Category: Books

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy, by Moiya McTier (Grand Central Publishing, 244 pages)

In college, I once signed up for an astronomy class. I dropped out after two weeks, having painfully discovered that astronomy isn’t so much about looking at celestial bodies in awe as it is about doing complex math. After that, other than a star-gazing class at a local community college, my knowledge of outer space hasn’t evolved much beyond watching Men in Black, which I maintain is a documentary.

So I was excited about the publication of Moiya McTier’s promised examination of the Milky Way in down-to-earth terms, billed as “an autobiography of our galaxy.” Finally, I could get the astronomy class of my dreams, on my couch, in a mere 244 pages, with an instructor who studied both astronomy and mythology at Harvard and went on to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia.

And I could have, and should have, except for the dumb gimmick that cripples the book: the Milky Way as narrator.

Maybe if this had been a kindly, wise Milky Way, a sort of cosmic Gandalf the Grey, the gimmick would have been easier to stomach. But we are instead given a haughty, snarky, disparaging galaxy, whose persona is made even worse by its perception that it is talking to puny, finite creatures not really worth its time. “I know it’s likely a lot for you to take in, and your brain is fully formed!” the narrator says at one point.

Another time, it says, “Sadly, your ignorance compels me to explain so much to you that I’m still not at the part about me yet.” And then there’s this: “A mayfly can live its entire life in one room of your homes. Isn’t that sad? Don’t you ever wonder why the mayfly even bothers to do anything at all? Because that’s how I feel about you.”

He seems nice, right? Or she. Who knows? This middle-school snark is hard enough to stomach for one chapter; it’s wearisome for the whole of a book. And this persona is so unnecessary; plenty of people write autobiographies without constantly addressing “dear reader.”

The implication of “Dumb reader,” over and again, is even worse.

To be fair, McTier is trying to convey the unconveyable: the vast chasm between small, finite creatures like human beings and the unknowable expanse of space and, if you’re into that sort of thing, a cosmic Intelligence, with a capital I. But Ed Yong did this without talking down to us in An Immense World, and for that matter, there are Twitter accounts that do as much without even using words, like ones that consist of nothing but photos of outer space or microscopic images.

Maybe this is just the kind of unintentional dumbing down that occurs when astrophysicists try to talk to regular people. There aren’t that many of them, after all, and they’ve got their own peculiar brand of humor. As McTier says while trying to explain red dwarf stars, the most common ones in the Milky Way, astronomers don’t all agree on the “initial mass function” of red dwarf stars: “If you ever want to cause an uproar among your astronomers, stand in a crowded planetarium and claim that the Kroupa IMF is better than the Salpeter. Most won’t be able to refrain from loudly asserting their opinion back at you.” Astronomers are clearly the life of the party.

McTier awkwardly hobbles from the Big Bang (“Don’t concern yourself with thoughts of what came before the Big Bang. That kind of knowledge is not for the likes of you — or even me, though I am fabulously worthy on nearly all other counts — to understand”) to the creation and destruction of other galaxies, to black holes, to the modern, mind-boggling telescopes to myths about space, to theories about when and how the world will end. It’s not all terrible, but it’s like eating pistachios with shells; at some point, you question the effort, particularly when she answers the question of extraterrestrial life, “Well, that’s for me to know, and hopefully for you and your scientists to find out.”

What’s most disappointing is that McTier does have a fascinating story to tell: her own.

In a much-too-short foreword written in her voice, McTier throws out a tantalizing morsel of her life story: how a girl who grew up in a cabin with no running water after her parents’ divorce fell in love with the universe and launched herself on an intellectual journey that found her, in her undergraduate studies at Harvard, having an internship that involved spending hours “analyzing five-dimensional data cubes to measure properties of a distant star-forming galaxy.” This from a girl who had to cross state lines to visit a bookstore when she was child.

It speaks to the power of imagination — she used to imagine the sun and the moon were her celestial parents — but also an incredible internal drive and intellect. I would gladly read 500 pages of McTier’s autobiography. But spare me her version of the galaxy’s in half that. D

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Book Events

Author events

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

• RENEE PLODZIK, Concord author, visits Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. to present her cookbook Eat Well Move Often Stay Strong.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOSH MALERMAN, horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to present his newly released bookDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present his newest release, The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

• LYNN LYONS, psychotherapist and anxiety expert, returns to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. with The Anxiety Audit: 7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them.

• JOSH FUNK & KARI ALLEN Children’s authors Josh Funk and Kari Allen present their newest books, The Great Caper Caper: Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast Book No. 5 and Maddie and Mabel Take the Lead, atGibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m.

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean (Tor, 298 pages)

Does the world really need another story about mythical un-human creatures who hide in plain sight among us and need to destroy human beings in order to eat?

Why, yes, as it turns out, we do.

Despite its vague resemblance to Twilight, The Walking Dead and others in popular humans-as-foodstuff genre, Sunyi Dean has penned a marvelous, mind-bending novel about a class of creatures deposited on Earth as a science experiment of sorts. The majority of them don’t eat people, but instead eat books. Yes, that sounds ridiculous and would be garbage in the wrong hands, but Dean — an autistic American-born writer of fantasy novels who now lives in the U.K. — brings a sly wit to the enterprise and has produced a sophisticated fantasy world that will doubtless beget movies and sequels.

The story revolves around Devon, a young mother who is part of six family lines that hide among humans on Earth, their purpose being to absorb human knowledge through eating books and, for some of them, through consumption of human brains. You can’t tell them apart by looking at them; they all look like humans, but book eaters grow “bookteeth” at about age 3, and mind eaters have a mosquito-like proboscis and a serpent-like tongue.

Devon is a book eater. Her 5-year-old son, Cai, is not. And Devon has the choice of watching him starve to death, or bringing home some hapless human whose brain is suitable for consumption about once a month.

This is not a good way of living for either Devon or her son, so she is intent on finding a class of book eaters who possess an elixir called Redemption that can turn brain eaters into book eaters. (It’s not just a question of will, as it was for the Cullens in Twilight.) But there is more to her story than that.

Despite being fed a carefully planned diet of fairy tales as a child, designed to suppress her imagination and keep her from questioning the Family Rules, Devon grew up with a rebellious streak and would sometimes sneak a book she wasn’t supposed to consume. She would even do something that was forbidden — read the book. (Book eaters cannot write, and they are only supposed to consume books, not read them.)

Devon had a happy childhood, however, despite never knowing her mother. Among book eaters, women are precious and rare because of a genetic flaw that causes ovarian failure in their late 20s. Their marriages are both arranged and “enforced” — because of the dangers of inbreeding, the patriarchs of the families must place brides like chess pieces, and so at age 19, Devon had been sent to another family for the requisite term of three years to be a wife and bear a child, after which she is to return to her family of origin.

Book eaters, who drink “inktea” and large amounts of alcohol, are big on ceremony, and the lavish weddings give Dean’s fertile imagination room to run wild: The bountiful spread of food includes a “salad” — “shredded pages of Midsummer Night’s Dream that were dyed different shades of green” along with edible origami made of pages torn from books and made into the shape of swans, and a wedding “cake” in the shape of the biblical Tree of Knowledge, “printed pages carefully shaped into origami apples.” When Devon tastes wine for the first time, she reflects that it tastes a little bit like “a well-crafted romance novel. Complex, sweet, and a little stinging.”

The wedding cake is a metaphor for what is to come: Devon’s knowledge expands first with the consummation of her marriage and then with the birth of her first child. With that birth comes the first of several surprises that alter our perception of what is happening. The shrewd plotting switches constantly from present-day to the past but is easy to follow and reveals Devon’s back story and motivation in slow motion.

Another smart literary device is in the telling of the book eaters’ history in snippets of quotes from a book called Paper and Flesh: A Secret History, written by an unfortunate reporter who tried to infiltrate Devon’s family and paid a price for his interest.

To preserve their secrets, the families must keep distant from humans, whom they largely disdain. But Devon must navigate the human world — and learn the secrets of the other five book eater families — in order to get Redemption for her son, who, as he grows older, will need to eat not just once a month, but once a week.

Like baklava, The Book Eaters has complexity in its many layers: as a jacket blurb says, “Truth is found between the stories we’re fed and the stories we hunger for,” and readers can chew for days on the points the author is trying to make. But at the center of her sharp criticism of patriarchy and the cage of tradition and extended family, is a rollicking good story. Twilight had one, too, but the series was poorly written. The Book Eaters, in contrast,is sophisticated, thought-provoking and as immersive as a quality video game, whether or not you’re a fan of the fantasy genre.

And readers will become conversant with a wonderful, rarely used word: bibliosmia, which means the enjoyment derived from sniffing a good book. A+

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Book Events

Author events

• DAMIEN KANE RIGDEN will be at the Toadstool in Nashua on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. for his novella All Manor of Beast and Man.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• BETSY THOMASON will discuss her book Just Breathe Out: Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 2 p.m.

• HUMA ABEDIN The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host Huma Abedin, longtime political advisor and aide for Hillary Clinton, to discuss her bookBoth/Andat the Music Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.Tickets are $15 and include a book voucher.

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

History & lectures

• FRAN LEBOWITZ Author, humorist and social commentator Fran Lebowitz will appear at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord) on Friday, Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $45 to $65, plus fees.

Poetry

• KATHARINE GREGG & HOWARD FAERSTEIN will read from their collections of poetry (Mere Thread by Gregg and Googootz and Other Poems and Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn from Faerstein) at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at noon.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom, 480 pages)

When I first opened Gideon the Ninth, the first of Tamsyn Muir’s “Locked Tomb” series, all I knew was that the book was queer and in a science-fiction fantasy universe, and that was all I needed to soothe my lonely gay heart. And it had cool cover art. So I gave the book a shot.

And I was turned feral. I devoured Gideon the Ninth, then immediately stormed my local bookstore for the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. And after Harrow, I reread Gideon immediately. Then Harrow, again. Reader, you may not know me, but I assure you: This is unusual.

I delight in the writing; Muir selects delicious adjectives that had me re-reading sentences just to taste them again. The protagonists are lovable, equal parts endearing and heartbreaking, and the villains are conniving and charming. The unique genre is refreshing, a mix of dystopia, science fiction, fantasy and squicky horror. I am obsessed with the plot: characters navigating intense relationships within an epic adventure, reminiscent of the multimedia webcomic Homestuck (indeed, fans can find nods to it). The characters’ central struggles are captivating, including acceptance of duty, acceptance of grief, and acceptance that God is actually some guy named John who’s a bit of a jerk. And this is all in a universe that’s unapologetically gay. I think I’ve been transformed.

Now we’re at the third in the series, Nona the Ninth (and last will come Alecto the Ninth, planned for release in 2023). I paced myself through the nearly 500-page novel to try to savor it; I know there will be another long wait before Alecto comes around.

The central question here is: Who the heck is Nona? She’s a brand-new character. We know she’s a soul who has been hitching a ride in another person’s borrowed body for the past six months. She’s guileless, devastatingly cute, hilariously entitled, desperate for attention, and has an intractable case of pica. And she has no idea who she is. I was sucked into every thing Nona did, or said, or thought, trying to suss out who she might be. She is immediately endearing. She is brave and sweet and incredibly concerned for her friends. It was a joy to read about her. The tagline on the cover is true: “You will love Nona, and Nova loves you.”

At the same time that I was getting to know Nona, I was desperate to find out where my favorite protagonists’ souls (or bodies, or both) had ended up. In a similar structure to the last two books, revelations on their whereabouts and other mysteries are tantalizingly interspersed throughout the whole novel, providing rich reward for each chapter. Peppered in are moments of action, which are vibrant in their immediacy and urgency. The novel culminates in an explosive, breathtaking finale that will have you scrambling for the next installment, or to re-read the previous novel with fresh context.

I celebrated some of the reveals in Nona, while others were awful. I asked myself, “Is it possible to wail in delight and horror at the same time? This is probably not what they mean by ‘laughing until you cry.’” But Muir is aware of this emotional weight, and skillfully alternates between sweet tenderness, chilling doom, and irreverent humor.

There are intractable mysteries remaining, though: What do the pictographs at the start of each chapter represent? What clues can be found in the various bible passages that are quoted? Which memes went completely over my head? You can enjoy these novels with a surficial read, but even more can be extracted between the lines. It’s the perfect kind of book to discuss with your friends, whether by sharing your favorite lines or brainstorming the latest fan theories.

Readers used to heavy worldbuilding in science-fiction fantasy a la Brandon Sanderson may be thrown off by the sparsely described setting of this installment, the city (or planet?), which we eventually learn is New Rho. Only what we need to know is supplied. But this brevity does not bring down the story. The true focus in The Locked Tomb are the characters and their relationships. And indeed, Muir plies her trade to good effect. Nona the Ninth made me laugh out loud, cry, seethe with both cheer and horror, and put my heart through a meat grinder. To this I ask: more, please.

For much of Nona, I felt bittersweet pangs for my favorite characters. I wonder: What kind of ending will befall them in Alecto? Will they ever be at peace? At this point, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I have trust that Muir will take them, and us, home. As many have already said: I’ve never read anything like Nona the Ninth. And I fear that when The Locked Tomb series is over, I’ll never read anything like it again. A+

— Alaina Tocci

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Book Events

Author events

• YANA TALLON-HICK, therapist, writer and educator, will be at Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) to discuss her book Hot and Unbotheredon Friday, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will discuss her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough; toadbooks.com, 924-3543).

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• BOB BUDERI author of Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub will beat the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 5:30 p.m. for a discussion with special guests C.A. Webb and Liz Hitchcock. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• NINA TOTENBERG The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. to present her newly released memoir Dinners With Ruth, which chronicles her lifelong friendship and conversations with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tickets are $43 and include a book voucher.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• HUMA ABEDIN The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host Huma Abedin, longtime political advisor and aide for Hillary Clinton, to discuss her bookBoth/Andat the Music Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.Tickets are $15 and include a book voucher.

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf, 416 pages)

If a great writer is someone who can take a subject like video games — loved by some, maligned by others, inconsequential to the rest — and use it to weave together a story that even the latter two categories of people can appreciate, then Gabrielle Zevin is a great writer.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about love, friendship and, yes, video games. That might sound like the premise of a young adult novel written to entice middle school gamers to put down the controller and pick up a book, but no; this is a beautifully written, emotionally complex story that unravels over the span of 30 years through various characters’ points of view — though mainly protagonists Sam Masur and Sadie Green’s — and in settings that range from hospitals to living rooms that serve as creative epicenters and offices, to inside the world of a video game that Sam creates.

Sam and Sadie met as kids in a hospital, where Sam was recovering from a car accident that killed his mom and Sadie was visiting her sister, who had cancer. Their very first interaction drew me in, with some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read. Sadie walks into the hospital’s game room, where Sam is playing Super Mario Bros. She sits down next to him and watches him play.

“Without looking over at her, he said, ‘You want to play the rest of this life?’

Sadie shook her head. ‘No. You’re doing really well. I can wait until you’re dead.’

The boy nodded. He continued to play, and Sadie continued to watch.

‘Before. I shouldn’t have said that,’ Sadie apologized. ‘I mean, in case you are actually dying. This being a children’s hospital.’

The boy, piloting Mario, climbed up a vine that led to a cloudy, coin-filled area. ‘This being the world, everyone’s dying,’ he said.

‘True,’ Sadie said.

‘But I’m not currently dying.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you dying?’ the boy asked.

‘No,’ Sadie said. ‘Not currently.’

‘What’s wrong with you then?’

‘It’s my sister. She’s sick.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Dysentery.’ Sadie didn’t feel like invoking cancer, the destroyer of natural conversation.”

Thus begins their relationship, though it’s derailed after 14 months when Sam finds out that Sadie has been counting the time she spends with him at the hospital as a community service project: “Their friendship amounted to 609 hours, plus the four hours of the first day, which had not been part of the tally.”

Sam and Sadie reconnect in their college years after a chance meeting at the subway station. They end up collaborating on a video game, Ichigo, which is a huge success and propels them toward future collaborations. Over the years, though, that work is complicated by emotions and miscommunications, deep love and unrequited romantic love, outside forces and other people, like Sam’s roommate, Marx, and Sadie’s professor/lover, Dov. These characters are what make Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow the compelling story that it is, and they’re a big part of the reason why people who don’t like video games can still appreciate this book. These are characters that readers can care about, and get mad at, and grieve with.

Zevin’s writing is exquisite; there are so many passages and sentences in the book that are worth reading more than once — an especially good thing when time jumps and perspective shifts get a little confusing and you need to stop for a moment and reread to make sure you know what’s going on.

There are some people who are not going to be able to get past all the video game references, because there are a lot. There are references to old-school games, and there are some technical aspects related to the behind-the-scenes work of creating a game, like design and programming and graphics engines (I’m still not quite clear on what such an engine does or why it can seemingly make or break the quality of a game, but those details don’t take away from the ability to understand what’s going on). There’s also a whole section that takes place in a video game called Pioneers, and while it wasn’t my favorite part, I can appreciate the depth that it adds to the storyline, as the game becomes an essential part of Sam and Sadie’s relationship.

I haven’t considered rereading a book in years — who has the time when there are so many new books waiting to be read — but this is one that I’m definitely going back to again, to savor the prose, spend more time with the characters and possibly get a better handle on what a graphics engine does — not that it really matters. A

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Book Events

Author events

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair in a Literary Lunchtime event at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will discuss her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough; toadbooks.com, 924-3543).

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• BOB BUDERI author of Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub will beat the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 5:30 p.m. for a discussion with special guests C.A. Webb and Liz Hitchcock. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Deluxe Edition 1, by Hitoshi Ashinano (Seven Seas Press, 450 pages)

Originally published in Japan starting in 1994, the manga series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (translated as Yokohama Shopping Log) follows the daily life of Alpha the android running her missing master’s coffee shop. Now the series has made it to the United States after a long wait, collected in this single volume, and publisher Seven Seas has done an excellent job preserving the style of the time in which it was originally published. Most of the pages are black and white with old-school screentones, but there are full-color images and panels as well, bursting with beautiful warm yellowish hues. Both aspects are preserved excellently with no apparent digital tampering. This desire to stay true to the original makes opening the book for the first time akin to rediscovering a long-lost favorite from your shelf.

Typical of manga created in the ’90s and early 2000s, the character designs are big and bubbly with round exaggerated features. There is less focus on realistically rendering the human face and more on amplifying expressions, making emotional beats more easily understood. Whether characters are enjoying a cup of coffee or asking for directions, the reader can get a sense of what they feel in quiet moments.

Yokohama’s art elevates itself past merely entertaining; two incredibly evocative scenes, one of dancing and the other of swimming, capture the nature of each specific movement. There’s a lightness in the renderings of Alpha’s dance at the Neighborhood Association party that shows a character free from worry or judgment by others.

The setting and background art contribute significantly to the reading experience as a whole.

The story takes place after some unknown large-scale ecological disaster, on a strange yet familiar Earth. Throughout the volume, whether Alpha is home or out traveling, there are only a few people, and nature has reclaimed much of the environment. The one local gas station with its single kindly caretaker feels lonely with a wide and empty lot, the asphalt cracked with fault lines. The roads, when they are not flooded, battle against ever-encroaching overgrowth. Flashbacks later in the volume depict the previous lay of the land, so we see how it has changed over time.

Another small but overarching detail is the way Yokohama implements shading in the panels. A chapter where a child plays outside would not be as vivid if the background art did not show the passage of time from a clear summer afternoon into dusk. Instead of using the setting as a vehicle to propel the narrative, it becomes a separate entity to care about all on its own.

There’s not a lot of plot in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. While there is the underlying thread of Alpha waiting for the cafe owner to return, it is rarely anything but an implication. Instead, the narrative is more of a series of vignettes with shared characters connecting them. Going with this larger, more unstructured narrative could have made the reading experience fragmented but, because of the work done in the setting, it is as if the reader is going alongside the characters throughout their day. Chapters consist of everything from trying to get rid of excess watermelon before it spoils to spending the day attempting to take a good picture. There’s the occasional mystery of the setting to ponder, like Alpha’s legendary neighbor the Osprey or watching the sky for a plane that never lands, but these things are passing curiosities, never resolved.

As summarized on the back of the book, the story presents itself as Alpha the android watching the end of the human world, but such an unstructured narrative, focused on the day-to-day, presents more a paring down of the world. What if money stopped mattering? What if there were no job to wake up early in the morning for, and no fear of losing shelter or health care? What would people care about and what would they value? Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a fantasy of kindness, where what matters most to the characters is connecting with others and the environment they live in. For them, there is time to contemplate who they are and what they want to become, and even how they want to experience the world around them.

For a work of fiction to gently remind the reader to open their senses, whether to a swirling storm of clouds or an expansive endless blue, and commit to memory the day that is given, truly is a treasure. A+ — Bethany Fuss

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Book Events

Author events

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair in a Literary Lunchtime event at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will discuss her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough; toadbooks.com, 924-3543).

• JOSEPH D. STEINFIELD presents Time for Everything: My Curious Life at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

• BOB BUDERI author of Where Futures Converge: Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub will beat the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 5:30 p.m. for a discussion with special guests C.A. Webb and Liz Hitchcock. Free admission; register at bookerymht.com.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Book Events

• CAT KID COMIC CLUB: COLLABORATIONS CELEBRATION Toadstool Bookshop (Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St. in Nashua; 673-1734, toadbooks.com) will hold a party to celebrate the release of Dav Pilkey’s newest Cat Kid Comic Club book (Nov. 29) on Saturday, Dec. 3, from 1 to 4 p.m. The afternoon will feature games, puzzles, goodies, raffles and more, according to the website. The book is available for preorder now.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Return of the Artisan, by Grant McCracken (Simon Element, 207 pages)

Behold the Pop-Tart, the humble toaster pastry introduced in 1964. It’s pretty much the same product as it was when Lyndon Johnson was president, which is to say it was the epitome of unnatural food. Designed to fit a toaster, the Pop-Tart was, Grant McCracken writes, “the ultimate triumph of artifice.”

“You couldn’t tell where it had been farmed, who had farmed it, or what, indeed, was in it. Somehow Pop-Tarts existed sui generis.”

Pop-Tarts, of course, still exist, but the world into which they were first introduced is far different now. In the 1960s, Americans were still enamored with factories and assembly lines and the convenience foods that rolled off them. There were objectors, of course; they were called hippies. As McCracken explains in Return of the Artisan, the ideals of the counterculture granola-eating warriors would ultimately prevail. America, the author believes, is over its ill-advised love affair with the industrial production of goods, and we are finding our way back to a better way of producing and consuming. It’s still capitalism, but we’ve found a better way to do it.

The change has occurred in 10 waves that began with the opening of Alice Waters’ trendy Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, in 1971, continuing with the tide of “foodie” cookbooks and the trend toward “slow” eating and natural foods, which naturally gave way to mixology and craft beer, and ultimately the rise of “fast casual” fare (think Panera and Chipotle) and, of course, Whole Foods. Incredibly, more than half of Americans identify as a “foodie,” someone who takes an inordinate interest in what they eat and how it is prepared. The trend is so significant that even the giants of mass production are trying to present themselves as artisanal; hence, the advent of Wendy’s “natural” fries and the blocks of “handmade” soap you can buy at chain supermarkets.

But this is not just about food. There are more craft fairs than malls these days, and many of the malls that exist are struggling to survive. Even if they don’t have the time and skill to make gifts themselves, most people prefer to give handmade gifts that have (and hold) value more than anything found in a big-box store. “Artisans make gifting easy,” McCracken writes. “Their creations are perfectly gift-proportioned: authentic, human scale, handmade, they are exactly the right size and shape, plus particular and personal in just the way a gift should be. They are Goldilocks valuable: not too precious, not too mere.”

The change to a society where artisans are valued more than industry comes with subtle shifts that are potentially radical. For example, McCracken says that in this new arrangement, the consumer isn’t king, as Charles Coolidge Parlin famously said. Neither are the Mad Men. The artisans, the ones who know what they’re doing, reign. Also, artisans aren’t in it for big profit, although they, too, need to pay their bills, and McCracken argues that the artisanal economy opens up opportunity for many 9-to-5 workers who have retired or lost their jobs, providing both income and community.

“Capitalism lives to optimize. … The artisan is inclined to make the product she thinks is most compelling, for a small audience, not with the cheapest method, but the most crafted one,” McCracken writes.

McCracken, who lives in Connecticut, is a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D., and as co-founder of something called the Artisanal Economies Project he has skin in this game. He is not just observing changes in the American economy but advocating for them, elegantly and convincingly. This is a lovely collection of essays, reminiscent of the thoughtful reflections of Bill McKibben, Howard Mansfield and Alan Lightman.

His most powerful one comes at the end of the book, when he recounts how he came to discover a simple canvas wallet that had been made by his uncle’s mother 65 years earlier. “The wallet was what we might call, after Proust, a ‘Madeleine’ object: an object charged with meaning and power,” he writes.

That wallet “opened a cut on the surface of reality. Something dangerous came spilling into life. … Somehow it managed to be both personal and completely traditional. You could see that it conformed to a traditional pattern to which generations had contributed. But it was also the work of an individual in the throes of a terrible emotion driving the stitches in one direction and then another. There was craft here and there was something craft couldn’t contain.”

There are pleasures to be found in Walmart and McDonald’s, to be sure, but they are thin ones and they make us fat. The return of the artisan, as McCracken sees it, won’t solve all our problems and is a slow work that is still in progress; it took 60 years, for example, for people to start questioning the wisdom of Pop-Tarts and mass-produced boxes of cereal. But there is value in the process, and in simply paying attention to the choices we make, McCracken maintains.

“The artisanal community is a respite precisely in that it allows us to take refuge from the blooming, buzzing world out there. It speaks to us precisely because it is not distracted and complicated by a hundred points of view.”

It remains to be seen whether the premises put forth here are true, but it’s a testament to McCracken’s persuasiveness that we want them to be true at the end. See you at the next craft fair. A

Book Notes

In the publishing world, the most prestigious books are the hardcover ones, and that prejudice trickles down to the masses. It’s mostly hardcover books that get reviewed; some publications won’t even consider paperback books. (For the record, we do on occasion.) While many paperbacks are subsequent editions of hardcovers, plenty aren’t, which means a lot of books aren’t getting reviewers’ attention. According to Publisher’s Weekly, there were twice the number of paperbacks (both trade and mass market) as hardcovers last year.

All that is to say, it’s worth poking around “new releases in paperback” to find gems that were not previously published. One appears to be Animal Joy, A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation (Graywolf, 320 pages) by Nuar Alsadir. Alsadir is an Arab-American poet in New York City, and her first nonfiction book is a lyrical and free-form exploration of the importance of laughter and humor to the human animal.

Two other new paperback titles worth your attention as we approach the end of summer reads:

¡Hola, Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons (Simon & Schuster, 224 pages) is a collection of humorous essays by advice columnist and Substack writer John Paul Brammer.

The author has been called “the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere,” but I’ve read Strayed and Brammer appears to be much funnier.

Equally fun is the novel Love in the Time of Serial of Killers (Berkley, 352 pages) by Alicia Thompson, which is about a Ph.D. candidate obsessed with true crime who goes to Florida to clean out her childhood home after her father’s death and starts suspecting that the next-door neighbor is, in fact, a serial killer.

On a much more serious note, anyone who wants to show support for Salman Rushdie, hospitalized in critical condition after he was attacked during a presentation earlier this month, could purchase his Language of Truth, a collection of the author’s essays between 2003 and 2020, which was released in paperback in July (Random House Trade, 368 pages).

A past winner of the Booker Prize, Rushdie is the author of 14 novels, including The Satanic Verses, the 1988 novel believed to be blasphemous by many Muslims. Ironically, the subject on which Rushdie was speaking at the time of the attack was about how the U.S. is a “safe haven for exiled writers,” The New York Times reported, quoting the CEO of PEN America, who said, “we can think of no comparable incident of a public attack on a literary writer on American soil.”

In the wake of the attack, The Satanic Verses re-emerged on Amazon’s top 10 list of fiction; it’s No. 1 as of this writing. A paperback edition (576 pages) is available from Random House.

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Book Events

Author events

• SPENCER QUINN presents Bark to the Future: A Chet & Bernie Mystery on Sunday, Aug. 28, at noon at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600).

• ADAM SCHIFF presents Midnight in Washington at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Tuesday, Aug. 30, at 2:30.

• MINDY MESSMER presents Female Disruptors: Stories of Mighty Female Scientists at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com, 836-6600) on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Free; register at www.bookerymht.com/our-events.

• PHIL PRIMACK presents Put It Down On Paper: The Words and Life of Mary Folsom Blair at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Sept. 8, at noon.

Poetry

• OPEN MIC POETRY hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com), starting with a reading by poet Sam DeFlitch, on Wednesday, July 20, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Newcomers encouraged. Free.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.