the return of a former employee who happens to be, inconsequentially, a gorgeous blonde, not that it makes any difference.
This sequence of events, later to be proved a tragedy of errors, would not have come about but for the moderately theatrical employee's more or less potentially lucrative engagement for a series of afternoon performances at a local venue, the name of which could possibly bring to mind the inventor of the telegraph. That particular venue, let's call it The Ritz for convenience, was recently inaugurated and ballyhooed as a wonderful showplace and northside destination in a neighborhood in need of some upscale muscle and cultural uplift.
The Ritz was the dream and brainchild of two forward looking arts patrons who were not named Medici and therefore needed to find a money guy to help transform some downscale property into a palace of the arts. The two patrons had the misfortune to turn to a Runyonesque character whose name, familiar to all Chicagoans, may, or may not, bring to mind the things on the face of a man who has not shaved for a few days. Not beards or mustaches, of course, but the individual units of which those decorative growths are comprised. Are we leaving too much out here? Good.
So this beard unit individual forks over a reputed six million Bush era dollars for the transformation of the Ritz, from rundown to ritzy, appropriately. The two non- Medicis are to be the producers, dreamers, idealists, and talent bookers, with the beard unit in the background as a so-called silent partner.
This being Chicago, it is well known that "silence" is solely the province of the tomb, and in the blink of an eye, in geologic time, Mr. Beard Unit is issuing orders. This turn of events escalates to a threatened shutdown of the Ritz and the consequent cancellation of scheduled acts, including the run of our pal's show. So he is to left hanging in the breeze, just a few blocks from Lake Michigan, in March, and the gorgeous blonde still ensconced and immovable back in the store.
So what's next? We have no idea; we're just sayin', is all.

2009-02-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

GRAPHIC EXTRAVAGANZA!!
We have just acquired a large collection of graphic novels, all in pristine condition and many unopened in original plastic wraps. Some are signed. This collection was formed by our customer over the last ten years or so, and lots of the books have got to be out of print by now.
We probably won't get around to posting an inventory by author, but some of your all time faves have got to be in this giant stack. Gaiman, Sandman, Green Lantern, Frank Miller, Batman, 100 Bullets, and one hundred more await your viewing pleasure. All of these will be priced at ten to fifteen dollars, and you'll be able to bargain for quantity purchases.
Graphic novels are among the hottest commodities in today's bookworld, and this collection predates the recent surge in interest which means that there are things in here that the tyro collectors don't have. You can make your bookshelf look like that of an advanced and highly sophisticated collector. Your friends won't think you in the least pretentious but just prescient and terribly canny!

2009-01-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

BREAKING BOOKSTORE NEWS!!!!!
Our former helper and shelving architect Sean Masterson the FAMOUS MAGICIAN will be on stage at the Morse Theater in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood in February and March. If you remember Sean from the store you know him as a warm and witty guy who can talk his way out of anything. This translates well before an audience, and he puts on a great show, suitable for all ages! Be amazed, be thrilled, be entertained, be on time!
This promotional entry has been made without the knowledge or approval of Mr. Masterson, and all objections should be directed to his website! ( "Mastersonmagic dot com" ) and ( "the Morse dot com")

DON'T MISS IT IF YOU CAN!!!!!

2009-01-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

HELP! We've been Yelped! I've been braggin' it up that the store has a five star rating on Yelp, sharing that distinction with only one other used bookstore in town, but a recent visit to Yelp.com reveals evidence of an assassination attempt and the loss of one half star. This is due to a recently added TWO STAR review by one "T.C.", a visitor who just didn't get it. He mistook the store for a library, I guess, and demanded alphabetization. Despite some unsanctoned and unofficial efforts by Missy Mae (sic.), one of our three invaluable helpers, the store is not organized that way. It would be impossible to do it in such a small space, and would require a full time staffer to keep up with it. This is not an apology. It is a caveat. Love it or leave it. Or just like it enough to come back.
The mean reviewer, T.C., does not present a profile photo on his Yelp reviews, and a quick search turns up more of T.C.'s disapproving reviews of other Lincoln Square stores. Apparently, he is a serial mugger. I am inferring gender here because the bad reviews don't have a woman's voice. They imply an attitude I associate with guys who suffered abuse as children. Women from these unfortunate backgrounds tend to be less public when acting out their psychic pain. (Thank you, Dr. Jim )
Could this "T.C." be the same person who came in last week and complained non-stop about every book we recommended, after asking for advice? Then presented a twenty dollar gift certificate his neighbor, our customer, had given him in exchange for dog walking!
Of all da noyve!

2009-01-24T04:29:00.000-08:00

The inaugural poem issue is still fueling many postings all over the web. Most or all of the heat and noise is generated by poets of all stripes, both the published on- a- pin -head variety and the can’t- get -laid- in- a - whorehouse variety. They seem to have taken possession of the entire issue of The Poem. It is the center of their universe. Their one chance to get noticed, albeit by proxy, has been hijacked by the controversy over The Poem’s worthiness. To dismiss it as trivial, modest, inept, inapt, unmoving, or otherwise ineffectual, is to mark them with the same stain, as if The Poem was a community effort and not the work and performance of one individual.
This is a phenomenon of Poet Ghettoization. They all live in a crumbling tenement off in a marginalized and forgotten corner of a city which has on its mind everything but Poetry. It’s their own fault. They got there by choice, after struggling across potholed streets, through gang infested turf. They were dying to live there, and now they wonder why the rest of us out here in suburbia aren’t driving up their property values.
Please insert many smily face emoticons where appropriate.

2009-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

I have had some 'net conversations and inter- blog postings about the inaugural poem. One response to my posts was positive, but many sites are the provinces of poetry teachers and grad students with territory to be fiercely guarded. As a consequence, my remarks have been condemned as those of a philistine. My favorite was a dare to "try (my) own hand at it" before presuming to criticize, as if only union members had voting rights.
On an unrelated note, we are going to install a trap door under the floor of the poetry section. This will lead to the basement alligator pond. The trip wire will be triggered arbitrarily, ensnaring the beautiful as well as the damned.
Such is life. Nothing is "fair".

Posted to http://mikechasar.blogspot.com/ These guys did not like the poem, but their blog rejected my post. What's that all about?

This poem sounds like a class exercise. It is trite, inappropriate to the occasion, broken and disjointed. It was also read in a stilted and pretentious manner, with cadences and emphases adjusted to imply more depth than the words themselves conveyed.
Many apologists, mostly poetry teachers, are now defending the poem by use of the dopey explanation, "It's better than it sounds"! They are counseling careful readings and study of the piece, so that we unenlightened boobs can come to understand it. Had it been written for readers rather than a live audience it should have been printed up in a run of two million and handed out to this crowd of Americans who came to be witnesses to a moving and meaningful spectacle of the country's best and brightest - for real, this time. The time slot could then have been filled by a recording of Ray Charles singing "America". I would still be crying.

2009-01-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to the bookstore blog! Missy Mae, one of the store's valued and respected employees, has taken the initiative in dragging us into the generation Y world of Facebook. Playing with this new toy has become an obsession, but it will pass. In the meantime, please accept our invitation to join the Ravenswood Books facebook group. I have no idea how to get there from here.
We continue to buy books from our customers and friends. We pay just enough to cover the cost of gas expended in transporting them to the store, but not enough to jeopardize our razor thin tightrope walking breathtaking and death defying tiptoe along the edge of financial ruin. In short, we are cheap, but, like The Dude, we abide. All the books we like are listed down below somewhere in the archives. Happy New Year

2008-08-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry, we don't do Dog Days here. Every day is Cat Day, chez nous. But the rest of the world seems to be dogged by economic woes, so we must leave an appropriate comment.

Milk is now around five or six bucks a gallon, isn't it? The soy milk we drink is between six and eight dollars, depending on where it's purchased ( Target is still under three for a half gallon of the organic stuff ), and baby spinach ( now untainted and non poisonous ) is over six dollars in one of those pound size plastic boxes at Jewel. Beer, which was one fifty a six pack at the bar during our first adventures in the adult world, is now over six at the supermarket.

Much of this price inflation is a consequence of ever higher transportation costs, which brings us to the main topic under consideration in this post: the price of used books at this store.

The average book here has always been around six dollars, and this remains unchanged, despite a recent rent hike ( and what a hike it was! ) and our own increased transportation costs, as follows:

Two weeks ago the entire gearing system on the store bike fell apart a few miles out on the lake front bike path, and the trip home was made by bus, the bike hanging off the front of a number 147. Repairs cost around seventy dollars.

A week later, while on the same path a few miles south and inaccessible to the 147 bus, the rear tire exploded, necessitating a two mile walk up to the Addison Street bike shop -in- the- park where a tire (used ) and tube (new) cost twenty dollars, installed.

However, since the company car has been parked at home pretty much every day since May, the cost of bike repairs must be balanced against the price of unused gasoline and unwritten expired meter tickets.

Using this ratio or paradigm or paradox, which always beat a parajacks, shipping costs have actually come down since last winter, when oil was still way under a hundred per barrel. You the customer are the primary beneficiary of this unexpected windfall (and, no, T. Boone Pickens had nothing to do with it, wind- wise ). Used books at our store remain a bargain, especially since the quality keeps improving and the inventory keeps expanding. Please take advantage at your earliest convenience. Economic opportunism isn't a bad thing when practiced locally, without deception, and to obvious mutual benefit. And we play really cool music here, too.

2008-07-04T06:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to you, and thanks for looking. Please browse through the archives for a list of books and authors that we are always looking for. And do drop by the store when you get a chance. It is being rebuilt and intelligently re designed by Sean Masterson, our new manager. Sean is also a professional magician who has performed for many years in the Chicago metro area. Talk to him about all your magical needs.

We welcome your calls and emails regarding our stock and buying policies. We are happy to search the store and to hold books for you.

Remember that the store is open from noon to six three hundred and sixty three days a year.

2007-12-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

More big deals have recently surfaced and are shelved for your viewing pleasure:

A Chicago favorite: Dierdre's Surrealist's Bible, in good condition with fair dj-$25

Cage-Cunningham-Johns: Dancers on a Plane; Borzoi Book, Knopf N.Y. 1990, with Anthony d'Offay Gallery and containing essays by Susan Sontag, Mark Rosenthal ( an old pal of yours truly ) and others. A show catalog in buttercup buckram with many illustrations and photos of the artists and their works ( notation drafts in the case of Cage ). First US edition, no dj, some minor soiling, and a remainder magic marker line across the bottom of its 166 pages. $65

The Official Atlas of the Civil War, Thomas Yoseloff, New York and London, 1958 - a huge blue buckram covered book featuring official maps of all the major civil war battles. Eighteen by fourteen inches, water damage to cover, mostly confined to the lower edge an corners, bumps to corners, warping to boards, and worn through to boards on leading edge of front cover. The interior of the book is in great condition, clean and undamaged. It is unpaged. There are over 180 plates of maps, illustrations, military equipment, photos, line cuts, flags, and more. This would be a prime candidate for a magnificent rebind job, but it's good enough for the average collector of Civil War material, in our humble opinion. $225

Asimov's Annotated Don Juan, Isaac Asimov, Lord Byron, etc., illustrated by Milton Glaser, Doubleday Garden City 1972, 1153 pages slipcased, dj and case with minor chips and tears, otherwise in good to very good condition. $275

Please call or write for more information. 773-593-9166; phonetically, our latest email address is "clint 2 k at g mail dot com"- say that aloud to figure it out: this blog does not permit the publication of "click on" email addresses. Oops, but there it is two posts below in parentheses.

It must be those conical little carrot things that get rejected ( <>). We must be careful: someone may be watching.

2007-12-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

Here's a short list of a few ultra-special books ( ne plus ultra, non? ) currently available at the store. Please call to reserve them for inspection. We will ship.

Taos Artists and their Patrons, by Porter, Ebie, and Campbell, published by the Snite Museum of Art in 1999. As new, $600

The Fleuron, A Journal of Typography, number seven "and final", Cambridge , Stanley Morrison editor, an edition of one thousand. A beautiful book in excellent condition in what might be a rebound version, but bearing title in gilt on spine. No dj $550

Fritz Scholder Lithographs, Clinton Adams, New York Graphic Society, 1975. Signed by Scholder, a gift to Bill Miller from Jack O'Grady ( card inserted ). Very good condition with minor DJ damage. $175

Chicago and its Makers, a Narrative of Events, 1833-1929, published 1929, Felix Mendelsohn Chicago. Good to very good condition, some wear to spine, age discoloration or minor overall soiling on cover. $750

Aaron Bohrod Early Works, F.B. Horowitz Fine Arts Limited Hopkins Minnesota 1988 Signed by Bohrod (" My best- Aaron Bohrod" ), 16 page paperback gallery show catalog in good condition, minor corner bumps, minor smudges to cover. $65

Goren's Contract Bridge, Charles H. Goren, Doubleday. The standard Goren book in fair condition with no dj but bearing the triple-threat signatures of Goren, Forest Evashevski, and Howard Schenken "with best wishes to all Tipps" $50

Heads and Tales, Malvina Hoffman, Scribners 1936. Memoir / autobiography by the sculptor who studied with Rodin and created the Field Museum's collection of ethnographic portrait bronzes. Very good condition with minor soiling, minor corner bumps, and minor top o'the spine wear. $45

2007-12-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

Live from Lincoln Square, it's The Return of the Blog!

After months of hibernation, the bookstore blog is up and running with a new email address (clint2k@gmail.com), a new computer, and a new sales staff, namely Megan, whose photo will doubtless appear in short order. We will soon be going online to sell, supplementing our fabulous street traffic business with world wide distribution of fine books. No particular site has been chosen for this venture, but we'll keep you informed.

In case the blogspot people do not allow our email address to appear in conventional fashion, as I have written it above, here is the phonetic version: clint 2 k at gmail dot com.

Please write or call for specific titles. The want list we have published somewhere down below is still current and unchanging. Many of those titles are in stock although inventory varies from day to day, it is to be fervently hoped.

Reviews of the store abound across the web. Look at yelp.com for a few good ones.

Phone 773-593-9166 for more information.

Ravenswood Used Books: Be There or Be (Lincoln not ) Square, or words to that effect.

2007-01-17T20:08:00.000-08:00

Add a new great book to your gotta read it pile: A Romantic Education by Patricia Hampl, a poet from St. Paul and the U of Minn. This memoir / travel book is at times lyrical, often insightful and moving, and, overall, lovely and fun to read. It's an account of growing up in the twin cities and later touring the still communist dominated eastern European land of her paternal ancestors. The copy I am reading now, which you may not buy, is a mid-nineties reprint with an updated afterword appended. I just started it today and won't finish until next week, what with vacuuming the store, putting back books you knock over, making coffee, eating hotdogs, and talking to all the interesting wanna-be customers who come in, look around, and leave, saying, invariably, "I'll be back when I have more time." Maybe next time they'll make the store their ultimate destination, so that they then can say to the dentist, instead of me, "I'll be back when I have more time." As if.
I will look for more copies of this fine book and put them in the window even if it takes a year. Don't be in a hurry. Pick up something else to read in the meantime. For example there's a new pile of Bloomsbury Group books that all came in at once last week- that's Virginia Woolf and her social / literary set; Lytton Strachey, the Gills, some of the Pre Raphaelites whom they knew, art critics, and much more, but I am not in the store as I write this and will not risk mis-spellings and historical errors, so you'll have to see for yourself, when you have more time, of course.
Read the want list below to see the rest of the great things that should be available in the store if only I could pry them out of somebody's library.

2007-01-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

Happy new year and thanks for tuning in! Please check out the want list posting that comes next. Each day we acquire more books from many sources including customers who sell or trade for store credit. Please stop at the store to see what's new.
We also welcome calls to 773-593-9166. To send us an email please read aloud to yourself the words "mall dot enteract at rcn dot com". Does that sound like an email address? Good! And it's one that can't be read and stolen by automated spam programs that cruise the web looking for addresses to which junk is sent. And speaking of RCN, my internet carrier, their after - the- sale consumer service is on a par with the best ever found in the Soviet Union. They are quite distincly Darwinists, not intelligent designers.

2006-10-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

A small sample of things we always need-
and this gives you an idea of our inventory.
Updated 11/13/06

AUTHORS-
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
John Steinbeck
Truman Capote
Ayn Rand
J.D. Salinger
Kurt Vonnegut
Mike Royko
Studs Terkel
Nelson Algren, Dawn Powell
Martin Luther King,
David Sedaris, Annie Dillard
Charles Bukowsi, Richard Brautigan
Chuck Palahniuk, John Fante
Cormac McCarthy, Tom Robbins
James Ellroy, Salman Rushdie
Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac
Mark Twain, Marcel Proust
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hunter S. Thompson
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, James Joyce
Herman Melville, Derida, Lacan, etc.
Douglas Coupland, Edward Gorey
William Gibson, John Betjeman, poems
Orson Scott Card , Philip K. Dick
Neal Stephenson, Haruki Murakami
James Baldwin
Martin Luther
Patricia Highsmith, John Calvin
A.A. Milne, Thomas Merton
Beatrix Potter
Walt Whitman
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Emily Dickenson
Robert Caro, Virginia Wolfe
James T. Farrell, Gertrude Stein
Joseph Campbell
Bertrand Russell, Augusten Burroughs
C.S. Lewis
Edward Said
Kahlil Gibran, Sylvia Plath
Jack Kerouac, John Irving
George Orwell, Aldous Huxley
Philip Roth
Jose Luis Borges
Pushkin, Gogol, Kafka, Camus, Collette,
de Beauvoir, Sartre, Tolstoy, Dumas
Tom Wolfe
Edward Abbey
Paul Theroux
Ian Fleming, Rex Stout
Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak
Noam Chomsky, Barbara Tuchman
Dashiell Hammett
Raymond Chandler
Patrick O’Brian
Ray Bradbury
BOOKS-
In Cold Blood
Lolita, Lenin’s Tomb, Krakatoa
Devil in the White City
The Sun Also Rises
The Kite Runner, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
The Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged, My Book House series for kids
The Power Broker, Bobbsie Twins , Nancy Drew
Division Street America
The Master and Margarita
Helter Skelter, Paris to the Moon (Gopnik)
The Joy of Cooking and any Julia Child
The Monk, Boss, Clout
Unsafe at Any Speed
Silent Spring, Making of the Atomic Bomb
A Sand County Almanac
1984, Encyclopedia of Chicago
Brave New World, Amazing Adventures/Cavalier/Clay
Duveen, North Shore Houses
Watership Down , Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Patriotic Gore, Chicago High Rises
Narnia books, Chicago Apartments
Harry Potter books
Catch 22, A Confederacy of Dunces
To Kill a Mockingbird
Red, Blue, Green Mars
SUBJECTS
Architecture
Chess, Illustrated kids books, fairy tales, etc.
Elvis
Rock and Roll, folk, opera, classical, country western
Swords and Guns
Books -repair, restoration
Writing
Magic
Gambling- horses, cards, games
Hitler, Stalin, other dictators and villians
Nazism, Fascism
History of South and Central America
Colonial histories in general- world wide
Histories about all countries
Korean War, Vietnam War, WW One
True crime Sci Fi
Astrology
Martial Arts
Artists: biographies, shows, catalogues, monographs
The Beat Generation
Poetry and dance
Chicago and vicinity
Zen and all world religions, sects, cults

2006-10-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

A brief welcome note:
Without getting into some bloggy musings about October, the weather, politics ( see our sister site ), any of which may appear in a later posting, allow me to welcome you to look in the window at a pile of Halloween related material- spooks, magic, myth, and other so-called occultishness.
The window, by the way, will soon undergo a larger transformation. Gone will be the Marshall Fields bag, for one, as well as the fabulous old porcelain sink pedestal supporting it. That stuff has been there since late last January, but people still stop to say, "gee, I just noticed your cute commentary on the late Marshall Fields". Yeah, we go, like REAL late.
A somewhat sad note: Last Sunday a customer came to the desk and, while actually buying a book, made an angry complaint about the volume on the stereo, on which multiple James Brown discs had been spinning for several hours. Such comments are welcome and encouraged, and we will even try to fill your request for specific music programs. There is no irony, sarcasm, or other implicit eyebrow raising in this statement. But hey, wait... CDs don't acutally spin, do they? If we had a larger store we would offer thousands of spinnable vinyls at $3.00 each. Audiophilic realtors take note.
A final note: a comment tab has recently been added to our blogs. It is spam proofed by the use of a sign-in program, but this does not require the entry of any personal information, email address, age, sex, or religious preference.
See you in the store

2006-08-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to September! The new month brings big changes to this bookstore. Janis has flown to Europe where she will spend the next year teaching English to French kids somewhere down in the south of France near Montpellier, just a few miles from all the places where Picasso lived and Gerald and Sarah Murphy invented being really cool! Gertrude Stein lived down that way, too, only many miles to the east, closer to the Swiss and Italian borders. Janis is all the way west of there, just a short train ride from Barcelona. All of these place and people names are indirect literary illusions to books which we can sell to you or recommend that you buy from another store which has been smart enough to stock them in advance of this posting!
Although the actual person, Janis herself, is probably irreplaceable, the space she once occupied, or part of it, is now taken up by Gabe, our new two days a week major domo who will sell, buy, organize and schmooze away at your command. Gabe is a writer,editor,actor, and an experienced bouquiniste, having worked for another Chicago bookstore which has not paid for naming rights in this blog. He has come to us highly recommended by many old pals through an odd chain of coincidental small world degrees of separation.
Kirk Robinson, who is married to Mrs. Robinson, stays on in his own evolving time slots. He teaches full time at the U of Illinois in Chicago, but since he lives upstairs of the store, has worked at New York's Strand Bookstore ( they can send promotional considerations via the Bridgeview Bank ), and is such a good dresser, our board has advised that he be kept on at almost any cost.
A new shipment of books in many languages has just arrived and will be followed by another as soon as the donor gives us a call. There are classics in French, German ( Gothic type and modern ), and Italian. As always, classic literature, famous books, and well known authors arrive every day. We have two books signed by the Arizona golfing great, Dan Quayle,

2006-07-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

A new book has just arrived in the store, and it has landed in multiple copies. It's the Nextfest Two collection of plays from the Nextfest drama festival in Edmonton, Alberta. What makes it special is that it contains the play "Citrus" written by our colleague and pal Janis Craft, the store's manager of collections and principal shelver. She will be soon be leaving for a year in France, and this book would be a great memento for her Chicago friends to treasure and admire for years to come!
Since the book was produced in Canada for a limited audience it is an instant rarity in the U.S. Get your signed copy before it's too late!!

2006-07-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

Good evening, avid readers. Here at chez Jim the tube has just cooled from its broadcast of the 46 year old movie "Butterfield 8", a flick starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey, or maybe just plain Lawrence, but who cares since he's been dead for years and was mostly a figment of the studio system's "imagination" to begin with.
The movie was made from a book by John O'Hara, which book is almost certainly in stock as we speak, but it lies there unread, unloved, and unwanted by the modern avid reader such as yourself who now holds O'Hara’s themes in low regard; social commentary on the post war years and their overheated psycho-sexual guilt/fear/ignorance/sanctimony.
Dead and gone, you'd think, until reflecting on the role which the Catholic church played in establishing that paradigm of unreason in the public mind and the Congressional Record, because looka here folks, here's another book just in called The Movies and the Catholic Church. It just materialized today and I have not yet given it a look-see, but I already know what it's about: the notorious Hayes Code will play big in the index of this book.
Hayes was some moralizing demagogue appointed by the movie biz at the insistence of a depression era-scapegoat seeking congress. He established and enforced a code of production standards which Hollywood had to adopt in order for its products to receive the seal of approval. Without this seal, known in the Church as an "imprimatur", these movies would not be distributed, advertised, or screened in the normal commercial manner and would be doomed to oblivion, if not actual hell, although that was the implication. These standards consisted of a ludicrously specific set of no-nos having to do with anything and everything of a sexual nature.The sex maniac movie moguls who were driving the nation into certain damnation were forced by the Hayes Code to clean up the Hollywood cesspool.
The code's rules were mostly written by the church (a ridiculously broad but nevertheless accurate generalization). One of the rules was that bad people must be punished before the movie’s end, and the punishments were curiously meted out in disproportionate numbers to naughty females who failed in their duties to hold off the immoral advances of men.
This rule was originally made up and enforced by priests in the home parish who counseled pregnant girls to marry, saying, "you made your bed, now sleep in it". These are the guys who continue to make the news with their ongoing altar boy antics. They are not insane Mullahs sending out bomb- strapped martyrs-to-be. They are good old Father Pat from St. Mumstheword, just down the block where your sister and brother attend Sunday school. These same guys were around seventy years ago when the Hayes code was adopted. They voted “ Aye “ when the roll was called for sex suppression standards for the movies, and that’s why Elizabeth Taylor’s character had to die at the end of this dumb movie I just watched, even though her fall from heavenly grace had been brought on by an old guy, "Major" somebody, her mom’s boyfriend, when she was a wee teen. The Major went unpunished. Maybe his commission was from the Salvation Army.
Buy a book today- it could be your own salvation. The middle aged gentleman at the front desk will be glad to guide you. No, really.

2006-06-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

So much for Hells Angels and the late Hunter Thompson, who picked a hell of a night not to quit shooting himself. Some crazed biker bought the book, and in fact he pedalled up to Lincoln Square all the way from Goose Island, leaving work at five and arriving at the store before six. That cat was SWEATing, man. One whacko book lovin' dude!
But there are other good books left for you to look at. Yes! Piles and piles of them! In fact there is an entire box full of noir classics by all those guys from the forties and fifties whose stories were bought up by Hollywood and turned into Robert Mitchum movies. Books about Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe with maybe two Ls in his first name... And books by Jim- not -our- ex-governor Thompson, whose work I have not personally read but who nevertheless remains quite popular. And a few mass market paperbacks ( read "cheap" ) by my own favorite noiristo, James Big Dog Ellroy. And a bunch of more obscure, to me, writers of the genre. And a book about noir movies!
This whole load landed in one lump a few weeks ago, but it has been somewhat buried and has not been much picked over. Most of the books are trade paperbacks priced at $5 each. The Maltese Falcon and Farewell My Lovely might still be there!
One day last week while leafing through this incredible dreamscape of escapist mayhem, I drifted into a state of semi-consciousness. My eyes lost focus and my body seemed to float above the stacks of precariously piled up books shoved into in the far right corner of the store. I drifted in a soft cloud of disassociated words which seemed to have come loose from the thousands of pages below me. I began to sense a presence at my shoulder and gradually became aware of a soft voice whispering to me the words which I here transcribe. The muse had struck, and this is what she said:
"Her eyes were like razor-sharp ninja knives. They ripped open my chest and dumped my heart, my lungs, my liver, and my poor pulsating prostate onto the baking hot Chicago sidewalk where the pile of guts lay steaming in the sun and I stood there trying to suck my breath through a two foot slice of bleeding meat."
If that's not noirishly hardboiled enough for you, then stop by the store and see how the pros write it.

2006-06-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

Today, Saturday June seventeenth, I acquired my first copy in boards ( a " hardback " to you untutored civilians out there ) of Dr. Hunter S. Thompon's fabled book Hell's Angels. In my excitement over this addition to inventory I feverishly composed the following review and now post it here without further reflection on its aesthetic merits. As if.

Greased an Hells

Motorcyles banging down the road
chopping off the miles
spinning spokes, smoking rubber
chrome flash trash talking bikers

Albino outlaws

Thug themed thumbs down dreamers
two hot wheels to hell
they don't smell
too good.

A brood apart from Babbitt
dopers drunks
out of touch
death trippers
citizens of no man's land
nomadic nihilists
wihtout portfolio

Angels of an early death
from crystal meth
or kidney failure
failed by dumping at high speed

too few brains spatulaed along
the center line
skid row slammed forever
damned to concrete
dumbness

saddle jouncing numbnuts
romanticised by dimwits
of the nude journalism

Commercial:
It's ten bucks without a dustjacket.
Paperbacks are called books " in wraps ".
Large books in wraps are called "trade paperbacks ",
and small books ( pocket size ) are called
mass market paperbacks.
Also available is a fine clean group of 54 of the so called
Great Books, a set of books in boards which the
University of Chicago at one time determined that all
educated people should be conversant with or even
display at home as part of a fine library. I cannot
disagree with this sentiment.
Another great set of books currently offered
for your reading pleasure is an 1804 edition bound in
leather of Addison and Steele's The Spectator, that
London periodical of the 1700's so beloved of
college English teachers. It is way cool looking,
and the forty odd volumes are yours for about $450 U.S.

P.S.!!
The foregoing ode to the late Dr. Thompson's book is now
clearly out there in the Public Domain and may be easily
plagiarized by any fifteen year old kid who has long dreamed
of being the hit and run homicide victim of a crazed man at the wheel
of an old Ford van filled with books. In boards, mostly, the heaviest kind.

2006-04-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

New photos of the bookstore and its smiley-face owner have just been posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalmatica, and more can be seen at http://papermustache.com. At this rate I will never have to spring for a digital camera, and my large collection of Nikon and Canon 35mm SLRs can continue to gather dust and go up or down in value. Paper Mustache, by the way, is an interesting project which aims to search out all of Chicago's independent bookstores. A noble and admirable ambition.
Stop by for a free handshake. But wait! We don't shake hands, sharing the sentiment with Donald Trump that this antiquated practice spreads disease. We prefer to bow, bump fists or elbows, or in some extremely limited and extraordinary circumstances, kiss.
For this reason, and because the store is so small, we also advocate the practice of tongue scraping as a daily toiletry ritual. Free lessons on this breath cleansing practice are given by request, and you will be directed, if need be, to a nearby resale shop where for a quarter you can buy a used ice tea spoon, the ideal tool for this indispensable act of personal hygiene, once it has been bent at the precisely correct angle and boiled for fifteen minutes. Yum!