Book Broads • Business Lunch

by Angie Eakley

I drive 30 miles to and from work every day, from a Milwaukee suburb known for its white-trash reputation to a region known as "Lake Country," which gives the opposite impression. As with every generalization, 'Stallis isn't as down and dirty as people like to think, and there are working class people living in reasonably sized homes out in Lake Country. (Although in the former the mayor recently hired a PR firm to make commercials or something to change popular opinion, and the latter is home to a high school that made the news for funding a locker room to rival that of the Milwaukee Bucks, so some stereotypes die harder than others.) One of my friends also works out there, and we occasionally get together for lunch. We call it "business lunch," refer to ourselves as "business ladies," and once when a miscommunication resulted in us each waiting for the other at a different Panera location, ruthlessly mocked and blamed our non-existent assistants for mis-managing our calendars. All this is to say that I am sorry to the gentlemen we saw at BW3s and mocked for the suits they wore and the files they brought in, because you my have been doing something Very Important for Business that I, at least, will never understand.

Despite this pathological inability to envision myself as even kind of an adult, I have always been drawn to the Business Profiles section of the bookstore. I still can't stomach those motivational business books; even I know that a company has never been saved by forcing its managers to read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Sorry, worst manager I ever worked for, nobody liked you personally or as a boss, and corporate probably told you that this assignment was mandatory, but the main dysfunction of this Team is YOU, and also nobody's going to read that book. Nobody.

The Business shelves are my Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. It's an alien world to me. (I know there are incredible books in that genre, and I'm certainly missing out by remaining relatively oblivious about all of it, but I just can't do realms. I can't keep track of rules and conventions in a made-up world, and I have SO MANY books to read that I just can't get sucked in to a 20-book series that spans decades and thousands and thousands of pages. SO many pages! I'm a big fan of the psychological mystery/thriller, and I just read the OG - all 800 pages of Wilkie Collins' The Woman In White, and as much as I admired and loved and got totally sucked into it, the editor in me died a little every time I read a LITERAL PAGE AND A HALF about something that could be conveyed in a sentence, and it was almost lost altogether when the narrators speak of brevity AFTER 700 PAGES OF EXPOSITION. Also the gender politics of that book are horrific, but that is a story for another time.) To me, the business world might as well be a country in Westeros or something, because I don't know anything about it. All the popular business books seem like weird self-help books to me. I don't know what a "strength-finder" is, but I conservatively shelved 2 million copies of that book in my 10 years as a bookseller.

To belabor this metaphor, business profiles is my Patrick Rothfuss novel; my The Sparrow. (This is wishful thinking. It is on my reading challenge list this year. Godspeed, me.) It is a treasure trove of storytelling! Sometimes it's a whistle-blowing tell-all by an insider; sometimes, it's an exhaustively researched story about a glorious rise and fall. Sometimes, it's more of a biographical profile of a weirdo. I can't get enough! My Woman in White follow-up will be a business profile book called Losing the Signal, about the rise and fall of BlackBerry. I never had a BlackBerry; I was the last of my friends to get a cell phone, and am on my second ever smartphone. I shouldn't care, but I do, because a) "book with 2 authors" is a prompt in the reading challenge I am currently doing, and this book does, indeed, have 2 authors, and b) it's a Business Profile so this is my Game of Thrones, my Lord of the Rings, my Ender's Game. I already know that I am all in. My friends have no idea how many idiosyncratic facts about BlackBerry they're going to have to suffer through, but I'm not even sorry.

In honor of all the profiles that have come before it, here is a survey of Business Profiles That I Have Known and Loved:

The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort
I picked this up as an advance reader copy in the free box at Barnes, and even that copy notes that the story is optioned for a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Business Profile books are often turned into movies. Recognize the narrative? Success from obscurity (they came from nothing! This could be you!), salad days of money and fame (wouldn't it be great to be stupid rich!), corruption as a result of said money and fame (you'd never lost sight of you origins! You'd appreciate every penny and be gracious and generous to everyone!), and finally, downfall (sweet, sweet schadenfreude!). You might get a little bit of redemption in the end, but that's just the cherry on top. It's been quite a while since I read this book, and I've since seen the movie, so I'm ignorant of many of the book-specific details, but I do remember the tone of the narrative jibing with the end-of-movie reveal that this dude is still an asshole who learned basically nothing. Regardless, his story is incredible.

Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Next, The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Lewis is the king of the business profile. He's probably more famous for his sports books Moneyball and The Blind Side, but if you only know Michael Lewis from the movies based on his books, you're really missing out. His first book, Liar's Poker, is an account of his time at Solomon Brothers. He graduated college at a time when Wall Street jobs were handed out like AOL cds in the 90s, and although he was admittedly a mediocre-at-best trader, he proved to be an excellent observer and engaging writer. His books are centered on an incredible true life story (which is usually the only part of the narrative translated into film) that perfectly illustrates a larger cultural point. Moneyball is about Billy Beane and the A's, but it's also about the history of fantasy sports and the rise of sabermetrics. The Blind Side is about Michael Oher's improbable rise to NFL prominence, but it's also a Malcom Gladwell-worthy story about the physical and cultural particularities of Oher aligning perfectly with the prominence of the role of the quarterback and the rise of the west coast offense. It's about the ability of athletic prowess to provide an escape from economic depression, and about how far schools will go to bypass the "student" part of "student-athlete" for their own gain. It asks what happens to all the Michael Ohers who aren't "discovered" by wealthy white families who can provide to the means to a lucrative career. The Big Short taught me what a sub-prime mortgage actually is, and I left that book not only understanding what happened, but how it happened. Basically, if you see a book written by Michael Lewis, read it. It'll be entertaining and informative and worth it, I promise.

The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald
It's a shame that whatever is currently going on with Eichenwald is happening, because he has written some fascinating journalism. This particular book could also be in true crime, or FBI-specific sections, but the story of the world's most bumbling and diluted CI is worth every one of its many pages. Like all of these books that are turned into movies, a lot of the details are necessarily cut or changed for the film. No matter how little you think you care about corn, you will be mesmerized by the callous brazenness of the businessmen in these pages. This is one story that seems like it could only have been a movie, but proves the cliche that truth is often crazier than fiction.

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Mezrich is one of those authors whose books I will read regardless of their subject. His format is simple: he writes about incredibly intelligent people doing incredible things. He's written about the MIT students that took Vegas for millions (Bringing Down the House, which was the basis of the movie 21), the heist of a priceless piece of the moon (Sex on the Moon), and the rise of billionaire Russian oligarchs in the wake of the fallen Soviet regime (Once Upon a Time in Russia). Lost in the glare of Sorkin, Fincher, Reznor, and Eisenberg is the fact that the basis of the movie The Social Network is this book by Mezrich. Before Justin Timberlake forced us all to wonder what's better than more money than we'll probably ever see (and remember all that time we spent on Napster), Mezrich was telling the story of an awkward loner who changed the world with his online Facebook. Again, if you want the story behind the story, this is the source.

No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos
Any complexity inherent to Ponzi schemes, and to Madoff specifically, is emotional. The actual running of the scheme is simple; as long as you can keep convincing new people to hand over their money, the deception continues undetected. In order to do that, however, you need to justify robbing other people for your own gain. The Madoff case was spectacular for many reasons: it's brazenness, the relative restraint he had to use to remain undetected for so long, and his callous betrayal of friends and family along the way. No One Would Listen is the story of the people who uncovered Madoff's deception, how they did it, and why it took so long. It is a fascinating tale of greed, audacity, and the determination of a small group of people to expose the truth in the face of indifference and incompetence, told by the people who finally brought him down.

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble by Zac Bissonnette
Every time I see a TY display at the big box store, I think about this book. When they made their debut, beanie babies were sold exclusively at specialty toy shops. That's probably the least interesting fact in this book. Everything about beanie babies is kind of nuts. From their creator, a strange man on a quest to make the perfect stuffed toy, to their improbable ascent to the top of the collectable world, to the people left with entire rooms of now worthless toys with their tags carefully shielded in plastic protectors, the story of Ty Warner and his toys is worth every minute it takes to read this profile. Bissonnette details how and why the beanie baby bubble came into existence, and what happened when it inevitably popped.

Books like these are why I love the business profiles section. They are dynamic, interesting stories about a specific business or industry that will draw you in regardless of how many team dysfunctions you can name. These things happened in business settings, but they are stories about ambition, circumstance, greed, ingenuity, and consequence. It's not a surprise so many of them find success on the big screen. The movies may be compelling, but the books they're based on tell the whole story.

Book Broads • Book Challenge 2018

by Angie Eakley

I've written before about my aversion to book clubs. As an avid reader and lifelong book hoarder, I like being able to choose what I want to read next in the moment, not to have to "force myself" to read something on a certain timeline. In the past few years, however, I have structured my own reading choices along certain rubrics, and have enjoyed the motivation and structure they afford.

A few years ago, I declared the "Fall of Grish," and proceeded to read all of John Grisham's books. Hunting used book stores for his entire catalogue was easy given his popularity, and was relatively inexpensive as I stayed in the realm of the mass market paperback. It also justified trips to Half Price Books on the regular, which is a favorite pastime of mine. Shortly before I left my job as a bookseller, we had a bay of psychological thrillers. I've always been a fan of this genre, but hadn't read many of the authors on display. Before I left, I printed the title list for the display and kept it in my bag. More authors discovered, more direction at the used book store, more anticipation of forthcoming titles!

Three years ago, I started keeping track of all the books that I read. After I finished a book, I'd make a note in the calendar on my phone and scan the ISBN into my BookCatalogue app. (I could probably write thousands of words in praise of this app; you can organize your books, note when and to whom you've lent books, mark their location and whether they are signed, and double check that you're not buying a book AGAIN, because you've meant to read it and it's in the clearance bin and for $2 you can't pass it up.) In 2015, I read 38 books. In 2016, I got my crippling anxiety under control AND left the bookstore, so I had adequate serotonin levels and 3-4 weeknights free; I read 59 books. In 2017, I set a goal of 60 books. I had to knock out a bunch of those quick-read psychological thrillers in December, but I made it!

This year, I'm doing something a little bit different. A friend of mine came across the POPSUGAR 2018 reading challenge. It consists of 40 open prompts, with entries like "read the next book from a series you've already started," "read a true crime novel," and "read a book that was published the year you graduated from high school." In a twist that will require more will power than I may possess, I'm going to attempt to complete this challenge all with books that I already own but haven't yet read. Even as I type this, I can think of at least two that I'll have to acquire, so that's going about as well as you'd expect.

I really love the open-endedness of this challenge. There is something incredibly validating about checking something off of a list, and being able to pick and choose the order in which to accomplish those tasks makes it feel less like an obligation. If I don't feel like reading a book about or involving sports this time, I don't have to. I've got a whole year. A few of my friends are doing the challenge as well; some will combine challenges, so a nordic noir with two authors published this year will check three prompts off the list; I'm going to do one book per prompt. It has us all talking about books and excited about reading, which is kind of my brand, so I'm very much looking forward to this reading year.

If you'd like to hop in on this challenge, you can find the list of prompts here. If you're looking for a suggestion from someone else doing the challenge, let me offer Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan. It's short, it's beautifully written, and serves as a wonderful introduction to his incredible books. (Don't read Prayer for the Dying unless you are ready to be DESTROYED, though. If you prefer non-fiction, his true crime book, The Circus Fire, is one of the best of that genre. You can't go wrong with any of his books, really.)

Finally, I'd like to say a giant thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my and all of our posts. I've had a great time thinking, talking, and writing about books since we started this, and I love hearing that people are reading and responding to our thoughts. From everyone on the Nerd Phone Chain, happy 2018, and happy (& challenging, fulfilling, informative, escapist, empowering, entertaining) reading!

Book Broads • Scary Book Month

by Angie Eakley

just a note: Elis was unable to find her laptop cord from moving, hence the late Halloween post just before Thanksgiving :P

I'm always jealous of people in long-running, functional book clubs. In theory, I love book clubs. Especially since leaving my bookstore job, which was essentially a book club discussion interrupted by customers and projects, I don't talk to people about books as much as I used to. Since I always have a book with me, people often ask me what I'm reading, but a lot of the time it's a one-way conversation. I miss spending several hours each week with friends who are also always actively reading, and who are excited to share their discoveries and bond over a shared love of specific authors or individual books. The problem is, it takes a lot of effort to get a book club together, and its success depends on the efforts of all of the members. Also, more selfishly, I like to be able to choose what book I read next; I have literal piles of books to be read, and I am not always in the mood to read a specific book at a specific time, which is sort of the standard operating procedure of a successful book club.

I don't have a specific rubric for choosing my next book, but sometimes I like to choose something related to a specific time or season (Bernd Heinrich's wonderful Summer World and Winter World, for example, are even better reads when what's being described in the books is happening around you). As a recent Joe Hill-related 6-year-old Facebook memory can attest, I've long chosen a "scary" book to read around the end of October. That year it was Heart-Shaped Box, another The Girl Next Door, another Columbine. Fact, fiction, or in between, it just has to be scary. Initially, I was going to read Five Days at Memorial, but recent events made me reluctant to want to read about the government failing to protect its citizens in the wake of a natural disaster. Instead, I chose probably the most famous true crime book of all time, which has long been on my to be read list but that I didn't even own until recently: Helter Skelter.

I know the story; at this point the story of Charles Manson and his "Family" is the stuff of cultural legend. I've listened to the Manson series on both The Last Podcast on the Left and You Must Remember This podcasts in addition to all the general information about the story you'd pick up as someone who grew up watching various true crime shows. Helter Skelter is written by the prosecutor, but tells the story of the formation of the Family and the execution, investigation, and capture of the killers in addition to the story of the trial itself and the immediate aftermath.

I don't know what exactly about this story resonates as much as it does. It may be the same reason stories of any cult situation are so fascinating. The idea of an individual giving up their autonomy in service of a singular person or idea seems insane, but it happens with regularity. Despite the location, time, or culture, people - often young, disaffected, questioning - voluntarily give themselves over to another in service of a larger ideal. In the compressed timeline of a 42 minute procedural or true crime show or book, it doesn't seem plausible. When put in the context of real time, however, and the psychological commonalities among the followers, these things can build. Manson had dozens of followers; only a handful committed murder.

That's what makes this book (and lots of other true crime books) so scary; it's not the specifics of the story itself. It's the idea that at any point people could break in and commit savage murder for seemingly no reason, and with seemingly no remorse. That under the right circumstance, any person can become disconnected enough to go looking for something else. Depending on who they find, they could end up with a better, more fulfilling life; or they could lose themselves to evil - thinking, saying, and doing things they'd never believed possible. And what of those murderous "followers?" Without Charlie, who are they? Could they again commit those heinous crimes? Can a person change?

Evil is something we always want to see. We don't want to look at images of the victims; they could be anyone. They could be us. But the killer - the killer is "other." We want to be able to look into the faces of Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Boston Marathon Bombers, the Columbine killers, and we want to see something there that makes them different. Because if they are just people, people just like us, if evil isn't something inherent, then those people could be us. Or the people we know, the people we love. We want to believe that people are basically good, that life is sacred, worthy of respect. When someone like Charles Manson comes along and not only refutes that, but does it by manipulating others both on a movie ranch in California and from the confines of a prison cell, then we are all at risk. Because evil doesn't have a tell. It's not a look, a mark, a strict dichotomy that is either present or not. It is a part of being human. It is a choice, albeit one that is easier for some to make than others. These true crime stories capture attention because they are shades of us; they don't make us feel safe, but maybe they reassure us that we are not evil. That given a choice, we would not choose violence, revenge, or hate. That for us, dressing up, decorating, and binging on candy once a year, just playing at evil, is enough.

Happy Halloween!

Book Broads • Shrill

by Angie Eakley

My first exposure to Lindy West was years ago, when she was doing recaps of the show "Glee" for Vulture. When the writer is funny, smart, and engaged (positively or negatively) with the material, I start looking forward to the recap as much as the show (especially when, as with a lot of long-running shows, it loses its way and becomes a ridiculous shell of what it was), and I start imagining how the recapper will react to something especially funny, or ludicrous, or problematic. It's basically talking about tv with friends, but, you know, the internet.

And then she wasn't writing them any more, and I missed her voice, but not enough to do any actual follow up. I'd see her articles here and there, and I heard her on the episode of This American Life where she confronts her troll. I've always liked Lindy West, but in a lazy sort of way.

When her book Shrill came out, I had a feeling I'd like that too. Not having read much of her work at the Stranger or Jezebel, most of what I read was new, and I was excited about how much she had to say. It was smart, engaging, and funny, but after each essay I felt a little down.

Lindy West is a feminist. She is smart, she is funny, she is strong. She is also a woman. She is also overweight. The majority of her public writing deals with all of these things. She rails against misogyny and body shaming, even though she knows it makes her a bigger target for the people who attack her in the first place. She stands up for the people who don't have her platform, even after a man created a twitter account in the name of her dead father for the sole purpose of trolling her.

I guess this is the place where I talk about my privilege. I'm a white girl from a middle class suburb with a college education. I also have probably an overabundance of empathy. It makes me feel so angry, and so impotent, to learn about the kinds of struggles people face every day for things that are completely outside of their control, and on top of that to realize that so little of that has ever happened to me. And then I feel silly for even typing that, because how much of a self-important, out of touch asshole do I sound like by saying "I can't believe all of this awful shit has been happening and I didn't even know. I'm just over here complaining about a student loan payment from the comfort of the apartment that I can afford because of the job that I have and if I ever get into trouble financially or physically or mentally I have a strong network of friends, family, and community around me and also just going to the fucking bathroom has never been an issue for me because I am also cisgendered and heterosexual and so I don't get accused of being a potential child molester because of they way I look or dress and I'm not pretty enough to be objectified and underestimated based on my looks but I'm not ugly enough to be targeted for that and basically I live in a world that was designed for the male version of me and no, I'm not afraid that my family will get sent back to a dangerous country that isn't their home because I signed up for a program to allow me to go to school and work in the only home I've ever known and the people who use bits and pieces of an old book of stories to justify their hatred and ignorance and superiority complexes happen to technically be of the same religion that I grew up in, so no, I haven't been denied a job or housing or a loan because of the way my name is spelled, thanks for asking.”

The thing is, we shouldn't need Lindy West (or Roxane Gay or Ta-Nehisi Coates or Bryan Stevenson or Matthew Desmond) to live the lives and write the books that they do. Not now. It's 2017, and Lindy West is still writing about how being fat still makes you a person, how being a woman with a brain isn't a threatening abomination, how maybe if you need to spew violence and hate at someone anonymously over the internet, you should probably spend less time looking at a screen and more time looking at a mirror, because the problem is you.

2017.

"As a human being, I am as worthy and capable and entitled to my life as you are," "other women identify with and gain strength from my outspokenness because they also receive hate and violence and rape threats just for existing," "sure I'll go on your talk show and try to explain to a comedian why it isn't funny to joke about raping anyone, not matter what the people on reddit think" should not be revolutionary statements. We should be able to laugh at the quaintness and reactionary quality of those statements, not gathering in support of a woman who died because a bunch of Nazis felt bad about a statue coming down (just kidding, the cultural and political climate created a powder keg of hatred that was going to explode around anything, and god damn it there are no FINE PEOPLE in a group of chanting, torch wielding bigots, but that's another fight for another day).

What if Roxane Gay wasn't defined by her appearance, or her skin color? What if Bryan Stevenson didn't have a job because poor minorities weren't targeted and incarcerated at alarming rates? What would Matthew Desmond study if people weren't forced to live like discarded non-entities in a degrading cycle of unemployment and eviction? What would Ta-Nehisi Coates have to say to his son?

Can you imagine what someone like Lindy West would write about if she didn't have justify her very existence every time she has something to say?

Book Broads • The Difficulties of Being a Fast Reader

by Portia Turner

I’ve always prided myself on being a fast reader. I love that I can get through crazy amounts of books (even though it still stresses me out that I can’t get through more) and I am well aware that it is a skill that people are jealous of.

That said, I recently went to a family reunion and decided to tackle a “book written before 1900” for my reading challenge with my roommates. I brought Middlemarch with me because I have been wanting to read it for ages and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Reading this book, though, has made me realize that I have developed very little patience when it comes to reading and my attention span for books has, unfortunately, decreased. I’m not used to spending more than a week reading a book and, as I approached week 3 with this tome, I found myself thinking, why aren’t you reading this faster? It’s thoughts like these that kept me reading and honestly, have probably pushed me through passages too quickly so I found myself not even sure what has just happened. And then I would go to work and realize that books are coming out that I meant to have read and I started to resent that I was still reading Middlemarch even though I was really enjoying the book and really did want to finish it.

It is disturbing to me that my attention span for reading has decreased and it is even more upsetting because, working at a bookstore, my hunger for books and my TBR list has grown insanely huge amounts. My want to experience as many stories as possible is making it hard for me to experience some of these books in the moment. Sure, there are the books that immediately pull me in and that I can’t put down and love from page one (I’m looking at you, Spoonbenders) but for most books, I find myself speeding through, not always giving myself a chance to fully relax and enjoy the book for what it is. This year I have found myself feeling so-so about more books than any other year.

This isn’t going to slow me down. I still have overwhelming piles of books around my room and I am still constantly bringing home new ones. But hopefully this realization will make me think harder about each book. Because books and reading are so important to me. And I need them to mean more than just a number at the end of the year.

Book Broads • Summer of Truman

by Angie Eakley

I'm not sure when my fascination with Truman Capote began. I read In Cold Blood years ago, not for any class but because it was one of those books you're supposed to read. I also don't remember being blown away by it, but then again, I was young. It would be years later, probably after passing it on display at the book store many times, that I would read Deborah Davis' Party of the Century, and my interest in him would be renewed.

It's not even his obvious, famous attributes that are so interesting to me. It may be because those things - the strange, high voice; the tiny stature; the extravagant style of dress - are dwarfed by the slurred speech and ravaged, puffy appearance that dominates recordings of him from the last part of his life. It seems the real Truman, the one he crafted his entire life, is the Truman of the 50s & 60s: famous author, darling of society, "pet" of the richest and most glamorous women of the time.

It's this man and those relationships that are explored in Melanie Benjamin's historical fiction novel The Swans of Fifth Avenue, a book that's long been on my reading list but that I only recently tackled. These women are the real housewives of the past, although I wonder how much their behavior would mimic that of the current Bravo stars if they had cameras and contracts rooting them on. These women lived by a very strict set of rules, with rule number one being to maintain appearances at all times. Slim Keith never threw shade about her friends to the cameras. Babe Paley never flipped a table.

I think it may be the duality of Truman's life that is so beguiling to me. From the time he could talk he told everyone who would listen that he was going to be a famous writer, and almost through sheer force of will he made it happen. In every way he seemed most himself on the arm of one of his beautiful swans, at the best table at the best restaurant, sipping champagne and trading gossip, making up for their husbands' neglect and their friends' duplicity, and giving them a credibility beyond "enviable beauty with rich husband," with the most talked about novelist of the time at their side. Although he embellished his youthful literary accomplishments, Truman never betrayed his dream. His writing life and his social life were separate, and when he was writing he was diligent and serious. He spent years in Kansas researching In Cold Blood, and even he didn't need to exaggerate the impact his "non-fiction novel" had on crime writing in general and on his notoriety as a public figure. It may be this aspect of him that makes the motivations behind his short story La Cote Basque, 1965, so curious. Its publication sets off the events in Benjamin's novel and in real life marked the beginning of Capote's own downfall. His social life became his writing life, and everything fell apart.

To some degree, we've probably all been betrayed by someone we considered a friend. Imagine if your life revolved around maintaining appearances, your every move documented by paparazzi and written about on Page 6. Even your closest friends don't know all your secrets, but the ones they do know are kept to themselves, because you know their secrets too. People like to imagine they know what your life is like, that behind all the glamor and the expensive clothes and the carefully curated magazine spreads and the seemingly effortless beauty and the older, handsome, wealthy husband, that something has be rotten beneath the surface because if not then life is simply not fair. So they talk. They talk about how your husband can't even be discrete about his affairs, how your "natural" beauty is the result of very good plastic surgery, how you must be miserable and all the money in the world can't make you happy.

Now imagine at least some of that is true, and after a lifetime of training to be a society wife, you find a soulmate in the most curious form of a tiny dandy with a very high voice and a very serious literary talent. And this friend accompanies you to the best restaurants, the fanciest boutiques, even on vacation at your second home and on your yacht. He makes you feel like you're more than a pretty face on the arm of an Important Man. Sure, he gossips about your friends, but you two have a real connection, and you know he would never betray you. Until he does.

Until it's 1975 and you open the new issue of Esquire. Your friend, the man who happily touted the publication of anything he wrote, who got you advanced copies and bragged about how this new thing would be better than all the old things, he hadn't even mentioned it. And you read it and there, laid bare, or hidden under the thinnest of guises, are all your secrets. And all your friends' secrets. And you have been played a fool. You have been unmasked, and your whole life at this point has succeeded because you were the best at wearing that mask. No matter what anyone said about you, you were the woman with the beautiful face and the rich husband and the mansions and vacation homes and the latest fashions and the best jewelry and the most fabulous friends.

And afterword, through the press because you have stopped taking his calls, what does this man have to say about it? That you should have expected it; that he is a writer. That he did it for you - to free you of the miseries in your life that you kept secret. But what does that make you? A fool for befriending him? Stupid for telling him anything about your life? A pawn he used for money and fame and material treasures while he catalogued every detail of your life for public ridicule? Because that story isn't a thoughtful meditation on the empty life of a glamorous public figure. Or about the face we show the public no matter what's going on in our private lives. It is a catty takedown, the flailing of a once great writer who took the easy route. A great work of self-destruction.

And so my fascination with Truman Capote continues. I'll end with a confession of my own (and the only way that his swans and I are at all similar): outside of In Cold Blood and "La Cote Basque, 1965," I don't believe I've actually read anything else that Truman wrote. I've read much more about him than by him, which for some reason I think he'd appreciate. 1960s, top of the social world Truman would, at least. The strange, athletic child from Monroeville, Alabama; the earnest writer embedded in Holcolmb, Kansas working on his genre-breaking masterpiece; or the sad outcast, drunk and on pills, stalking the dance floor at Studio 54? Him, I'm not so sure.

Book Broads • Books That Have Surprised Me

by Portia Turner

Independent bookstores received advanced readers copies of books all the time. Some of them are amazing (shout out to you, new David Sedaris) and some are just terrible. And then there are the books that surprise you. We recently received a copy of Odd Birds by Ian Harding. My coworker and I are big fans of the show Pretty Little Liars (though we will probably deny it if you ask us) and so we got great entertainment over the fact that good old Ezra Fitz himself had written a memoir. I mean, he’s 30! What does he have to talk about? The book became a joke between the two of us (that none of our coworkers understood because they are clearly not as cultured as we are) and we decided that we would book club it.

Katie took it first. I kept asking her for updates and she just kept saying, “It’s way better than it has any right to be! His writing is actually really funny.” When she handed it off to me, she said, “I actually really liked it. I gave it four stars.”

I love Katie but I wasn’t sure that I could trust her opinion of the book. I mean, this was a book we joked about for so long! It can’t actually turn out to be that good! And then I sat down and read the whole thing in less than 24 hours. It was great. Katie had been right. It had been really funny! And his writing is great!

This experience got me thinking about how nice it is to be surprised by books. And so I decided to share a few books that have surprised me with you all. There have been plenty of great surprises but I decided to focus on a few things when choosing these three. First of all, they had to be books that are already out cause I know that you will all want to run out and get them after reading this. Secondly, I wanted them to be books that all surprised me in completely different ways.

First up is My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (aka the Lady Janies). This one was a classic case of misjudging a book by its cover. The description on the back of the book described it as a comedy version of the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey so I took it because I love that stuff. The cover, though, is terrible and so it didn’t motivate me to read it. I kept moving back further and further on my TBR list. That all changed one day when I was reading Publishers Weekly only to discover that it had received a starred review. I decided that I needed to get past my opinion of the cover and give the book a chance. And holy crap, I am so glad I did! This book is amazing! It’s hilarious, filled with Princess Bride and Holy Grail References. It is incredibly witty and cleaver. It has one of the best narrators I have read in a long time. I passed it around my friends and everyone who read it loved it. I was not expecting this book to become so beloved! I’ve recommended it so many times and feel happy anytime I see someone buying it because I know that they are in for a fun ride.

The second book on this list takes me back to my very first week working at The Book Cellar. My coworkers showed me where all the free books are kept and I grabbed one because I just happened to like the cover. My experience with advanced readers copies at Barnes & Noble had been terrible and so a part of me thought that publishers just sent books that they were having a hard time selling. I wasn’t expecting anything but thought, hey, at least this one is pretty. It may not be any good but it will look great on my bookshelf. That book was Eleanor by Jason Gurley and it turned out to be one of the best books I have ever read. Everything about it was completely unique. The writing is great and his unique concepts are so interesting and cool. I sent it to my mom and she loved it as well. This book taught me an important lesson about reading in advance though. I read it in September and it didn’t come out until January and those months of waiting before I could recommend it to anyone absolutely killed me.

Finally, I’m going to talk about a book that surprised me because of the subject matter. I’m not a big sci-fi reader and I really have a hard time with time travel. I find myself being far too focused on how messed up things would be if time travel actually happened and can’t focus on what is actually happening in the book. Our Penguin rep kept coming by and talking about this book called All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and describing it as a time travel book and so I kept thinking, this book is probably great for someone working here but not me. But then I went to Heartland Fall Forum, a book conference for Midwestern booksellers, and had the pleasure of meeting Elan in person. He was absolutely fantastic so I decided that I needed to give his book a chance. And holy crap! It is completely amazing! Sure, it is a time travel book but it’s also so much more! It is more a story about people and what it means to be a functional person in the world. Elan is a screenwriter and his background is incredibly clear. I was able to so easily visualize the whole book as I was reading it. And I have sold a lot of copies to people by describing it as a time travel book that isn’t about time travel. I can’t explain how great this book is.

So I guess that this is all to say that good can come from reading something that you don’t usually read. Pick up something that you wouldn't usually. You could be pleasantly surprised.

Book Broads • The Storied Life of AJ Firky

by Angie Eakley

Any work of entertainment that can accurately represent a vocation earns praise from those who do those jobs "in real life" because it happens so rarely. A prime-time soap set in a hospital has no burden of accuracy; its goal is entertainment, not instructional medicine. Books can often clear that hurdle because they don't have a 22 minute running time or a necessary, immediate, sustained fan base to exist. Nevertheless, when a book like Gabrielle Zevin's "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry" comes along, anyone with a love of books and any experience in bookselling cannot help but fall in love with it.

(Alternate, less college essay style opening paragraph, taken verbatim from a text I sent to Portia on 5/3/17 at 6:22pm: "I just started The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and I love him and his snobbishness and this book is CHARMING AS FUCK!!")

I have wanted to read this book for a while. I still remember it being one of Portia's staff recommendations at the Nobe, there is a bookstore on the cover, and the cover title font is PREFECT. I had initially set this up as a meditation on the cliche of judging books by their covers; how we not only do that metaphorically in real life but how it's actually a decent method of selecting a literal book to read. You'll have to excuse me. It's been longer than I care to admit since I wrote an academic paper, but those instincts run deep.

A. J. Fikry is just shy enough of a straight up a caricature of a bookseller that even at his most unlikable, he's all of us. He's like a functional, realistic version of Bernard from Black Books. Bernard is endearing to so many booksellers because he is their id; Fikry is their ego. He knows his customers by what they read more readily than he knows their names. He knows what to suggest for them despite themselves. Lambiase may be a Deaver man, but Fikry knows he has it in him to work his way to Mosley, and it is for that reason that their relationship grows. He is appropriately snarky for the owner of an independent book store, and as a corporate retail bookseller I reveled in the catharsis of someone, even a fictional character, vocalizing the kinds of things I'd think on a constant basis. Zevin knows this, and each Maeve Binchy reference warmed my heart, because 10 years of bookselling and 3 times that of reading tells me everything I need to know about those ladies and their book club.

"Your first literary crush is a big deal," Amelia says. "Mine was John Irving."
"You lie," A.J. says. "It was Ann M. Martin."

"Fikry" is not solely a book for people who've worked in bookstores. It is a book for people who love books. The characters fetishize print books while grudgingly accepting the better qualities of e-readers (despite initial tantrums). It also centers on the idea that what you read is who you are. People choose books for all kinds of reasons, but each choice is akin to buying new clothes. What you read becomes a part of you, and whether that knowledge stays hidden like an unremarkable pair of jeans or broadcasts who you are (or more accurately, who you want to be) like an embellished sweatshirt from Forever 21, people choose books for a reason. Characters throughout the book are asked about their favorite, and their responses reveal more about them than they say.

"Amelia's mother, who is the size of a grasshopper and has the personality of a praying mantis…"

It almost goes without saying that a book about a bookseller that cuts right to the heart of any reader who has fought to remain calm while being asked to come up with the title of a book that "was on the radio the other day" or "is very popular" and has a cover that is "mostly blue" is beautifully written. So many of the characters define themselves by their literary tastes, but Zevin so accurately describes her characters in a non-literary way that you don't have to have physically smiled at the reference to "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" to know everything about the people on these pages.

"A place is not really a place without a bookstore"

I generally don't like going into a book knowing anything about it. Between hearing or reading about new titles, familiarity with authors, and recommendations from friends, I have literally piles of books in my tiny apartment waiting to be read. That's not to say that the plot of "Fikry" isn't good or doesn't matter; it's wonderful. But I've leave it to the reader to discover its charms firsthand. I may be a little biased, but when lovable cop Lambiase says "Turns out a I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I've seen movie people on vacation and I've seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain't nobody in the world like book people," I know I've found a book I'll identify with. And it's one that I absolutely love.

book broads • Final Puzzle Piece

by Erika Gudmundsson

I’d just like to start by saying how absolutely thrilled I am to have the opportunity to interact with my Book Broads/Nerd Phone Chain pals in this way. I miss seeing them every day, and I love that we are coming together to work with each other in a more creative context. For years now, we have been each other’s cheerleaders, and I have found an amazing support system within this group of fantastic women. Normally, something like this would be way out of my comfort zone, but the encouragement and support from these gals makes this more of an exciting adventure than a panic-inducing undertaking. Thanks, pals!

I worked at the bookstore where we all met from the time I was 20 years old until I was 32. My entire adult life was spent at this place, and I loved being surrounded by other people who loved books and reading. I remember times in the breakroom where there would be 4 or 5 of us down there (the good old days of heavy staffing), sipping our coffees and reading silently, and even though this essentially was a solitary activity, it definitely felt like we were doing something together. (This reminds me of this article about silent reading parties, which we should absolutely do, you guys.) Since we all have left that job, I personally have experienced some difficulty with regard to my identity. Who am I as a reader who is not also a bookseller? How do I relate to coworkers without this common interest? It sounds ridiculous, but this has honestly been a struggle. At both of the jobs I’ve had since leaving the bookstore, other employees have commented when seeing me read on breaks – not negatively, just in surprise. Books and music have always been my go-to ways to connect with people, and I’m finding that, now, perhaps due to my age, that is becoming less common, and it’s making it harder to form connections with people. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself becoming a bit of a bad reader, which I intend to write about it more detail for my next post.

In the meantime, perhaps I’ll share a bit about my non-reading life. I’m a nontraditional student, working (slowly) on my degree and certification in ESL education. This has led me to take a number of linguistics classes, which I never knew I had any interest in and have found I absolutely love. I work at a hippie grocery store, it’s ok. I like yoga and wandering around in the woods, I’m a nonproductive knitter, and I’m trying to make myself not hate running. I like having friends over to watch movies with themed drinks and snacks, and listening to podcasts about books while soaking in the bathtub. I also have pet rats (Idgie and Ruth, from Fried Green Tomatoes) who I am completely obsessed with. I’m a procrastinator, and I love naps. I look forward to sharing my adventures in reading with you and the Broads!


Hooray! The gang's all here! We'll be delving into more book-y things in upcoming posts so come back Thursday for our next post. -Elis

book broads • What I'm Reading

by Angie Eakley
Reading is a solitary endeavor. When the title character in Gabrielle Zevin's "The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry" proposes, he says, "When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time." Ugh. I can't be the only bookworm who melted at that sentiment. You read by yourself, but what you read becomes a part of you, and you want to share that with other people.

Because I've always been "a reader," because I worked in a bookstore for 10 years, because if I'm out with a group of people and they all pull out their phones I pull out a book, and because I always have at least one book with me (two if I think I'll finish the first before I get home), people often ask me what I'm reading. Unless I am actively reading and you walk up to me with that question -- I'm busy…READING -- I am happy to oblige. Probably to a more detailed degree than you'd like.

When Elis asked the phone chain for ideas for the blog, I realized that I would like an outlet to talk about what I'm reading. I didn't give myself any other guidelines, so some essays might be more analytical while others are more directly to the point of the question. I am a girl who on a whim decided to read all the John Grisham books (even, somewhat regretfully, "Skipping Christmas"), so I don't always have logical reasons for the things that I do. It's usually because I'd heard it was good, or I love the author's other work, or I probably should have read it already. Or, you know, because I love a good procedural and may have used my newfound legal thriller knowledge to offer unsolicited legal advice at the slightest provocation.

I think this exercise will make me read more actively, since I will know in the back of my head that I have to have something to say about each book, and I (and the notebook app on my phone) look forward to the challenge.

Yay! Welcome to the blog and I look forward to more plenty more from Angie. -Elis

book broads • The Reading Life of a Bookseller

by Portia Turner
Being a bookseller, especially at a small indie store, can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to reading. I am constantly receiving free copies of books, mostly galleys from the publishers so we can read books before they come out, and my book nerd heart is just exploding with happiness.

That said, reading when you are surrounded by all of those books can be stressful. I know, boo-hoo, you have too many books. Hear me out.

When it comes to reading, I don’t always have a choice about what I want to read. Sometimes I look over at the stacks on my shelves and think, “Oh, my precious books, how I want to read you.” But there is so much more that goes into making those decisions. The first priority for my reading has to do with events we are doing. I don’t always read the book before the events (because we have tons of events and there is no way I could possibly do that).

Take my last few months, for example, which have been especially event book heavy. For example, we had an event with Augusten Burroughs followed by an event with Brendan Reichs and Veronica Roth in March so I read their books and then we divided up the books for our YA Fest right after I finished those books and so I had six YA books that I had to read in a month. Half way through the YA Fest reading, I went on a trip and decided to take no work books with me so I took a Jane Austen which helped me with my reading challenge with my roommates. (More about that later.) I returned to work and found that there was a brand new galley from one of my favorite YA authors who was also going to be at the fest so I picked that up and added it to the list. 5 of the 7 YA books in, my brain couldn’t handle teenagers anymore so I picked up We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby and started to read that but then got overwhelmed by the fact that I wasn’t reading the YA books I needed to for work. So I started reading an essay from that book followed by a YA book. ALSO, all this time, I had a galley of the new David Sedaris (my all time favorite author) staring at me, asking why I wasn’t reading it. So I was sneaking around with it, reading bits and pieces here and there and feeling like I was cheating on the other books. Finally, I finished the YA books in time for the fest and had time to read two whole books for fun before event reading for May started up. In fact, it snuck up on me cause who knew it was already May? So now, here I am having just finished Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig for an event we had last Tuesday and madly trying to finish Cork Dork for an event that is happening this week. After that I have one more event book and then I can read for fun some more, that is until the June schedule comes out.

And don’t even get me started on backlist! (For those not in the book world, backlist are books that have been out for a while. They are usually in paperback and, if an author has many books, includes the older books by that author.) My roommates decided that we were going to do a reading challenge and both of them said, “Oh this will be so easy for you.” But when I looked at the list, I started to panic. There are multiple items on the checklist that include old books. While I have more than enough ideas of what I want to read to check that off, I can’t begin to imagine when I will have time to read those books. I bought Middlemarch last year because I want to read it and I haven’t picked it up since I bought it. Every time I see it I think about how much I want to read it but then I get overwhelmed thinking about all of the books that are coming out and why haven’t I read them yet and oh crap there are so many events coming up and three different books came out last week that I wanted to read oh no I’m falling behind and then I find myself in a puddle on the floor. From there I crawl away and pick up the book I am currently reading and try to forget the whole thing.

So yeah, reading can be stressful as someone working in a bookstore. And this doesn’t even take into account that publishers are constantly telling us what is awesome and coming out soon and the fact that we are going to author dinners and getting to talk to authors about their new books and why we should read them. And then we get Publishers Weekly and Kirkus and the boxes of galleys arrive everyday. I can’t even keep a TBR list anymore because everything would be on there.

All of that said, I still love reading. Nothing lives up to the feeling of hanging out with a good book. I absolutely love working in the book world and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I just really wish there were more hours in a day and more days in a week so I could just read everything.

Thank you, Portia! Read more about Portia and the other Broads as their bios fill on here. Stay tuned for more of the Nerd Phone Chain :) -Elis

book broads

I decided to enlist some of my friends who are definitely more avid reads than I am these days. I wanted to still keep a book component, but didn't want to delve into stale topics. So I enlisted some other broads to be part of the Nerd Phone Chain Book Corner. We all became friends when we worked together at a book store. As we've been away from that place for about two years, we've developed a group chat dubbed Nerd Phone Chain (NPC). We're drawn together by our love of books, quirky humor, old fashioneds, fried cheese, and our pets. Also, I love them ❤️ I will be introducing them once we get their photos situated, but for now, I wanted to write a little bit on why I have been a terrible reader lately.

When I worked at the book store, I tore through books as though we were running out of books. Essentially, there were too many books and I wanted them all. Hell, I still want them all. Matt and I have shelves and bins of books we have yet to read, not to mention we read each other's books. I think it's safe to say I love books. I love talking about them and I'd love to write someday. But things have shifted and I don't read as often as I do.

I began a new job almost two years ago at a small local natural food grocery. I still hung onto reading then, but I recall a depressive episode completely sidelined any and all of my interests. I watched a playlist of Jimmy Fallon playing games with his guests to make myself laugh. I was buried deep in the depressive darkness. It's hard to get back into a book that you abandoned during that episode, no matter how much you wanted to finish it. Things seemed to decline from there.

I would pick up a book, get half way, and put it back on the shelf. I continued buying books that I hoped would intrigue me. Only a couple managed to make me to feel like to voracious reader I once was-- Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein; The Girls by Emma Cline; The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron; Will You Please Be Quiet Please? by Raymond Carter. Lots of starting and stopping books. I don't know. I just became preoccupied by work and other hobbies. But, that's about to change.

I'm in the middle of reading South and West by Joan Didion. It will be my first contribution for the NPCBC. I look forward to it and to sharing the brilliant minds of my fellow book broads.