Dinosaurs, Legs & Cakes

WORD FROM WELLERS | OCTOBER 2022

By Catherine Weller

“This cookbook changed my thighs!” I don’t usually lead with such a comment about a book. But in this case it was true and needed to be said. I was also among friends at the annual Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association FallCon in Denver.

FallCon is when booksellers from indie bookstores in states ranging from Idaho and Montana to Texas and Oklahoma gather to talk books and learn from one another. We spend three days attending meals during which authors talk about their upcoming books, attending workshops and seminars taught by fellow booksellers and experts from the national bookselling community, and talking on a trade show floor to publishers about books for the holiday and spring seasons. It’s easy to come back from FallCon revved up about the books to be sold and eager to make improvements. WBW children’s books buyer Claire went to FallCon with me and boy are we excited for the next few months.

I had the honor of attending a dinner celebrating Lydia Millet’s latest book, Dinosaur. If her name is familiar, you either read excellent fiction or you remember the accolades she earned two years ago when the hardcover of A Childrens Bible was published. Dinosaur, which publishes October 11, is another marvelous work for our time. It opens with a man selling his fortunes in New York, buying a house in Tucson over the internet, and driving across the country to live in it. When I started the book I thought of many things in rapid succession: road trip, journey story, the Hitchcock film Rear Window, creepy obsession. But my final impression is domestic fiction. By that I mean fiction along the lines of Jane Austen, a narrative that details people’s yearning for connection and belonging, a search for happiness wrapped in a plot rich with details about their everyday lives. It is not vapid; sometimes still waters run deep as my grandmother was fond of saying. It is quiet and perfectly lovely.

Claire and I also attended a dinner to fete author Greg Marshall for the spring publication of his book Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It. Greg grew up in Salt Lake City. He grew up different in Salt Lake. Greg had a limp, one his parents told him was from tight tendons. He also had crushes on assorted Utah Jazz players. Greg’s writing is closer to David Sedaris than to the writing of someone overwhelmed by the tragedy of their circumstances or their dreadful parents. This is an intelligent, wickedly funny book about growing up, coming out, coming of age in a place and time many of you will find familiar. Watch for it in the spring of 2023. It’s well worth waiting for.

Now back to the book that changed my thighs. I was talking to a sales rep. for Simon & Schuster about their new book Gateau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes by Aleksandra Crapanzano. When she was talking to me about the book last spring I was interested but skeptical. So she sent me an early copy. After much hemming and hawing I started baking cakes from it and have yet to stop. I don’t care for over-the-top sweetness and I’m not skilled at fancy piping or elegant effects. Turns out this is the book for me! I’ve so enjoyed plumbing the recipes from Gateau that I still haven’t passed it to the coworker I really wanted to have it, the person who actually bakes. She’ll get it someday. In the meantime, Tony and I are enjoying simple, not too sweet cakes with a variety of flavors and glazes that are absolutely lovely. It’s also only one of a slew of terrific new cookbooks publishing this Fall.

Come check these books out!

Rare Books

By Tony Weller

Someone said one must be knowledgeable to recognize one’s own ignorance. I started working in this bookstore in 1972 when I was 10 years old, and my ignorance and I are well acquainted. Fifty years later I meet it daily. Like Click and Clack, my favorite mechanic philosophers used to ask each other, I often ask myself why I don’t know more. The scope of our work introduces me to things I don’t yet know repeatedly and again. Somewhere in my youth, I awarded the adults around me with faith they owned all answers. Damn, growing up was a let-down—I learned that the knowledge I imagined was an unattainable ideal. But by then I expected I should know things, and with books around me, I had no excuse to not learn. Still I persevere, each day, following paths of necessity and switching paths all day long. These many years later, I am barely capable of closing bibliophilic doors of inquiry. In my glee I employ cultural reckoning and sometimes acquire books that defy easy comprehension.

I hope you will forgive my ignorance as I attempt to describe such a book. It is a beautiful manuscript on parchment in a quarto red morocco binding with gilt stamped covers, a Latin volume likely made circa 1700. I cannot read Latin but received some scattered assistance.

A leaf is a piece of a sheet of paper or other paper-like material that has been folded down to make a page in a book. The words folio and leaf are related and in parchment volumes, each folio or leaf is usually numbered, unlike pages, on only one side. Pages and leaves are not synonyms. A leaf, or folio, is a physical object made from paper or animal skin. Pages are more like content—they are ink; a piece of paper is seldom called a page unless there is writing on it. Thinking of the ink on the page as content is helpful. One folio or leaf contains two pages.

The book in my hand contains 46 ruled folios. The first five are blank. The sixth one begins pagination numbering folios 1–31, numbers 1 through 17 of which are filled on both sides in an elegant hand with decorative red and blue flourishes. Folios 18, 19 and 20 are blank. The same character resumes on folios 21 through 28, where the script changes to a more casual hand, maintaining decorative style but without added color. The volume ends with 12 ruled but blank leaves.

Text includes dates much earlier than what we believe is the age of the book. It may be a sophisticated copy of an earlier work but we are not Latin scholarly enough to take the inquiry deeper. Owning and showing it is a pleasure. We’ll let the pleasure be yours for $3000.

Explore our rare books on Biblio.com

September-October Best Wellers' Pick

Receive 20% off when you purchase during September & October

An Immense World:

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By Ed Yong

Random House

Hardcover

Sale price $24.00

Reviewed by Claire Margetts

In his book, An Immense World, Ed Yong raises the question: how can we understand the way animals experience their world when we simply cannot relate to what they see, smell, taste, hear, feel, and everything in between? Their brains and bodies are so different from ours, how can we possibly put ourselves in their furry, scaly, feathered points of view? The short answer is that we can’t—and that is the most exciting answer of all, as I learned from this fabulous book.

To start our adventure through the animal kingdom, Yong has us picture a large room full of an array of animals: a person, an elephant, a mouse, and a mosquito, to name a few. The mosquito is darting through the air heading toward currents of carbon dioxide that signal the presence of a tasty human; the elephant is using its trunk to sniff out its surroundings; the mouse is scurrying along the walls, ears perked for danger; all while the human is looking around with her very complex eyes, trying to figure out what’s going on. Even though they are in the same room, each creature is having a wildly different experience of the space and the others in it. The same can be said for all the animals on our planet—each creature is equipped with their own personal sense receptors that only capture a mere fraction of reality. We are all tucked into our own completely unique sensory bubble called an Umwelt.

When we try to relate to the creatures we share our world with, the best way is not to compare one species with another, but to understand how each individual is suited to live. What is their Umwelt like? How a species is built gives us clues to how they experience their world, and it is only from there that we can piece together a hint, a vague inkling of an idea of what their reality is. This is a unique and exciting way of looking at the world around us—immersing ourselves into studying not what animals do, but what makes them able to thrive and excel. Yong leads us on a tour of the animal kingdom like never before, focusing each chapter on a different sense and how it is used and manipulated across a multitude of creatures.

With David Attenborough-like glee, Yong guides us through our five senses, while explaining how other creatures use these same senses in completely distinctive and wondrous ways. Doing away with the mysterious notion of a “sixth sense,” we also explore how some animals have ways of picking up on stimuli that humans simply do not possess. By understanding different animals’ Umwelten, we can almost imagine the eye-popping colors on a spectrum we can’t see, sounds our human ears can’t pick up, or even what the magnetic pulls from the earth feel like.

It is the unknowable that was the most exciting to discover within these pages. I loved learning that there are so many things happening right next to me that I will never truly be able to observe. Yong cultivates a thrill in things that are so close to us and yet so foreign it is hard to even wrap your head around. Yong takes time to pause and truly delight in the natural world containing an endless parade of new knowledge that can help bring us closer to our natural world.

Ed Yong’s playful prose and scientific expertise are the perfect mixture to draw you deep into other worlds found here in our backyard. Even as I am sitting next to my cat writing this review, I’m wondering what she is experiencing in her own little Umwelt. It makes me smile, because although I’ll never know exactly what she is thinking, I get to understand her a bit better because of this book. Trust me, as you immerse yourself in An Immense World, you’ll be looking at your pets a little differently. Or perhaps, you’ll enjoy spouting off incredible animal facts to your friends, family, or anybody who will listen (perhaps patrons of a certain bookstore in Trolley Square...). In this lovely book, Ed Yong gives us such a wonderful glimpse into the immense world around us.

Get yours here

Bookseller Recommendation

The Hunger

By Alma Katsu

G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Paperback $17.00

Review by Alechia Skripko

“Evil was invisible, and it was everywhere.”

In The Hunger by Alma Katsu, the Donner Party meets a far worse fate than what the history books describe. Katsu reimagines the doomed journey of the historic Donner Party's westward travel. This is historical speculative horror at it's very best. It's a methodical unraveling of comfort and sanity. Hang onto those wagon seats, it's going to be a wild ride!

The pioneers must outrace territorial Natives and the weather. All the while, they are working against dwindling supplies and morale. However, the most threatening danger is an unknown adversary. Is it human, collective delusion, or did the pioneers tread near something pure evil?

Katsu’s ability to build atmosphere, tension and terror is striking. The pacing is very engaging with the varied points of view throughout. The reader will be flipping pages in anxious anticipation, even knowing the ultimate fate of these characters. The journey getting to the result is gruesome and harrowing fun! It’s a fitting book for the spooky season. And as the weather continues to change, the creepier this story will feel.