The Books We got for Christmas: 2013

Here’s a nice thing about working in a used bookstore; you can pick up some unusual books for the holidays as well as the best sellers. We got a bit of both this year.

Spouse got two gift cards; one for the used bookstore in question, Mockingbird Used Books, and one for the Four-Eyed Frog. His haul of actual books was quite small; basically two, or two and a half, since one of these is for both of us.

Here’s what he got:

California Sabers by James McLean

This all-volunteer unit from California was the only California unit to fight in the east, as part of the Massachusetts 2nd Cavalry in the American Civil War.

Leningrad by Anna Reid

The siege of Leningrad grabs the imagination. Whether it’s the courage and indomitability of the residents, the sheer inventiveness of both the citizens and the Russian soldiers, or Stalin’s breathtaking callousness to his own people, it is a powerful symbol, and Reid’s book looked about the best of what’s out there. She is supposed to have gotten access to some previously unavailable documents, which makes the book even more tempting.

For both of us:

Wilderness Writings by Theodore Roosevelt

How can you not love Teddy Roosevelt? He was a president, a war hero, a big game hunter and a writer; he loved taxidermy and he started the New York Museum of Natural History. The really annoying thing about him is that his writing is good! This slim book contains a wealth of detail about various trips, including his passage down a then-unnamed river in Brazil.

I got:

The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr

While I liked The Alienist, some of Carr’s other books made me yawn. This one, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, contains two favorite, if morbid, elements; Sherlock Holmes, of course, and the savage slaughter of Queen Mary Stewart’s (Mary, Queen of Scots) Italian secretary, David Rizzio, by a group of brutish Protestants. They killed him at Mary’s feet, almost literally. I am curious to see how Carr ties together this event with a double murder in England, separated from Rizzio by a political border and nearly two hundred years.

Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Everyone I know who has read this has loved it. I started it Christmas afternoon and I’m about one-third through it. (UPDATE: finished it, loved it… Now I’m reading JUST MY TYPE by Simon Garfield, about typefaces.) I think it’s great; I do wonder if you have to be a Californian, or even a northern Californian/Silicon Valley person to truly appreciate it. Sloan creates a personal, engaging narrative voice and from the beginning when we find out that our hero, Clay Jaddon, lost his web-design job with NewBagel, the “perfect bagel company,” it is laugh out loud funny.

The Land Across by Gene Wolfe

I ordered this myself, at the Four-Eyed Frog, after reading a review done as a conversation between Kat Hooper and Bill Capossere on fantasyliterature.com. They intrigued me so much I have to try it. I had trouble getting the title right when I called. “It’s the Crossing Land, by Gene Wolfe,” I said. “Or Crossing the Land. Or Crossing-Land. Or something.”

“Never mind,” Jeremy said. “We’ve got it.” And they did.

 

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