Dear Reader,
Welcome to the September edition of the Book Beat newsletter!
We hope you had a great summer of reading and a good start to the new school year. The beginning of the autumnal equinox is September 23rd, so as we look forward to the beginning of fall, stop in to the Book Beat for plenty of new releases and essential fall reads.
Coltrane has a scoop Blue Moon icecream and one of Marybeth’s Blue Moon cookies.
We celebrated Book Beat’s 41st anniversary on August 30 during the Blue Moon (a second full moon in the same month). We had a lovely party with hibiscus tea, Moon Pies, and Ray’s Blue Moon ice cream! The ice cream was a generous gift to the store from our friends Tom and Denny which was sweet to share.
We also hosted five local authors with recent books. Joining us to celebrate was Josh Malerman (Spin a Black Yarn) , Kelly DiPucchio who had two new picture books: Mouse and Giraffe and Becoming Charley, Rebecca Mix (The Ones We Burn) who also presigned copies of Mossheart’s Promise, Tracy Gallup (Anna’s Kokechi Dolls) and Meriam Metoui with her recent YA thriller A Gude to the Dark. Stop by soon, while signed copies are still available!
Thank you friends, staff, writers and patrons for forty-one years of Book Beat! We are grateful and lucky to be here with you to celebrate. Thank you everyone!
The International Day of Peace returns Saturday, September 21. This year’s theme is Actions for Peace: Our Ambition for the #GlobalGoals. It is a call to action that recognizes our individual and collective responsibility to foster peace. Remember: * A collective minute of silence at 12 noon across the planet wherever you are to make a PeaceWave * take a moment that day to ring a bell, wear some white, help a stranger, say a prayer or fold a paper crane. Let us all create Peace Day every day! IMAGINE PEACE!
At risk of sounding self-serving, we reccommend making reading a daily habit for peace. Reading has the remarkable power to foster peace in our world by transcending borders and bridging divides. Through the eyes of fictional characters or the voices of real-life narrators, we gain empathy and understanding for the diverse tapestry of humanity. One study uncovered that people who read literary fiction showed the most improvement on empathy tests. This empathy, can help dissolve the ignorance and prejudice that often fuels conflict. In the realm of literature, we learn the art of listening and the importance of dialogue, cultivating a deep appreciation for the richness of human existence. In this way, reading serves as a potent catalyst for tolerance, empathy, and ultimately, peace on a global scale.
Its been ten years since we posted Remembering Elmore “Dutch” Leonard, a writer who helped bring the city of Detroit together, exposing it to the world. Dutch became a friend of the bookstore during the last few years of his life and the memories we have of his signings around the city are precious reminders of how the power of literature brings people together. He surprised us all by attending our 30th anniversary party in 2012, where he and Senator Carl Levin met for the first time.
Our newsletter contains an exrta long set of reviews in Tom Bowden’s post i arrogantly reccommend… where he also wrote a strong interview with children’s writer and National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson. Mr. Bowden will soon be leaving to Shanghai for three months where he will be teaching English classes. We look forward to future reviews when he returns and perhaps an expat letter from China.
Our reading group selection this month is Sentimental Tales by Mikhail Zoshchenko, one of the most humorous and famous Russian writers of the 1920s Soviet era.
Wishing everyone a peaceful and healthy September. Happy reading!
– Cary, Colleen, and the Book Beat staff
L-R: Kelly DiPucchio, Tracy Gallup, Rebecca Mix, Miriam Matoui, and Josh Malerman, Photo by Grace Wilkins.
UPCOMING EVENTS
AT BOOK BEAT: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10: KEN WALDMAN AND TONY MUGGS
Sunday, September 10 from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Alaskan Fiddling Poet, Ken Waldman comes to Book Beat. Ken Waldman is celebrating the release of his debut novel, Now Entering Alaska Time, recently published by Ridgeway Press of Roseville. It’s Ken Waldman’s tenth book published by Ridgeway Press. Previously, Ridgeway Press has published eight volumes of Trump Sonnets, Waldman’s ongoing satire of the former president. Waldman’s books and CDs are in stock now and will also be for sale at this free event. Joining Ken will be musician and writer Tony Muggs, a very popular local rock and blues player with a compelling story. He will present his recent book and LP titled Autobiograffitti. Read more about this event here.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27: Book Beat reading group meets online
The Book Beat reading group selection for September is Sentimental Tales by Mikhail Zoshchenko. The Sentimental Tales are satirical portraits of small-town characters on the fringes of Soviet society in the first decade of Bolshevik rule. Our discussion will be held Wednesday, September 27 at 7:00 PM online via Zoom. A Zoom link will be sent on the afternoon of the meeting to anyone interested in attending. Email bookbeatorders@gmail.com to sign up. Books are in stock now and discounted 15%. Please call (248) 968-1190 for more information. Read more at our post: reading group selection for September.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30: READ IN THE PARK AT BEVERLY PARK
Saturday, September 30 from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM join us for the 5th annual Read in the Park at Beverly Park (18801 Beverly Rd., Beverly Hills, MI 48025). At 11:00 AM, visit with Rhonda Gowler Greene, author of over twenty-five children’s books including the new book, Supergran!. Afterwards, walk the story book trail featuring one of Rhonda Gowler Greene’s books. Next, at 1:00 PM, visit with Hazel Park native Frank Anthony Polito. Polito has published numberous novels, most recently Rehearsed to Death, the second in a series of cozy mysteries set in the fictional town of Pleasant Woods.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5: COLLEEN CAMBRIDGE AND DIANNE FREEMAN AT HUNTINGTON WOODS LIBRARY
Thursday, October 5, from 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM, the Huntington Woods Library and Cultural Center will be hosting Michigan authors Colleen Cambridge and Dianne Freeman for an evening of historical mystery! Cambridge and Freeman will be signing their books, including their newest books Murder by Invitation Only and A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder. Ask us about Cambridge and Freeman’s other titles in these mystery series available right now in the store! Visit the Huntington Woods Library website for more information.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7: AUTHORS TO THE POINTE
Saturday, October 7 from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM we will be joining the Grosse Pointe Public Library at The War Memorial (32 Lake Shore, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI 48236) for the annual Authors to the Pointe, including breakfast and featured authors Angeline Boulley (Warrior Girl Unearthed, Firekeeper’s Daughter) and Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land, All the Light We Cannot See) will be signing their books after their talks. Tickets for the event include breakfast and are on sale now at Authors to the Pointe!
SLEEPER ALERTS, RECENT & UPCOMING ARRIVALS
The Fraud
Zadie Smith
Penguin Press
Zadie Smith is the author of many books, including the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time. Her latest, The Fraud, is a work of historical fiction set in Victorian England, a satirical novel addressing the London literary scene, classism and racism. Signed copies are currently available in limited quantity at Book Beat!
The cultural and literary life of Victorian England erupts vibrantly from each page of this extraordinary novel . . . Smith wrestles contemporary themes surrounding women’s independence, racism, and class disparity from centuries-old events . . . Readers of Geraldine Brooks or Hilary Mantel will be enthralled. — Library Journal
Dazzling [and] beautifully observed…Smith’s dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery. — Alexandra Harris, Guardian
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Sean Howe
Hachette Books
At the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forçade suddenly appeared, insinuating himself into the top echelons of countercultural politics and assuming control of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition of newspapers across the country. Weathering government surveillance and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain White House press credentials. But his audacious exploits—pieing Congressional panelists, stealing presidential portraits, and picking fights with other activists—led to accusations that he was an agent provocateur.
As the era of protest faded and the dark shadows of Watergate spread, Forçade hoped that marijuana could be the path to cultural and economic revolution. Bankrolled by drug-dealing profits, High Times would be the Playboy of pot, dragging a once-taboo subject into the mainstream. The magazine was a travelogue of globe-trotting adventure, a wellspring of news about “the business,” and an overnight success. But High Times soon threatened to become nothing more than the “hip capitalism” Forçade had railed against for so long, and he felt his enemies closing in.
Assembled from exclusive interviews, archived correspondences, and declassified documents, Agents of Chaos is a tale of attacks on journalism, disinformation campaigns, governmental secrecy, corporatism, and political factionalism. Its triumphs and tragedies mirror the cultural transformations of 1970s America, wrought by forces that continue to clash in the spaces between activism and power.
August Wilson
A Life
By Patti Hartigan
The first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the late 20th century, by a theater critic who knew him.
August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson’s death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.
Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn’t research his plays but wrote from “the blood’s memory,” a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors. She interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh (where nine of the plays take place) to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color.
The Last Devil To Die by Richard Osman coming out on September 19!
A new mystery is afoot in the fourth book in the Thursday Murder Club series from million-copy bestselling author Richard Osman
It’s rarely a quiet day for the Thursday Murder Club.
In the fourth instalment of Richard Osman’s hugely popular The Thursday Murder Club series, the group of pensioners once again find themselves at the heart of a murder mystery. This time, a close friend who worked in the antiques business has been murdered, and the package he was guarding has disappeared. It falls to the group of true crime-obsessed friends, Ron, Elizabeth, Joyce, and Ibrahim to solve the case. Like the previous three books in the series, The Last Devil to Die is full of heart, charm, and loveable characters.
Cosmic Scholar
The Life and Times of Harry Smith
by John Szwed
“The first comprehensive biography of this hipster magus . . . [John Szwed] allows different sides of Smith’s personality to catch blades of sun. He brings the right mixture of reverence and comic incredulity to his task.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Grammy Award–winning music scholar and celebrated biographer John Szwed presents the first biography of Harry Smith, the brilliant eccentric who transformed twentieth century art and culture.
He was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe about the occult, swapped drugs with Timothy Leary, had a front-row seat to a young Thelonious Monk, lived with (and tortured) Allen Ginsberg, was admired by Susan Sontag, and was one of the first artists funded by Guggenheim Foundation. He was always broke, generally intoxicated, compulsively irascible, and unimpeachably authentic. Harry Smith was, in the words of Robert Frank, “the only person I met in my life that transcended everything.”
In Cosmic Scholar, the Grammy Award-winning music scholar and celebrated biographer John Szwed patches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century’s most overlooked cultural figures. From his time recording the customs of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Florida to his life in Greenwich Village in its heyday, Smith was consumed by an unceasing desire to create a unified theory of culture. He was an insatiable creator and collector, responsible for the influential Anthology of American Folk Music and several pioneering experimental films, but was also an insufferable and destructive eccentric who was unable to survive in regular society, or keep himself healthy or sober.
Exhaustively researched, energetically told, and complete with a trove of images, Cosmic Scholar is a feat of biographical restoration and the long overdue canonization of an American icon.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
-Albert Camus