Paul Combs's Blog
March 14, 2019
Bookish
In my last post I let you know about Angry Typewriter, a podcast about writing and the writing life. But I'm also a book lover, like all of you, so I started a second podcast (one I am actually adding more content to than Angry Typewriter).
The new podcast is called Bookish. On Bookish I'll be talking, raving, and ranting about all things books, from Harry Potter to Harry Dresden, from Bulgakov to the Bible, from our favorite bookstores to least-favorite film adaptations. It should be fun.
You can listen at https://anchor.fm/bookish. It's also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and many other platforms. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Keep on reading.
The new podcast is called Bookish. On Bookish I'll be talking, raving, and ranting about all things books, from Harry Potter to Harry Dresden, from Bulgakov to the Bible, from our favorite bookstores to least-favorite film adaptations. It should be fun.
You can listen at https://anchor.fm/bookish. It's also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and many other platforms. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Keep on reading.
March 6, 2019
Angry Writer Podcast
I'm pleased to announce the launch of Angry Writer, a podcast about writing and the writing life. You can check it out at www.anchor.fm/angrytypewriter. It is available on multiple platforms, including Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. All can be accessed through the link above.
Keep on reading (and writing).
Keep on reading (and writing).
September 5, 2018
Book Town is Now Available!
Book Town (The Last Word Book 3) is now available on Amazon in paperback and e-book versions.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV3Y8K1
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV3Y8K1
August 26, 2018
We Have a Release Date!
We have a release date! "Book Town" will be published on 9/5/18. You can pre-order the Kindle version at the link below. Link to the paperback coming shortly.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV3Y8K1/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GV3Y8K1/
August 1, 2018
Book Three is Coming
I have been a negligent blogger in general and on this site in particular, but life has settled down some and I want to announce that book three in The Last Word series is coming in September. Watch this space for release info on "Book Town" soon.
July 26, 2015
Writer in Residence
I have been gone from the blog for a while, but with good reason. The second book in The Last Word series is now complete and will be published August 25th, 2015. You can keep up to date on news about me and the new novel both here and on my website: www.paulcombs.net.
August 31, 2014
The Patron Saint of Booksellers
It seems only appropriate (given my love of bookstores) that I review the book written by the woman who should be canonized as the Patron Saint of Booksellers. Ninety-five years ago, American Sylvia Beach opened the now-famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, and her memoir of the same name chronicles the roughly 25 years that her shop was the center of the literary world.
Before delving into the particulars of this wonderful book, it is probably best to clear up any confusion over the store itself. In another well known-book, Time was Soft There, Jeremy Mercer chronicles his time at Shakespeare and Company. However, the store Mercer writes about is not the store Sylvia Beach founded, but one that another expatriate American named George Whitman opened in 1951 and renamed Shakespeare and Company after Ms. Beach’s death. In what was either a double homage or a case of grand larceny (depending on your viewpoint), Whitman not only took the name of Sylvia Beach’s bookstore for his shop, he also took her name as well: his only daughter is named Sylvia Beach Whitman, and she now runs his Shakespeare and Company.
The original Sylvia Beach started Shakespeare and Company in 1919 with $3,000 borrowed from her mother. As is the case with independent booksellers to this day, it was never a lucrative enterprise but rather a labor of love. She began the store as a lending library for those looking for books in English, charging a small monthly membership fee; this practice was quite common in the early part of the last century, but has essentially vanished today. As time went on she began selling more books than she loaned, but the shop’s fortunes remained tenuous for its entire existence.
What makes Shakespeare and Company (the memoir) so appealing is the melding of Beach’s light, anecdotal writing style with the monumental people about whom she writes. This is more than a book about a bookstore; it is a chronicle of the writers, artists, publishers, and others who essentially made the shop their second home throughout the 1920s and 1930s. And while anyone writing a memoir likes to drop a name or two, the names in Shakespeare and Company stand out a bit.
One of Sylvia Beach’s best customers was a young, unknown (when she met him) writer named Ernest Hemingway. He was covering sports for a Canadian newspaper at the time, and it was to Sylvia Beach and her longtime partner Adrienne Monnier that Hemingway read his first short story. Hemingway and his wife Hadley later introduced Beach and Monnier to the grand sport of boxing. She knew all of the so-called "Lost Generation" writers, and her memoir contains stories about Hemingway, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Robert McAlmon, Thornton Wilder, Andre Gide, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. It was Sylvia Beach who took F. Scott Fitzgerald to meet James Joyce when Fitzgerald was too nervous to go alone.
Her relationship with James Joyce and his family takes up a good part of the book, and with good reason. By her own admission, Sylvia Beach worshiped James Joyce. Her shop became an office of sorts for him; he met with other writers there, received his mail there (as did many other writers who had no stable address), and read through the inventory of the bookstore. But Sylvia Beach’s greatest contribution to both Joyce and literature was offering to publish his novel Ulysses when it had been rejected as obscene by his publishers in England and America. The trials of publishing and distributing Ulysses are interesting not only as history but as a cautionary tale against censorship even today.
Because she felt that authors deserved to be paid more for their work than the people who published them, she took no royalties from her publication of Ulysses, and nearly sent herself and the bookstore into bankruptcy covering the costs and expenses. It was only the intervention of several writer friends that saved her from having to close her doors permanently, but she seemed not to be concerned about what happened to her as long as Joyce’s novel made it to the readers who clamored for it.
Shakespeare and Company is a quick read, although you may have to look around a bit to find it. I was determined not to buy it online, but rather from a real local bookstore, and it took me about a week to track down a copy. It is a glimpse into an amazing time in the history of American literature, a wonderful chronicle of a bygone era, and a fine portrait of the woman to whom Hemingway gave his highest praise: "No one," he wrote in A Moveable Feast, "was ever nicer to me."
Before delving into the particulars of this wonderful book, it is probably best to clear up any confusion over the store itself. In another well known-book, Time was Soft There, Jeremy Mercer chronicles his time at Shakespeare and Company. However, the store Mercer writes about is not the store Sylvia Beach founded, but one that another expatriate American named George Whitman opened in 1951 and renamed Shakespeare and Company after Ms. Beach’s death. In what was either a double homage or a case of grand larceny (depending on your viewpoint), Whitman not only took the name of Sylvia Beach’s bookstore for his shop, he also took her name as well: his only daughter is named Sylvia Beach Whitman, and she now runs his Shakespeare and Company.
The original Sylvia Beach started Shakespeare and Company in 1919 with $3,000 borrowed from her mother. As is the case with independent booksellers to this day, it was never a lucrative enterprise but rather a labor of love. She began the store as a lending library for those looking for books in English, charging a small monthly membership fee; this practice was quite common in the early part of the last century, but has essentially vanished today. As time went on she began selling more books than she loaned, but the shop’s fortunes remained tenuous for its entire existence.
What makes Shakespeare and Company (the memoir) so appealing is the melding of Beach’s light, anecdotal writing style with the monumental people about whom she writes. This is more than a book about a bookstore; it is a chronicle of the writers, artists, publishers, and others who essentially made the shop their second home throughout the 1920s and 1930s. And while anyone writing a memoir likes to drop a name or two, the names in Shakespeare and Company stand out a bit.
One of Sylvia Beach’s best customers was a young, unknown (when she met him) writer named Ernest Hemingway. He was covering sports for a Canadian newspaper at the time, and it was to Sylvia Beach and her longtime partner Adrienne Monnier that Hemingway read his first short story. Hemingway and his wife Hadley later introduced Beach and Monnier to the grand sport of boxing. She knew all of the so-called "Lost Generation" writers, and her memoir contains stories about Hemingway, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Robert McAlmon, Thornton Wilder, Andre Gide, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. It was Sylvia Beach who took F. Scott Fitzgerald to meet James Joyce when Fitzgerald was too nervous to go alone.
Her relationship with James Joyce and his family takes up a good part of the book, and with good reason. By her own admission, Sylvia Beach worshiped James Joyce. Her shop became an office of sorts for him; he met with other writers there, received his mail there (as did many other writers who had no stable address), and read through the inventory of the bookstore. But Sylvia Beach’s greatest contribution to both Joyce and literature was offering to publish his novel Ulysses when it had been rejected as obscene by his publishers in England and America. The trials of publishing and distributing Ulysses are interesting not only as history but as a cautionary tale against censorship even today.
Because she felt that authors deserved to be paid more for their work than the people who published them, she took no royalties from her publication of Ulysses, and nearly sent herself and the bookstore into bankruptcy covering the costs and expenses. It was only the intervention of several writer friends that saved her from having to close her doors permanently, but she seemed not to be concerned about what happened to her as long as Joyce’s novel made it to the readers who clamored for it.
Shakespeare and Company is a quick read, although you may have to look around a bit to find it. I was determined not to buy it online, but rather from a real local bookstore, and it took me about a week to track down a copy. It is a glimpse into an amazing time in the history of American literature, a wonderful chronicle of a bygone era, and a fine portrait of the woman to whom Hemingway gave his highest praise: "No one," he wrote in A Moveable Feast, "was ever nicer to me."
August 22, 2014
Shop Indie...Buy Local
I'm a big supporter of the "Buy Local" movement, having seen both through research studies and personal experience that supporting merchants within your own town and neighborhood benefits your community far more than buying from a big-box chain store. For obvious reasons, I am especially supportive of local booksellers, though sadly there are few in the part of Texas where I live.
In keeping with this, below is a list of ten websites of indie bookstores around the country where you can order copies of my novel The Last Word. Getting your copy from one of them rather than another online option directly helps your local community, and the more local business that thrive the better off we'll all be.
Avid Bookshop, Athens GA
http://www.avidbookshop.com/book/9780...
Book People, Austin TX
http://www.bookpeople.com/book/978069...
Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston TX
http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/nod...
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle WA
http://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/97...
Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY
http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/bo...
Well Read New and Used Books, Hawthorne NJ
http://www.thewellreadbookstore.com/b...
Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor MI
http://www.literatibookstore.com/book...
Gibson's Bookstore, Concord NH
http://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/book/...
Market Block Books, Troy NY
http://bookhouse.indiebound.com/book/...
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
http://www.changinghands.com/book/978...
I will post more indie stores in the days ahead, but even if you are from a different part of the country, or if your area has no indie store, you can still order from one of these shops.
Keep on reading..
In keeping with this, below is a list of ten websites of indie bookstores around the country where you can order copies of my novel The Last Word. Getting your copy from one of them rather than another online option directly helps your local community, and the more local business that thrive the better off we'll all be.
Avid Bookshop, Athens GA
http://www.avidbookshop.com/book/9780...
Book People, Austin TX
http://www.bookpeople.com/book/978069...
Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston TX
http://www.bluewillowbookshop.com/nod...
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle WA
http://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/97...
Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY
http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/bo...
Well Read New and Used Books, Hawthorne NJ
http://www.thewellreadbookstore.com/b...
Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor MI
http://www.literatibookstore.com/book...
Gibson's Bookstore, Concord NH
http://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/book/...
Market Block Books, Troy NY
http://bookhouse.indiebound.com/book/...
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
http://www.changinghands.com/book/978...
I will post more indie stores in the days ahead, but even if you are from a different part of the country, or if your area has no indie store, you can still order from one of these shops.
Keep on reading..
August 18, 2014
A Story of Love...and Football.
I published a new short story yesterday, just in time for football season. It's called "Romeo and Juliet and America's Team." Here a short description:
Weddings can be stressful. Melding families can be tricky. When the bride is from Dallas, the groom from Pittsburgh and the wedding the day before the Cowboys and Steelers meet in Super Bowl XIII...all bets are off.
It is a story of love...and football, and it's free for the next few days on Kindle. Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MSMD0CS
Hope you enjoy it, and Go Cowboys!
Weddings can be stressful. Melding families can be tricky. When the bride is from Dallas, the groom from Pittsburgh and the wedding the day before the Cowboys and Steelers meet in Super Bowl XIII...all bets are off.
It is a story of love...and football, and it's free for the next few days on Kindle. Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MSMD0CS
Hope you enjoy it, and Go Cowboys!
August 13, 2014
Re-Reading Books
A few weeks ago I reread Helene Hanff's wonderful book 84 Charing Cross Road. After I was finished, a thought occurred to me: why did I just read a book (slim though this volume is) that I've read at least ten times before, when there are so many other books out there I haven't read yet?
It doesn't seem all that strange when we watch a favorite movie so many times we can quote the dialogue word-for-word, or when we listen to the same song or album repeatedly. But with books it is a bit different. Watching films and listening to music are essentially passive forms of entertainment; with a book there is a serious commitment of time, and the inability to do anything else while reading. You can use a power saw or fry chicken and listen to Beatles at the same time; try doing those things while reading A Farewell to Arms and you may end up in the hospital.
I believe there are several reasons we go back to the same books over the years. For one, we know what we're getting. There is nothing worse than spending hours or days reading a book only to find out it wasn't really worth the time, especially if the ending was a disappointment. With a book you've read and loved, you know you won't be disappointed.
Another thing about rereading a well-loved book is that in many ways it is like visiting an old friend. I find that the books I tend to read more than once have especially strong and well-written characters in addition to a good story. Spending time with these characters again is like running into an old college roommate. You may not want want to live with them again, but it's enjoyable spending a few hours together.
Finally, the books I reread almost always give me something new each time I read them. Whether it's a passage I somehow didn't catch before, or an event that speaks to me in a new way, there's always something fresh about them. For example, I have read The Razor's Edge every year for 30 years, and each time I get something new out of it. The book hasn't changed, but my life has, and the novel reaches me in ways in my 40s that it never could have at 20.
So while I encourage everyone to read as many books as they possibly can (it's the key to a well-rounded life), be sure to take the time to go back and read the books you loved again. They'll wait for you and welcome you home every time.
It doesn't seem all that strange when we watch a favorite movie so many times we can quote the dialogue word-for-word, or when we listen to the same song or album repeatedly. But with books it is a bit different. Watching films and listening to music are essentially passive forms of entertainment; with a book there is a serious commitment of time, and the inability to do anything else while reading. You can use a power saw or fry chicken and listen to Beatles at the same time; try doing those things while reading A Farewell to Arms and you may end up in the hospital.
I believe there are several reasons we go back to the same books over the years. For one, we know what we're getting. There is nothing worse than spending hours or days reading a book only to find out it wasn't really worth the time, especially if the ending was a disappointment. With a book you've read and loved, you know you won't be disappointed.
Another thing about rereading a well-loved book is that in many ways it is like visiting an old friend. I find that the books I tend to read more than once have especially strong and well-written characters in addition to a good story. Spending time with these characters again is like running into an old college roommate. You may not want want to live with them again, but it's enjoyable spending a few hours together.
Finally, the books I reread almost always give me something new each time I read them. Whether it's a passage I somehow didn't catch before, or an event that speaks to me in a new way, there's always something fresh about them. For example, I have read The Razor's Edge every year for 30 years, and each time I get something new out of it. The book hasn't changed, but my life has, and the novel reaches me in ways in my 40s that it never could have at 20.
So while I encourage everyone to read as many books as they possibly can (it's the key to a well-rounded life), be sure to take the time to go back and read the books you loved again. They'll wait for you and welcome you home every time.
