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Early Literacy

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:49:29 -0500

Early Literacy:

Follow me on my journey to promote early literacy in at-risk babies of teen parents.

Amazon Absorbs Goodreads

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:30:58 -0500

Amazon Absorbs Goodreads:

Goodreads, say it isn’t so!

Dave Eggers at The Book Cellar, Feb 2nd

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:06:44 -0600

Dave Eggers, founder of McSweeney’s and author of the 2012 National Book Award-nominated A Holgram for the King, is visiting The Book Cellar! Join us on Saturday, February 2nd from 10am-12pm for a meet-and-greet and book signing. Books will be available for purchase here in the store. And yes, we’re just as excited as you are.

Building Stories by Chris Ware was recently published by...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:54:00 -0600

Building Stories by Chris Ware was recently published by Pantheon. It comes in a rather large box and contains “14 distinctly discrete Books, Booklets, Magazines, Newspapers, and Pamphlets.” This is will be a series of reviews of each of those 14 separate pieces.

{Part 2 of 14}

As far as I can tell this is the shortest piece in the box. Its narrative deals with the woman from the previous building, but she now has a daughter. When critics point to Ware’s sentimentality, they probably point to pieces like this. But Ware risks showing us moments in our lives that are so difficult to talk about without sounding sentimental, or pretentious, or sappy or whatever. Which is one of the reasons I love his work so much.

But seriously, how do you guys like my office rug?

Building Stories by Chris Ware was recently published by...

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:29:00 -0600

{Part 1 of 14}

Those familiar with Ware’s work will recognize one of the main characters from this first narrative segment, a youngish single woman with a prosthetic leg from an as yet unnamed accident or illness. As far as I know she first made an appearance in Acme Novelty #18 which appears to also be included in the Building Stories box. I know it’s $50 but wow, there sure is a ton of material in here!

This story follows this young woman, along with a old lady landlord, and an unhappy couple, who all live in the same apartment building. The building itself is also a character, providing occasional “voice over”. This story takes place during the course of one day, September 23, 2000, but Ware being Ware, he manages to expand that day into a lifetime, depicting the history of these characters, sometimes in a single panel.

Ware’s traditional themes emerge quickly in this first piece: loneliness, mourning the passage of time, miscommunication, self loathing, memory, self doubt, modern boredom, love, intimacy, and sex.

Building Stories by Chris Ware was recently published by...

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:46:00 -0600

Mariner Books churns out another crop of Philip K Dick....

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 20:15:00 -0500

Mariner Books churns out another crop of Philip K Dick. Beautiful.

Available for sale at The Book Cellar 10/23/12.

Hey Dog Lovers! Check out the trailer for Ken Foster’s new...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:19:00 -0500

Hey Dog Lovers!

Check out the trailer for Ken Foster’s new book, I’m a Good Dog: Pitbulls, America’s Most Beautiful (and Misunderstood) Pet. It’s on the shelves October 25, so swing by Book Cellar to grab your copy. Then remember to visit us again on November 15 because Ken will be in the store sharing the book and signing copies!

All Hail Chris Ware and Building Stories

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:29:36 -0500

All Hail Chris Ware and Building Stories

Tonight at 7pm, D.T. Max Discusses Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story"

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:23:25 -0500

Tonight at 7pm, D.T. Max discusses his new David Foster Wallace biography “Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story.” Q & A and signing to follow.

Tonight at 7pm at The Book Cellar: Aleksandar Hemon and Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:26:19 -0500

We are proud and honored to host celebrated Chicago writer and National Book Award Finalist Aleksandar Hemon as he discusses Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story.

Jeffrey Brown at The Book Cellar, Sept 21st at 7pm

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Just a quick reminder, Jeffrey Brown will be here to sign his new book Darth Vader and Son!

Neal Stephenson: Some Remarks - Bookworm on KCRW

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 10:36:38 -0500

Neal Stephenson: Some Remarks - Bookworm on KCRW:

We love us some Neal Stephenson. We love us some Bookworm. Together at last.

From the Indiana Review: Three Stories Unlikely to Make it Beyond the Slush

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 10:12:50 -0500

Three Stories Unlikely to Make it Beyond the Slush

Roth and Wikipedia

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 09:42:02 -0500

Philip Roth took to The New Yorker today (must be nice) to berate Wikipedia for an inaccuracy concerning his 2000 novel, The Human Stain. Roth states that the website misattributed the basis of the character Coleman Silk on Anatole Broyard - a mixed-race author who was able to pass himself off as white - when the inspiration was in fact an incident involving Melvin Tumin, a sociology professor at Princeton. It’s an interesting little piece in the way Roth turns a letter of complaint into a story and raises it’s fair share of questions with regards to authorial intent, collaboratively edited platforms, and how literature rewrites its own rewrites.

These are a few of our favorite things.

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:31:34 -0500

A Clockwork Orange just turned 50!

And just in time, Three Floyds’s Moloko Milk Stout is back!

Happy days!

Burma Cookbook Challenge

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 21:37:00 -0500

Let’s begin at the beginning

Hal here. A few weeks ago, I spent an entire weekend cooking. Ok, I wasn’t slaving over the stove-top every minute of all 48 of those hours, I’ll admit it. Rather, I was out having a culinary adventure: buying fresh veggies and fish from a new place, prepping all sorts of chile-happy marinades, mixing together condiments that get funkier (ie. better) with a little time, and butchering the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen. This was not a normal weekend dinner party. My mission: Artisan’s Burma Cookbook Challenge.

A little background

After decades of political isolationism under an authoritarian regime, The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, or Burma, recently began the process of opening itself up to democracy and the outside world. Many onlookers mark the rise of Thein Sein, the current president, as instrumental to this reform in urging more governmental transparency, economic repair, and personal opportunity. Indeed, it’s an extremely important and exciting time not only for Burmese citizens, but also for the international community as we start sharing resources, ideas, and (most deliciously of all) recipes. Naomi Duguid’s new cookbook, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, then arrives just in time. In it’s own words:

This book celebrates the culinary culture and traditional foodways of Burma, using recipes, stories, and photographs to engage with life in all its richness, both in the kitchen and out.

And if there’s anything that I can now attest to, it’s that Naomi’s book is not just a celebration but a cause for celebration.

And so here’s where I come in

One of the great things about working at an independent bookstore is having the opportunity to preview new books before they hit the shelves. Ninety-five percent of the time this means getting ahold of the newest Murakami novel or Didion memoir or werewolf-pirates-are-seniors-in-high-school-but-don’t-know-how-to-talk-to-girls YA book. But sometimes, at the moment when all seems lost, when we’ve cooked every variation of pasta primavera and fish tacos that we can, when Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything starts looking like This Thing Tastes Like That Thing, the staff-foodies are surprised with a groundbreaking cookbook. When Burma arrived at our doorstep, the Book Cellar’s owner, Suzy, calmly handed me a copy, asking if I wanted to cook a few dishes and write about my experience for a challenge put on by Artisan Press. She then watched as I blurted a mixture of “YES!” AND “AWESOME!” and “ARE YOU KIDDING?!” (it sounded something like “YAWSOMIDDING!?”), clocked out three people that weren’t me before I got the right one, and ran for my bike.

(Alright, I stayed for the rest of the day and was very civil but this is how I felt.)

A brief rundown of the menu I planned with not a small amount of anxiety

I think it’s safe to say that I crave east Asian food more than the average person. I can’t exactly verify that with data, I just know it in my heart to be true. I’d happily give up ever eating tacos again if it meant pho for the rest of my days, or hamburgers for Bi Bim Bop, or lasagna for just one more pork bun. As such, my eyes tend to be a little bigger than my stomach when it comes to cooking/consuming anything where peanut oil and fish sauce are essential ingredients. This all brings us to the Burmese Rice Meal. From the book:

Most people have at least one daily meal centered around rice. Usually it’s the main meal of the day, eaten at noon. The diversity of flavors and textures in a rice meal in Burma is wonderful…Even if I order only one curry at a little bus-stand restaurant it will come with not only rice, but also an array of condiments and sides, from a clear soup to fresh and steamed vegetables to chili pastes and more.

The Rice Meal is anchored by three main dishes, offsetting flavors from spicy to sweet to tart, accompanied by a salad or two and several condiments, a light soup, and steamed and raw vegetables. Meaning, a whole lot of food. Here’s what I went for:

Mains-

Mushroom and Tomato Simmer, Chile-Oil Fish, and Deep-Fried Street-Stall Chicken

Salads and condiments-

Intensely Green Spinach and Tomato Salad with Peanuts, Tart-Sweet Chile-Garlic Sauce, Tamarind Sauce, and Standout Tomato Chutney

Soup and Vegetables-

Ambrosial Chicken Broth with Shallots and Lime Juice, cauliflower, zucchini, yard-long beans, Thai eggplants, pickled carrots and cucumber

And then there was shrimp pow(d)er

Questions I had while at Tai Nam on Argyle and Broadway looking for the first item on my long shopping list: “Where do they shelve dried shrimp? How dry should they be? (Some of these are almost dust, and some still might have eyes!) Should I get the small, medium, large or extra large(!)? How did they dry in the first place? Which smell is the right smell? How am I going to hide these from my cat? Should I hide these from my cat? Am I getting a good deal on these…these dried shrimp?” Ingredient-wise, the most obscure part of Burmese cuisine has got to be the dried shrimp powder (henceforth DSP). This is not to say that it’s obscure-bad, only obscure-different and, to my palate, obscure-deep-and-good. Made by simply pureeing packaged dried shrimp into a fine powder, DSP is in just about every Burmese dish, from salads to soups to curries and sauces. It’s got a slightly salty, slightly robust flavor-of-the-sea (I don’t believe in “fishy”) that can, with just a dash, give an added depth of flavor to just about anything. Other than DSP, my grocery-adventure had me buying tamarind pulp, shrimp paste (oddly enough I had crab paste in my pantry, but had to stay true!), and more shallots than I have owned and will ever own in my life.

Some other lessons and first impressions

Many of the dishes I took on required either fried shallots or shallot oil or both. The good thing is: in order to make one you get the other. The better thing is: fried shallots and shallot oil are AMAZING ON ANYTHING. The shallots take on a beautiful golden color and, after being left to dry, are rich and crunchy and just the right amount of onion-y. Then you’re left with the shallot oil (all the remaining peanut oil that has been flavored during cooking) which you can splash on salads or use in stir-fries or, best of all, mop up with bread. Worth the price of admission. The condiments were simple enough, as long as you remember to wash your hands after handling chiles. The coolest, most unusual part of making the sauces was definitely cooking with tamarind for the first time. As Naomi details in the glossary, tamarind comes packaged in a variety of ways but the best is the pulp, which you can find in rectangular blocks in any Asian grocery store. Anyways, there’s this really neat part of prepping the tamarind where after you let it soak in warm water, you force all of the liquid out through a strainer; the thing is, it really doesn’t look like it’s going to be that much and it keeps looking that way but you keep mashing and then, after a little while longer, you notice that you’ve already doubled what you have and there’s more coming out and it feels like magic! The tart-sweet chile-garlic sauce was also a real winner - like the chile-garlic sauce with the green lid that you can buy at Jewel-Osco except fresh and citrusy and with a hint of fish sauce. Lastly, the standout tomato chutney was thicker (almost like a salsa) with more going on in terms of shrimp powder and shrimp paste and tomatoes. A very busy sauce that ended up being irresistible on the fish.

The Mains, or How to Stop Stressin’ and Just Grab a Hammer

I will be the first to admit that I’m not the best in the world at timing a meal. I like 6 hour roasts and 4 hour bolognese sauces and can famously stretch a thirty minute recipe to its hour and half breaking point. Luckily for everyone dining with me, I had a sous chef/photographer (credits, etc.) along for the ride to keep me on time. First we started with the mushroom-tomato simmer which was a good entry level dish on account of it wasn’t very hard and didn’t have a huge amount of prep. I used oyster mushrooms which gave the dish a kind of earthy taste, particularly when matched with the turmeric. All told, this took no longer than twenty minutes and had the kind of logical ingredients/steps that one can commit to memory in no time. Next I grabbed a knife and a hammer (I’m accepting cleavers for Christmas this year) and went about chopping apart the biggest chicken I’ve ever purchased. (I might have mistakenly bought a roaster but I seriously don’t remember it being this big at the store. Probably expanded on the way home. Science.) Now, you can have your butcher do this part if you a) don’t want to get your hands dirty, or b) are in a hurry. From the book:

The chicken should be chopped into small pieces, about 10 pieces to a pound. That translates into the following: Chop each drumstick into 2 pieces; the thighs into 3; split the breasts and cut each half-breast into 4 pieces; and chop the wings into 2 pieces.

I can’t stress enough that this is a fantastic way of really stretching out a whole chicken for a group of diners. I ended up with roughly 20 pieces (these were much bigger than I think were originally envisioned, but we’re Americans!) and several new dents in the top of my knife. Collateral damage. Then I rubbed all those chicken pieces in a mix of turmeric and let them sit in fish sauce for two hours. In the meantime, we started the Chile-Oil Fish which builds upon the turmeric/shallots/peanut oil base with chile oil, powder, and paste. By far the best part of the whole cooking process was the way the fish and the chiles and spices made the kitchen smell. That and the fried shallots. Have I mentioned them in a while? Just a reminder. The last step of the cooking was frying the chicken, which I did in about three inches of peanut oil in a deep wok. Normally I’d have been really bummed out with wasting so much precious peanut oil, but get this: a large jug of peanut oil from the grocery store was only $8, I kid you not. I went crazy with it! The key to the whole recipe, as Naomi points out, is to keep the oil’s temperature hovering right around 350 degrees, which over a couple of minutes of turning and bothering (always bother fried chicken) yeilds a rich gold-red color. The end result was not a far cry from the fried chicken you can get on the Thai menu at Spoon Thai on Western and Wilson. Except so much cooler on account of YOU COOKED IT!

Spoiler in which everything was great but there’s a clear winner

To the eating: in keeping with Rice Meal tradition, I served everything all at once with jasmine rice, the ambrosial chicken broth with shallots and lime juice, the intensely green spinach and tomato salad with peanuts, and the round of condiments. The mushroom and tomato simmer was my first bite, and it was a mix of tangy, earthy, and all-around hearty - Naomi recommends oyster mushrooms and I second the recommendation, as they have a thick, mushroom taste that’s more apparent than white button mushrooms. Next was a fast break to the spinach and tomato salad which had a great paring of textures with the soft spinach (cooked and then cooled) and the crunch of fresh tomatoes and fried shallots. The chile-oil fish was the perfect followup, as each bite had a great level of spice-heat paired with the richness of the cod. I extra-especially was into trying to coat every piece I could with the tomato chutney, mixing fish on fish-taste with a little tomato tang thrown in the mix. Finally, drumrole!, the street-stall fried chicken. Oh boy, this was the real winner. Maybe I’m just a sucker for anything deep fried and dunked in a sauce, but dipping those little chunks of perfectly crisp chicken in the tamarind and chile-garlic sauces was nothing short of taste-bud heaven. So simple, so delicious, a “what the heck” way of making fried chicken without any batter - just oil, heat, and a little bit of fresh sauces.

Final impressions before everyone was happy

I fed six with lots of leftovers, and in my world, that’s a big deal. Twenty-somethings eating for free can really eat! Overall, I came away with a great rush of new food sensations that I’d not had in quite sometime (even when on a kimchi binge). The chicken was the all-around favorite, and that’s saying a lot when all the recipes were so interesting and well-crafted. But the highest praise I can give, and I don’t feel this often from new cookbooks, is that I came away having learned some new things, from how to completely transform shallots into a delectably crispy topping to using ingredients I’d normally pass over (shrimp paste is awesome but should be respected) to trying out new ways of cooking (batterless deep frying, who’d of thought!). Overall, this is a book for hungry nerds, nerdy foodies, foodie adventurers, and anyone wanting to try something both deeply traditional and entirely new.

Aaaaaaaand everyone was happy

Thanks to Artisan, Suzy, Tai Nam, Kevin, Claire, Jen, and Wyrm (for not getting on the counter, good girl). Photo credits: Kev.

theparisreview: “Here where we live, the avenues are deep and...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 10:38:48 -0500

theparisreview:

“Here where we live, the avenues are deep and calm as alleys of a cemetery. The streets which run from the École Militaire to the Invalides seem somehow reserved for state funeral processions: one sidewalk in sun and one in shade, they stretch away between their frozen plane-trees, between their rows of withdrawn facades, empty of shops, empty of sound. There is, nevertheless, a sort of shivering suspense in the air, a sense of general misgivings in the face of the periodic bells, and the sky leans low on this quarter of mine, so very old before its time.

“My house stands at the crossing of two silences. The absence of a policeman, which permits the elderly edifice to finish out its days in dignity, adds to the distinction of the place. Some mouldings in cornucopia form and a species of turret are the sole adornments it was given; as for the rest of it, one might liken it to a thermometer—tall and narrow and constructed of windows to absorb the daylight. The daylight is never given back, and I wonder what becomes of it. (Here, by the way, i sone of the principles which dominate the life of the house—that part of its life, at least, which is known to me—that it never sends back for the use of the world a single thing, neither the daylight, nor the elevator, nor its servants.)

“Today I regarded it from a little distance, with the eyes of a stranger. Not everyone can do this with his own house, and it seems rather sad that it is possible at all. At any rate, the house made not the slightest effort to recognize me, pretended, even worse, that I wasn’t there.

—Antoine Blondin, “Death of the Avenue de Ségur”

Photograph Credit Alvaro Sanchez-Montañes

This is the sound of a quiet prose.

D.T. Max at The Book Cellar Oct 11 @ 7pm

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 11:12:00 -0500

Mark it on your calendar, DFW fans: DT Max visits The Book Cellar to discuss his new biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. Oct 11th @ 7pm

DFW Bio

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:36:53 -0500

The reviews are starting to trickle in for D.T. Max’s upcoming bio of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. Several of us have given the book a go and found it by turns heartwarming, funny, scary, surprising, and (probably above all) complicated - not in form, but in its attempt to understand such an immense literary mind. While she was never much of a fan of Wallace’s work, NYTimes reviewer Michiko Kakutani probably has the best summation of what the bio hits on:

Wallace emerges here as a mass of contradictions. An A student and tennis jock, seen by classmates as “cheerful, popular, funny,” but given to growing anxiety and panic attacks. A Midwesterner who valued “the culture of forthrightness he’d grown up with” but who became preoccupied with recursive literary narratives and the convoluted theories of Jacques Derrida. A conservative voter (Mr. Max says he voted for Ronald Reagan), whose work evinced a view of America as a toxic land in thrall to consumerism and self-gratification. A self-described “grammar Nazi” who helped remap the landscape of contemporary fiction. An author, regarded by many as a slacker hipster, who was, Mr. Max says, “an intense moralist” whose rehab experiences had made him “an apostle of careful living and hard work,” devoted to his students and the people in recovery he sponsored.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

-Hal