Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. This time we visited five times, as usual. My husband's special interests at the sale are photography, architecture, and performing arts; books about history; and fiction, including mysteries and science fiction.
These are seven of the books my husband found at the book sale this year.
Dr. Johnson's Apple Orchard: The Story of America's First Pet Cemetery by Edward C. Martin, Jr.
Published in 1997, this 120-page, coffee-table size book features over 200 photographs of the historic Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, established in 1896 by a New York veterinarian.
Description from the dust jacket:
What was once the summer retreat of a famous Manhattan veterinarian has been the home of America's first pet cemetery for over one hundred years. The Hartsdale Canine Cemetery is now the resting place for pets of every description, from parakeets to a lion cub, from the loyal dog of a blind newsman to the pampered pets of famous celebrities and a former vice president of the United States. Its carefully tended trees and crystal-clear stream have made it a community treasure in the small hamlet of Hartsdale, just north of New York City. Over the years it has grown like a stream around a boulder. In this 100-year Centennial tribute, Co-Director Ed Martin captures the dignity and compassion that has marked the cemetery's famous history. Through magnificent photography and personal reflection, he has created a feast for the eyes as well as the heart. Within its pages, you will discover stories of simple devotion, outrageous eccentricity and remarkable heroism.
Ghost of a Smile: Stories by Deborah Boliver Boehm
From the description at Goodreads:
Ghost of a Smile is a funny, erotic, scary collection of stories set in modern-day Tokyo and incorporating elements from Japanese ghost stories. Author Deborah Boehm turns modern Tokyo into a shadow world where life and death are simply matters of perspective, and where love, longing and sexual desire last beyond the grave. In this supernaturally enhanced city, the ordinary boundaries of identity—country, gender, even whether one is human or a spirit—are blurred. Ghosts can seduce, trick and even love mortals, and so the familiar problems related to dating and falling in love may be compounded by the discovery that a partner isn't human at all.
The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
This book is based on the podcast titled 99% Invisible. Based on reviews I have read, a lot of the content is from the podcast, but for those who have never listened to it, this sounds like a very interesting book.
From the description at Goodreads:
A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast
Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?
Or stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings?
Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships?
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout,
The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.
The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak
From the description at Goodreads:
The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.
Brunhild was a Spanish princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet—in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport—these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe.
The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a years-long civil war—against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne’s empire. Yet after Brunhild and Fredegund’s deaths—one gentle, the other horrific—their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.
In The Dark Queens, award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture’s stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.
Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison by Ben Macintyre
My husband read this book soon after he purchased it at the book sale in mid-September. As with all the books he has read by Macintyre, he enjoyed the book and gave it a high rating.
From the description at Goodreads:
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.
But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
My husband is currently reading this book. He discovered that he previously had a copy and never read it, and then bought another copy at the book sale. The only other book he has read by Tony Horwitz is Confederates in the Attic.
From the description at Goodreads:
On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he's mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown's founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.
An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.
Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.
You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir by Harry Bliss
This is another book that Glen has read since he got it at the book sale. It is actually a book that we co-own since we both like the author's writing and the drawings. He liked this one very much.
From the description at Goodreads:
A poignant and witty graphic memoir from New Yorker cover artist, internationally syndicated cartoonist, and New York Times bestselling author Harry Bliss capturing his reflections on life and his relationship with Penny, his beloved dog.
... As Harry grieves Penny’s loss, he reflects on his parents in their later years, his love for his wife and home, and the colorful artists, friends, and mentors who have shaped him.
With humor and gut-wrenching honesty, You Can Never Die is an intimate portrayal of a man making sense of the beautiful and painful world around him. This singular memoir integrates sharply crafted, witty stories with hundreds of gorgeous cartoons and never-seen-before sketches from Bliss’s career.
