Marc Fitten's Blog

Paul Anders seems an uncontroversial man, but it’s bullshit. An act. His mild mannered way of speaking. His apologetic nature. He isn’t a nice guy like everybody says. If anything, he’s a sociopath. An engineer who lives by checklists and processes. It’s his favorite word, and he tends to lisp it.

Sitting in his house again -- his wife and mine have become close friends -- he’s had a few beers and he tells us again his process for burning bermuda grass.

“Here’s a turf tip” he slurs in his mild mannered way. “I’m sure I’ve told you before. Burn your grass in swathes, not all at once. It could get out of control, and then you’d be in trouble.”

My wife, Donna, laughs for him. His wife laughs also and tells him he’s repeating himself. He becomes clownish at this point. Raises his hands in a mea culpa gesture. He polishes off his beer bottle. It’s the same story every year and he knows it. I don’t remember when this end of summer ritual began, but I don’t even pretend to listen anymore….

His wife, Meredith, places a single roasted corn cob on her styrofoam plate and mentions her weight. Donna tells her she looks great, but she’s not fooling anyone. Meredith has been growing stouter and more medicated as the years pile on. She’s not terribly attractive. Lumpy of body and mind. Slack as a flat tire. There’s no definition to her legs, yet she insists on weekending in khaki shorts. Blue spider veins transverse from the side of her thighs down to her cankles and her orthopedic footwear. She’s only 45. A college administrator. Department of Literary Arts and Literistic Awareness….or something equally ridiculous sounding. She thinks we’re kindred spirits.

“We’re both writers,” she likes to say. “You understand how it is dealing with academic egos.”

I don’t, though. Not really. I only worked at a university tangentially -- in one of their public facing offices, and that was years ago. I sensed the danger and tried to avoid the academic ego entirely. I freelance occasionally. I’ll write articles or essays. Nothing big published yet. I have a novel I’m finishing up. I cobble a living together. Donna is the one with the real profession, and I love her for it.

The only bright spot, the only personality in the Anders home is their daughter, Gabrielle. And for the first time in a couple of years, she’s back at the table, looking listless and nursing a long neck herself. Spiked cider. The kind of thing I imagine Smurfs drink. It’s probably because she’s had the baby. Babies will do that to you -- suckle the life force right out. Hers is asleep in the house, but there’s a baby monitor nearby and every once in a while a garbled coo comes through. Poor Gabi looks terrified when she hears it, and that makes me think of Phillip Roth. Something about people fucking themselves into a life. Anyway, Gabrielle has managed that perfectly. She was always a little too quick. At fourteen, she looked seventeen. At seventeen, she looked twenty-six. She got pregnant the summer after she graduated high school. Ended up staying with her grandparents a little bit, but is back now, working at the mall and attending a local community college. The same one her mother works at.

She looks great, though. There’s no denying that. Listless, sure, but somehow better because of it. The baby is going on two years old now and Gabrielle has filled out even more, if that’s possible. A young Sophia Loren. No cankles on her….

There’s no dad. Well, there is a dad, but he’s never mentioned. Meredith has never spoken of it to Donna anyway. The gossip is that the baby’s father was Gerhardt Meuller over in Sherwood Forest, but who’s to say? The baby is sort of Aryan looking. Snow white hair. Blue irisis. Rosy cheeks. Gabrielle spent a lot of time at the Meuller’s babysitting. She even went with them on summer vacations to the beach. I’d buy it, that Gerry was the dad…. The fact they moved away so suddenly without anyone knowing where is what makes people suspicious. I imagine they’re back in the fatherland now. Cologne, I think.

At any rate, as I was saying, Gabrielle is the only bright spot in the murk that is the Anders household. Meredith has her cankles and her absurd “Literistic” department. Paul is a sociopath about to lose his mind. And Donna and I are their next door neighbors. Some might think I’m a little too fixated on Gabrielle, and they would be correct. But It’s not for reasons they’d assume. I’m nearing forty and I like my life exactly how it is. I wake up and make Donna breakfast. I see her off, and then I go out to my shed where I work on whatever I feel like working on. In the afternoon I might go to a museum or to see a movie. Or I might meet up with other writer friends to talk bullshit about our nonexistent careers, how to get an agent, or how the internet is destroying us all. Then I come home. Open a bottle of wine. Enjoy a glass on my deck. If Gabrielle is around she’ll come over and have one with me. I know she’s not quite twenty-one, but she’s been knocked up, so I figure all her horses have left the barn and some wine might do her good. She’ll guzzle it down as young adults do, flirt a little for practice, and then run home, panic-stricken, when it dawns on her that she left the baby alone in the kitchen...and the oven’s on. I’ll prepare dinner then. Write a few notes, and when Donna comes home, have a nice meal.

It’s a good life. Clean. Straightforward. Sustainable.

The only reason the kid comes over is because she’s been selling me her Adderall since she was fifteen.

My new book is called Elza's Kitchen. Check out the new cover!

http://bit.ly/o7LxGG

Well, I've driven roughly 3000 miles, flown as many, and I stopped tallying my visits to Holiday Inn Expresses.  I have ten more bookstores stuck on the hard drive of my dead laptop along with countless photos from across the country.  Book stores in D.C., Mississippi, Colorado, and I can't even remember where. The laptop just crashed one day.  I'd taken it in once before  – an HP.

I'm going to see about getting to the hard drive this week.  Once I post what I have, I'm going to see to the final 25.

If anyone is still visiting the site and has any suggestions on who the final 25 should be, please let me know.  And if you're local, and it's a favorite, maybe I can even talk you into guest blogging.

Thanks for continuing to check in!

Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe

Back on the East Coast I stop in to see Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in DC.   This store is great. It's cool and crammed with books and is just a few steps from Dupont Circle.  Their selection of books is smart, and thank to their location they draw in a lot of pedestrian traffic.  It doesn't hurt that there is also the the Afterwords Cafe & Bar.  This bookstore works similarly to Trident up in Boston in that the...

Changing Hands Bookstore

I drove from San Diego to Tempe to visit Changing Hands because I'd been invited to read there and also because people kept telling me it's one of those bookstores that can't be missed.   Changing Hands is one of the most highly regarded indies in the country.

35 years in the bookselling business, Changing Hands is a large independent store in a strip mall that rivals the chains for size. They sell new, used...

The Book Works

Southern California is gorgeous!  The weather is perfect.  The people are pretty.  It feels like a place with a lot of spare time and money.  It's only fitting that any local indie is just as gorgeous.  Check these photos out!  The Book Works is a fun store in Del Mar with a great location.  The Salk Institute is nearby.  UCSD is also.  It's a book store in a high traffic area in an outdoor mall (The Flower Hill Promenade).

It...

Warwick’s

7812 Girard Ave

La Jolla, CA 92037-4287

(858) 454-0347

Twenty minutes from San Diego is a great seaside town called La Jolla.  And downtown on the main strip, in the middle of everything, is Warwick’s — a store for books, stationery, gifts, and office supplies.

This is a family owned store — four generations in the making.  Like Vroman’s it is a store that opened in the nineteenth century.

And there’s another similarity to Vroman’s  in that Warwick’s is a local icon, an indelible part of the surrounding community.  They sponsor a lot of events at Warwick’s and have strong customer service.  It is an affluent community of supportive readers.

Warwick’s has a cooking club, partnering with a local restaurant, where they host food-themed events.  There are also a lot of active reading groups and every spring and autumn, they host a book club night where booksellers and sales reps talk about forthcoming books.

It’s a lovely town with a venerable book store.  Well worth a visit if you’re in the area.

Warwick's

Twenty minutes from San Diego is a great seaside town called La Jolla.  And downtown on the main strip, in the middle of everything, is Warwick's — a store for books, stationery, gifts, and office supplies.

This is a family owned store — four generations in the making.  Like Vroman's it is a store that opened in the nineteenth century.

And there's another similarity to Vroman's  in that Warwick's is a local icon, an indelible part...

Surprisingly enough, this week’s highlights are mostly focused on new nonfiction dealing with intriguing political and psychological issues.

Events: The Henry Miller Library will be showing the film “Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, presented by producer Rod Stoneman on Wednesday, September 30th, at 7:30. Before and after the screening, Stoneman will be available to discuss the issues of objectivity in the media presented in both the film and his book by the same name. Screening is free; donations are appreciated.

New Literature: Carl Jung’s The Red Book, a frightening exploration into the subconscious written 40 years ago, is only just now being published. A $195 visual masterpiece, this may be one of the most important books in the history of psychology, a “story about genius and madness…possession and obsession.” While fascinating to some and uselessly creepy to others, this book is bound to be interesting.  Read the ten-page New York Times article here (via Newtonvile Books Blog).

Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America is one of the rare historical novels that is a true page-turner. Egan, the author of The Worst Hard Times, about the American dustbowl, is a specialist in American history and a winner of the National Book Award. This book about the raging forest fire that ravaged more than three million acres in only two days focuses on Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the National Forest Service. This is a powerful novel about conservationism, sustainability, and other important environmental issues that remain today (Broadway Bookbroads).

Other: Newtonville Books posted a very entertaining interview with Lev Grossman, author of the hit adult fantasy recently mentioned in the Monday Morsels, The Magicians.

You can now vote for the winner of the National Book Award and have the chance to win tickets to the National Book Award ceremony and a stay at the Marriott Hotel! Vote between The Stories of John Cheever, Invisible Man, The Collected Stories of William Faulkner, The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor, Gravity’s Rainbow, and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (Newtonvile Books Blog and Powell’s Book Blog).

Twitter got a 28-year-old man who still lived at home a book deal due to the popularity of his blog on his father’s amusing sayings (via Powell’s Book Blog). Apparently blogging really can pay off…who knew!

Surprisingly enough, this week's highlights are mostly focused on new nonfiction dealing with intriguing political and psychological issues.

Events: The Henry Miller Library will be showing the film "Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", presented by producer Rod Stoneman on Wednesday, September 30th, at 7:30. Before and after the screening, Stoneman will be available to discuss the issues of objectivity in the media presented in both the film and his book by the same name. Screening...