11.22.63 by Stephen King

We got this one in today. I haven’t read much of the ol’ King-ster (‘It’, ‘The Stand’, and who could ever forget ‘Misery’, shudder). But this blurb intrigues me. I like time travel stuff. Anyone read this? What’s the verdict? Let me know please… And if you haven’t read it, here’s the blurb so you can join in the fun. L’Yan

Stephen King 11.22.63 blurbarama

Plum power

JimmyD’s staff have very different tastes in crime fiction. One of us enjoys “foreign” crime (Scandinavian in particular), one of us enjoys a good psychological thriller, and one of us is devoted to old-school detective fiction. So it is not often that we stumble across a book that all of us have read, and when we do, it is a very rare occurence indeed if all of us have enjoyed reading it.

One of the rare crowd pleasers:

‘One for the Money’ by Janet Evanovich caters for those who enjoy solid characters, those who like a bit of wit to break up the tension, and those that like to read about something a *bit* different than lawyers in a courtroom – come on, who doesn’t love a bounty hunter? Stephanie Plum is a sassy heroine with a shaky (and hilarious) love life, and the “bad guy” is such a rogue you will probably end up cheering for him.

Not to mention, Janet Evanovich has released a Stephanie Plum novel at the rate of one per year for 18 years (so far). So if you enjoy the first one, why not keep going? (Admittedly, the quality starts to slide a bit, but they are still good fun and you really don’t have to pay too much attention to the plot!)

Let us know if you need any other suggestions, or if we can help you find an author that suits your taste.

L’Yan… and the crime lovin’ JimmyD’s gals

Thank you!

Hello to everybody who finds our website and wonders where we have gone!

I would just like to let you know that we still appreciate all of the emails and phone calls we get from you. We love to help you find that elusive book you have been looking for for ages! We have a lot of books in the shop and in storage that aren’t all listed for sale on the internet, so keep the questions coming and we will continue to try our best to help out.

If you are on facebook, find us at our page: JimmyD’s Bookshop

We would love to hear from you!

L’Yan

Weird Author Names, No. 1.

I’m just putting some new age books onto our system, and I came across this book:

The author’s name is so… intriguing. Sort of like a portmanteau of “good” and “savage”, and somehow just right for the author of a slim little Astrology volume from the mid-60s. I also feel compelled to share the author’s bio with you, since it’s almost as charming as his name.

“The author has worked as a reporter and tramp printer for at least half of the major dailies in the U.S. and has written hundreds of articles for the national magazines TRUE and FACT.”

TRUE and FACT indeed. You can pick up this charming little book in our New Age section, for $11.

-Agnes.

The Far Side by Gary Larson

Someone used to give my dad  a Far Side calendar for  Christmas every year, one of those desk calendars you flip over every day. I loved reading that calendar all at once. There was something about Gary Larson that was too cool to save for a calendar.

Gary Larson, if you didn’t know, does one-panel cartoons that are often dark, surreal and wildly funny. They’re a great gift for someone with a sense of humour, I think, but they’re also addictive (hence the way I spurned the one-cartoon-a-day calendar format).

Here’s something you might not know (that I discovered on Wikipedia). One of Larson’s cartoons features two chimpanzees groooming each other. One finds a blonde hair on the other and says “ Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodal tramp?” This is typical of Larson’s humour, which often features anthropomorthised animals. The Jane Goodal Institute wanted to sue Larson for this cartoon, but Goodal refused since she found the cartoon funny. She has since praised Larson’s ideas for the way they contrast the way that animals and humans live.

Jane Goodall isn’t the only friend Gary Larson has in the world of zoology, either. He has had a species of butterfly and a species of louse named after him. 

You’ll love Gary Larson if you like smart, surreal, weird and “quirky” humour, if you love animals or pop culture. I think this book would be a great gift for the scientist, office worker or comedy buff in your life. Maybe I’ll give it to my dad as a replacement for the calendar, this year.

Agnes.

Shantaram-a-rama

Joy of joys! Somebody just brought in a copy of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts… which is also on the Top 100 lists. Therefore I simply must read it. I will slowly make my way through it and let y’all know how I go. Its a doozie.

L’Yan

Seen the Movie? Read the Book! (Maugham, The Painted Veil)

The most recent film of The Painted Veil came out in 2006, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. The vibrant Kitty meets Walter, a quiet but intelligent young doctor. The two marry, but Kitty has an affair and Edward accepts a place as a sort of epidemiologist in China, which is in the middle of a cholera outbreak. The movie is quite stunning visually and the nasty, loveless relationship (at least one one side — as a Facebook user would say, it’s complicated) was reminiscient, at least for me, of another Maugham work, Of Human Bondage  (that one was made into a charming and amusing film with Leslie Howard and Bette Davis).

The book is very… polite. Maugham is very much a product of his era (as all writers are), and in my (not terribly informed) opinion, that might be why his books are often dismissed as overwrought and sentimental. The latter is certainly true, but if you enjoyed the emotional interplay of the movie (which is really quite sophisticated at the same time as it is downright malicious), you’ll like the book.

Maugham’s plain prose was often criticised for being quite lowbrow,  and this is easy to see, especially when you consider that in his time Modernism was first beginning to assert itself. It’s not hard to infer that Maugham was probably confused about his sexuality (for a public man of Maugham’s generation, being openly gay was impossible), and many of the relationships in his books are dysfunctional and overemotional.

If you liked the movie, I’d recommend that you give the book a go, especially if you like reading classics. Even with the subject matter there’s a sort of comforting quaintness in this book that you won’t get in many other writers of Maugham’s vintage.

-Agnes.

You can find this one, and some other Maugham (pronounced “mawm”, by the way) works, on our Classics shelf. We have whole shelf devoted to books that have been turned into films (and vice versa), too.

What do you think of Maugham?

L’Yan’s continuing obsession with bad blurbs

I love terrible blurbs. Although they are often unhelpful when I am trying to categorise a book, they at least give me a good laugh.

How’s this for a phenomenally terrible blurb:

Shirley is a prostitute. She thinks she knows all her customers: the first-timers, the talkers, the lookers, the hard guys, even the occasional psychopath. But, Mr Fox is no ordinary customer: who ever heard of a punter who quoted T.S. Eliot or arranged meetings at the Tate? With their every encounter she becomes more and more confused. Is it just a scripted pick-up? Or perhaps some bizarre kind of God-game? Love-Act toys with the reader’s curiosity right to the very end. It could be a book about seduction and manipulation or truth and invention or desire and the end of desire. Or not. It is for the reader to discover where the conundrums of M.E. Austen’s taunting game can lead in a first novel of rare and compelling ingenuity.

Blurb from M. E. Austen’s Love Act, Black Swan, 1982

An entirely unhelpful blurb of “rare and compelling” stupidity. I love it.

The Dag’s Dictionary by Richard Glover

Excerpt from The Dag’s Dictionary by Richard Glover, published by ABC Books 2004:

Damn!nesia (damn nee’ zee ah) n.

An affliction by which you walk purposefully from one end of the building to the other, but forget mid-trip where you were going.

I suffer from this constantly.

JimmyD’s staff always get a laugh out of this book.  We have a copy in stock right now for $11. But be warned: this book never sticks around very long!

I also like this one:

Liebry (ly’ bree) n.

A pile of unread but fashionable books placed on a coffee table in order to impress visitors.

L’Yan

This copy is now SOLD. Let us know if you are interested and we can putyou on our seeking list!

Submit a review to JimmyDs and WIN.

Here at JimmyD’s we like to read, but we can’t read everything. Magda is a keen enthusiast of Scandinavian crime (and Fred Vargas, the French crimestress with the strange name), but my own (Agnes) favourite crime writers are Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. L’yan knows a lot more about fantasy, but I for one wouldn’t know a David Eddings if it fell out of the sky and clocked me on the head (maybe I should do something about that, and I probably will, but after I investigate the hundred or so books and authors and series I mean to look into in the near future).

Here at JimmyD’s we like books, but we couldn’t possibly have time to read our way throuh every book in the shop, and there are people considerably more qualified to (say) tell us just what distinguishes a King Penguin from a boring old Penguin Classic.

Do YOU want to have your say? Submit a book review to JimmyD’s by commenting on one of our entries. Just tell us what you thought of a book in the comments, even — you don’t have to write something worthy of the New York Times Book Review, but of course if you can you’re more than welcome. The best book review (or comment) each and every month will receive a) our praise and b) a book voucher. Oh, and it’ll be displayed in pride of place in the window.

So what are you waiting for?!?! Get writing!

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