detail from Gustav Klimt, “Bauerngarten (Flower Garden),” oil on canvas, painted in 1907
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to announce our first BAG DAY FLASH SALE this weekend Friday through Sunday: May 19-21.Save 15% with your Book Beat book bag all weekend during store hours.
Here are the (fine print) RULES: To participate you will need to bring in any Book Beat cloth bag we sell in the store, or a woven reusable “Read, Think, Create” bag given away on Bookstore Day. Simply present the bag at the checkout and receive a 15% discount that will apply to all new hardcovers, paperbacks and sale books. Special orders are not included unless paid for and ordered this weekend. You may also buy a book bag this weekend and receive the discount.
PLEASE NOTE: As our parking lot off Greenfield Road is undergoing repairs, parking access might be easier using the East side parking lot on Lincoln. Sorry for the temporary inconvenience.
Wednesday, May 24, 6:30 pm author Dan Charnas will present his bestselling book Dilla Time (now in paperback) at our co-sponsor the Southfield Public Library. Book Beat will be selling books at the event. Please call to reserve a copy or for more info click Dilla Time by Dan Charnas.
SLEEPER ALERTS & RECENT ARRIVALS
Written in 1933, nearly in real time,The Oppermanns captures the day-to-day vertigo of watching a liberal democracy fall apart. As Joshua Cohen writes in his introduction to this new edition, it is “one of the last masterpieces of German-Jewish culture.” Prescient and chilling, it has lost none of its power today. The Oppermanns is our reading group selection for May. Copies are in stock now and discounted 15%.
Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire is an eccentric adventure of daily life inside Sotherans, a London, UK bookshop and one of the oldest bookstores in the world, established in 1761. As a novice bookseller, Darkshire’s detailed observations convey the quirky traditions against the (mostly unintentional) humorous aura of the antiquarian booktrade. Sleeper + laugh riot.
HUDSON’S: Detroit’s World-Famous Department Store, at 548 pages and over 7lbs, is a massive tribute to the dynasty of Detroit’s J.L. Hudson’s department store. A beloved institution during the 1950s and ’60s, Hudson’s is a dense archive of history and memories, with hundreds of vintage photos, letters, advertisements, and ephemera. Architect, historian, and author Bruce Allen Kopytek tells the detailed story of the family runned Hudson’s, it’s expansion throughout metro Detroit’s suburban neighborhoods, and it’s rapid decline downtown. In a sense Kopytek has created the experience of classic Hudson’s in book form which follows the original Hudson’s design and color scheme throughout its oversized bigger-than-life presentation. By adding a simple Hudson logo gift ribbon across the books cover, the illusion is complete. Hudson’s lives on!
Easily Slip into Another World, A LIFE IN MUSIC By Henry Threadgill with Brent Hayes Edwards is the true testimonial of an avant-jazzist. Henry Threadgill has had a singular life in music. At 79, the saxophonist, flautist, and celebrated composer is one of three jazz artists (along with Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis) to have won a Pulitzer Prize. In Easily Slip into Another World, Threadgill recalls his childhood and upbringing in Chicago, his family life and education, and his brilliant career in music. “Easily Slip Into Another World is so good a music memoir, in the serious and obstinate manner of those by Miles Davis and Gil Scott-Heron, that it belongs on a high shelf alongside them. But this memoir rises toward, and then falls away from, Threadgill’s war experience. It’s the molten emotional core.” —New York Times review
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) author of the masterpiece INVISIBLE MAN had a little known but lifelong engagement with photography. RALPH ELLISON PHOTOGRAPHER presents over 125 images beginning in the 1930s, exploring everyday Black life in Harlem, through his intimate Polaroids of the 70s-90s, confirming Ellison’s role as a photographer of the highest order. Along with powerful portraits of Langston Hughes, his wife Fanny and others are energetic New York City Street scenes and later Polaroid work where Ellison focused on flowers and nature, reminiscent of the last works by Walker Evans.
Three essays cover Ellison’s biography within his practice of photography. “The human imagination is integrative,” said Ellison in one essay—a feeling that is shared as testament to the beauty of Harlem and its people—and how Ellison saw the artistic process as holistic and blended. “The truth is the light and the light is the truth,” wrote Ellison in INVISIBLE MAN, and to see the world through his eyes adds one more dimension to an artist who brought light to us all. Ellison was a multifaceted Renaissance man as was Gordon Parks whose foundation co-published the book in partnership with Steidel, widely considered the highest bar of photo book publishing in the world. RALPH ELLISON PHOTOGRAPHER is a beautiful collection.
The Pulitzer Prize this year in fiction was a double surprise with Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead sharing the prize with Trust new in paperback by Hernan Diaz. The prize in poetry went to Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 by Carl Philips. A complete list of award winners is found at Pulitzer Prizes 2023.
Tom Bowden’s selection of small press books reviewed in this month’s newsletter are found in his column i arrogantly reccommend. Coming in June is a Book Beat celebration of Cinema in Ann Arbor with Ann Arbor film historian Frank Uhle. Thanks for reading our newsletter and for your continued support.
Happy Spring reading!
~Cary, Colleen and the Book Beat staff
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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
~Marcel Proust