The browsers of the world have apparently — and however inadvertently — united and forced Amazon into the bricks and mortar bookstore business! Clearly, Amazon\u2019s online search and presentation algorithms never captured what it is browsers are doing when they look up, down and all-around physical shelves and find an unexpected treasure in a most unlikely place.<\/p>\n
GO BROWSERS!<\/strong><\/p>\n Now Amazon has to put together an appealing array of worthy books, placed and presented to intrigue the person who puts things together differently.This is very tricky business. \u00a0Think, for instance, about Steven Johnson,<\/strong> who browsed, developed ideas, then wrote the unusually sourced book,The Ghost Map<\/strong>, or Elmore<\/strong>Leonard<\/strong>\u2019s researcher,\u00a0\u00a0Gregg Sutter,<\/a><\/strong> who found, among other useful sources, picture books of Havana that helped with Cuba Libre<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Cathleen Schine’s novel, The Love Letter<\/strong>, is the only novel which addressed knowingly, if briefly, the arrangement of books in a bookstore. \u00a0As I recall, MILITARY HISTORY was shelved next to POETRY.<\/p>\n It is hard enough to work back to what an author might have browsed through, but it is even harder to capture a browser\u2019s as-yet-unread pile of chosen books. \u00a0(I wish I had photographs of the summer book piles chosen by the Roseledge Book Regulars from North Carolina.) \u00a0Many thanks, then, to Mary Karr<\/strong>, who, in a NYTBR<\/strong> interview<\/a>, let us \u201csee\u201d hers.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, it\u2019s a wobbly and eccentric pile. A masterful new comic novel by Annie Liontas, \u201cLet Me Explain You<\/strong>,\u201d and a gorgeous epistolary work by Mary-Louise Parker, \u201cDear Mr. You<\/strong>.\u201d Larissa MacFarquhar\u2019s fascinating \u201cStrangers Drowning,\u201d<\/strong> about saintly types. Ta-Nehisi\u00a0Coates\u2019s \u201cThe Beautiful Struggle\u201d<\/strong> \u00a0and St. Teresa of Avila\u2019s \u201cInterior Castle.<\/strong>\u201d Brooks Haxton\u2019s<\/strong> chronicle of his poker-genius son, \u201cFading Hearts on the River\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 he\u2019s one of my favorite poets, along with Terrance Hayes (\u201cH,ow to Be Drawn\u201d)<\/strong> and Dean Young<\/strong> (\u201cBender\u201d).<\/strong> Dana Spiotta\u2019s genius \u201cInnocents and Others,\u201d<\/strong> Claudia Rankine\u2019s necessary \u201cCitizen\u201d<\/strong> Ed Frenkel\u2019s \u201cLove and Math,\u201d<\/strong> David Berlinski\u2019s \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions\u201d;<\/strong> also Lena Dunham\u2019s<\/strong> hilarious and moving \u201cNot That Kind of Girl.\u201d<\/strong> \u201cThe Abbey,\u201d by James Martin, S.J.<\/strong> Plus Phil Jackson\u2019s inspiring \u201cSacred Hoops\u201d<\/strong> got reread for the manuscript on memoir I just turned in. (Hope our Knicks read it!) I\u2019m finding \u201cGo Set a Watchman\u201d<\/strong> way more dangerous than \u201cMockingbird\u201d for rendering racism from inside an allegedly educated white household \u2014 seems truer to the Jim Crow South than the later book\u2019s rose-colored tale of liberal white nobility.\u201d<\/p>\n Holy cow! What a great array of knowns and unknowns! Wouldn\u2019t it be fun to see what nine other books she looked at for each one she chose? (References:<\/strong> The 10 to one figure comes from some old U of Chicago Library research and I have a dimmer memory of someone trying, similarly, to quantify \u201clooked at\u201d vs. \u201csaved\u201d Internet sites, but the study or the studier got bogged down.) All together, this sounds like a tiny starter collection for a very interesting bookstore. Roseledge Books comes to mind.<\/p>\n Hurry up summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The browsers of the world have apparently — and however inadvertently — united and forced Amazon into the bricks and mortar bookstore business! Clearly, Amazon\u2019s online search and presentation algorithms never captured what it is browsers are doing when they … Continue reading