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Park Slope Reading

Reimagining a Used Bookstore

November 22, 2022 By Jonathan Zelinger Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading

Troubled Sleep aims to reorganize Park Slope’s collection of pre-owned books.

Remarkably, the idea to open a used bookstore in Park Slope was conceived by the founders of Book Thug Nation in only June of this year. Less than six weeks after the idea was casually floated in a meeting, the small book conglomerate opened their newest location, Troubled Sleep at 129 Sixth Avenue, Most recently the home to a neighborhood pet store, the space has been transformed from a muted and easily overlooked storefront into a vibrant, wide-windowed facade. Displayed on both sides of the black and yellow entranceare double-decker carts of used books. Each of them, selling for a dollar.

When I stopped by on a recent afternoon , Alex Brooks was visibly delighted as he rang up a woman with a stack of books held up against her chest, most of which had been selected from the dollar cart. “This is such a terrific find,” Brooks, Troubled Sleep’s manager, said as he flipped through her haul. “Barbara Tuchman might even be one of my favorite historical authors. I’m sad that for many readers, she is considered obscure.” The patron, Donna S, who lives on 8th and Montgomery, agreed. On her way out, she promised to return with decades worth of used books sitting in her house, insisting she’d donate rather than sell.

In Park Slope and surrounding neighborhoods, there are not many used-book stores. There is Unnameable Books on Vanderbilt, and Better Read than Dead in Bed-Stuy, but a signature charm of these stores are the whimsical and chaotic aesthetic of their space. “Used books you can find,” Brooks said when asked what set Troubled Books apart. “But we wanted to take a practical approach to the used-book buying experience.”

This aim speaks to the balance Troubled Books is trying to strike – a bookstore where you can find what you’re looking for and navigate easily, while remaining susceptible to the wide variety of titles you see in between. . About 90% of the store’s books are used. The center display table is reserved for new books, both contemporary and classic. Donna, the stack-carryingcustomer, left with six books. Just one of them was new – Didion’s the White Album – and five used, with bylines like Baldwin, Bentley, and Hemmingway.

While it might seem a bold venture, to open a pre-owned bookstore at the tail end of a pandemic and in the eye of an imaginable recession, the owners of Book Thug Nation are by no means amateur entrepreneurs. Started by four sidewalk booksellers, the group has made a reputation for attracting a wide range of shoppers: collectors of rare works, budding young readers, and everyone in between. Their inaugural store, Book Thug Nation, is a small but formidable used bookstore and literary staple in Williamsburg.

As for Brooks, he, too, is no novice in this world. He has worked with Book Thug Nation for five years:once a loyal customer who caught the attention of the staff with his literary enthusiasm, he was offered the opportunity to help grow the business. Before opening up Troubled Books, he worked at their Manhattan storefront, Codex, on Bleecker Street. Now he is stationed in Park Slope for the foreseeable future, only a few short blocks from where he attended The Berkeley Carrol School 20 years before.

It’s too early to tell If Troubled Sleep is destined for the same success as their sibling locations, which have by now sprouted up all over the world, including cities like Madrid and Valencia. But having walked by several times over the past month, I have yet to see the store without perusing passer-bys looking through – what they may or may not realize – are the bookshelves, quite literally, of their neighbors.

Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading

The Kids Need Coaches

April 7, 2022 By Kathryn Krase Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Reading

I spent a few hours this week emotionally preparing for the “draft”. It’s not the NFL, NBA, or MLB draft that had me sweating; it was the SFX Youth Sports, 2022 Spring Baseball Season, Grasshopper Division draft. This draft was important because I had actual skin in the game. I’m preparing for my 12th season as head coach of a coed youth baseball team in the Prospect Park Baseball Association, and it’s time for me to pick my team for the 12th time. 

Near the start of each season I find myself reminiscing. Sometimes I think about the t-ball days, over a decade ago; I recall that experience less as “coaching” kids to play a sport I love, and more like “herding cats”. Other times, I reflect on the longevity of my relationship with many of my players; 2 have been on my team all 12 years (my son and nephew), 2 for 11 years, and a few more for 8, 9 and 10 years. As a result of these long relationships, we’re more a baseball “family”, than a baseball “team”. This year, in preparation for the draft and upcoming season, I ended up reflecting on an experience from before my coaching days, that I didn’t even think was related to coaching, but turns out it is.

Almost 15 years ago, I was a new mom and preparing my dissertation proposal. I was actually chugging along smoothly. Then, I received a suggestion from one of my committee members to add additional material to my theoretical perspective on how “social capital” theory relates to my dissertation topic. I had no idea how “social capital” related to school personnel notoriously over-reporting Black and Brown families to child protection services. However, as anyone with a PhD knows, if a dissertation committee member makes a suggestion, it’s better to just follow through with it, then ask too many questions. After all, I wanted to finish my program, not languish in it.

So, I asked the committee member for guidance on what source materials might help me best understand the context of this theory I never studied before. The answer: “read Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam”. I assumed this recommended source was a journal article that I could access electronically through the library’s online system. But, alas, it was a book. A BOOK. My committee member wanted me to stop everything I was doing after submitting a full draft of my dissertation proposal, and read A BOOK?!? I had an infant at home! To make progress, so far, I had to figure out how to work on my dissertation proposal while regularly breastfeeding. I was making progress, so far, because I had been conceptualizing my proposal for 2 years before I got pregnant. But, I bought the book, and dug in.

The book ended up being fascinating, and well written; I was able to finish reading it in less than a week. What I learned was that social capital refers to “connections among individuals”. Social capital theory suggests that individuals form connections with other individuals and groups because these connections benefit their own interests. But, social capital in the United States is dwindling. Putnam provided evidence that Americans were disengaging from each other, and their communities, for various demographic and political reasons. As a result, there was a loss in civic engagement, and dwindling numbers of volunteers for community groups. 

“What the heck does this have to do with bowling”, you ask? Well, even though more people (mathematically) were reporting bowling on a regular basis, fewer people were bowling in leagues. Therefore, people were more likely to be “Bowling Alone” (get it), than ever. There was less “togetherness” happening, even when it came to bowling. It took some brain energy to connect this concept to my dissertation topic. But I was able to do so competently enough for students to have to call me “Doctor Krase” for the past 13 years.

Bowling Alone, and social capital theory, came to mind a few weeks ago when I was talking with an old high school friend I recently reconnected with. He is the athletic director at a private school that is in constant need of coaches for their sports teams. He asked if I was interested in coaching for his program; for the record, I am. He explained how hard it is to find coaches because people are so busy, and coaching requires a certain level of commitment. He talked about spending years recruiting coaches from the ranks of local collegiate athletes, and how he’s lucky to get more than one year of service from such a recruit before they graduate, and move on. Then, he has to recruit and train a replacement. We’ll be talking later this spring about possibilities for me to join his coaching staff, and we’ll see what happens next year. 

The difficulty finding coaches for youth sports teams is not unique to private schools, or any school for that matter. With school coaching gigs there is usually some level of monetary compensation, though not substantial. And the hours are complicated. Finding coaches is a constant struggle in volunteer circles, as well. While trying to problem-solve the vacuum of coaches, I found myself recalling Bowling Alone. How would Putnam’s perspective on social capital theory explain why it’s so hard to find coaches?

First there’s the demographics. American birth rates have been decreasing for half a century, but the actual number of kids in the country continues to grow, albeit more slowly. And, even though the rate of participation in sports is decreasing, the actual number of kids playing sports is increasing. There’s also a ton of sports to choose from. The “big three” (i.e. football, baseball, and basketball) are still popular, but so are soccer, track and field, tennis and volleyball. Some sports have seen a reduction in participation over time, namely tackle football. But the bottom line is, there are more kids, and more kids are playing sports; that means higher demand for coaches. 

While there is a growing number of children, adults are less likely to be parents. Coaches, especially volunteer coaches, are most likely to be parents. So, with a declining share of the adult population choosing to become parents, or delaying parenthood until later in life, there is a smaller pool of adults likely willing to coach.

Then there’s the lifestyle changes for adults over time. The start of the 20th century saw a rapid expansion of leisure time for adults across socio-economic status as the 40 hour, five-day, work week became a standard. But by the early 21st century, adults reported feeling more rushed and busy, with growing demands for their time outside of work. A multitude of commitments for adults means less time available for them to serve as a coach.

And then there are the stresses of the coaching role, itself. I don’t think the stress of draft night is a major deterrent to recruiting volunteer coaches. So, what is stopping everyone? 

Coaching isn’t just showing up at game time. There’s finding time in everyone’s schedules to practice, and also making space in the limited space of our evenings and weekends for games. Good coaches need time, and mental space, to identify skills in need of development in players, and then provide the opportunity for the players to learn such skills. Coaching involves figuring out logistical arrangements of players on the field or court, and making decisions about whether the goal is fairness amongst players of differing abilities, or capitalizing for the team’s competitive advantage, or a balance of both. And then there’s the need to effectively communicate all of this to children of various ages and developmental stages, and their parents.

Coaching isn’t easy, and it isn’t always fun. We’ve all seen media reports of the less-than-friendly reception coaches (and officials) get on the field from other coaches, spectating parents from all teams, and even their own child players. Coaches, and youth sports officials, unfortunately, get harassed and disrespected. I, myself, am no stranger to being called names or being cursed at on the field.

While there are a ton of reasons why there aren’t enough coaches, there are so many of us who have been in the role for a long time. On the video conference call that served as this year’s draft, I was greeted with many familiar faces from drafts of the past, as well as new faces. There was a time when I was the only woman in the draft room; now there are a handful of us. Why do people coach? And why do some of us keep coming back?

All the research shows the value of kids playing sports, especially team sports. There are major benefits to their physical, mental and emotional health. The lessons learned on the court, field, ice, etc. are transferable to situations kids face with school, work, friends, and family. And kids need coaches in order to reap these benefits.

While there isn’t the same type of research on how coaching impacts adults, I can say that even with the stress this role causes me, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I LOVE COACHING! I love seeing the kids improve over short and long periods of time. I love seeing the kids cheer and support each other on and off the field. I love connecting with kids, their siblings, their parents, and extended family members. I love it when a player is excited to tell me who is watching them from the sidelines for that game. I love it when a player timidly inquires about whether they can try pitching, or play first base. I love it when a player beams with pride when they make solid contact between the ball and their bat and they watch it fly through the air, or the smile that engulfs their face when they realize the ball fell into their glove to catch a fly ball and they made an out on the field. I even love the feeling of stressing out before the draft; I love it because I know that after the draft, it’s only a matter of weeks before we’re back on the baseball field. 

Social capital may be dwindling, but it’s not gone. There was plenty of social capital at the draft, and plenty of untapped social capital reading this article. I know you’re there… If anyone reading this article is considering coaching, even for a single season, but isn’t sure it’s worth the effort. IT IS! Do it! The kids need us… and maybe we need them, too.

Filed Under: Park Slope Life, Park Slope Reading

Life in Balance

September 28, 2021 By Laura Broadwell Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

Excerpted from Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40 edited by Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin (Dottir Press, 2021

My daughter, Eleni, is twenty-one now, but I distinctly remember a day when she was two and I was desperately trying to convince her to put on her shoes so we could go out to play. Eleni was running around distractedly and wouldn’t listen, while my mother, then seventy-five, was repeatedly asking me unrelated questions—something about a neighbor and what we would like for dinner. As I answered my mother’s questions, she asked them again because she was hard of hearing. For what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself caught in a cycle of speaking louder and louder to a two-year-old who wouldn’t listen and to a seventy-five-year-old who couldn’t hear. To a bystander, the scene may have seemed comical, but I was not amused. 

In retrospect, that particular day was golden. The sun was shining, my father—also seventy-five—was out for a run, and my mother was still able to cook the foods of her native Greece. Though I was an exhausted, older single mother, I found immense joy in (eventually) taking my daughter out to play, and, as an only child, I reveled in the fact that my parents had finally been granted a grandchild. My family now felt whole and complete. 

In a few years’ time, things would change. 

“Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a mother; and as I crept toward forty and remained unmarried, this dream, this ambition, didn’t fade. Then when I was forty-one, a confluence of factors arose that made motherhood seem possible.”

Living in an unusually sizable apartment in Brooklyn, I had a steady job that I loved, supportive parents and friends who resided near my home, and a surprising ally in the Chinese government. Though things have changed since, there existed a window of time, a fortuitous opening, when the Chinese government allowed a single woman over forty to adopt a healthy infant—in most cases, a baby girl. (For me this was a bonus, since I intended to raise a child on my own.) On top of that, the adoption process in China was fairly straightforward; and with some luck, it appeared I could be in China within eighteen months, a new mother to a baby daughter. After much thought and reasonable trepidation, I decided to pursue this option. 

On August 16, 1999, I arrived at a dimly lit registrar’s office in central China, where I was handed an eight-month-old baby. At the age of forty-two, I suddenly became a first-time mother. I named my daughter Eleni in honor of my own mother, who had waited patiently for her first and only grandchild. Then nine days later, we flew home to New York, where my parents and friends greeted us at the airport. Eleni and I were set to begin our new life together. 

Our first two years in Brooklyn passed quickly. Eleni was a happy child, a curious child, a child who never slept. By extension, I was always exhausted, holding down a full-time job, caring for my daughter, having few spare moments to myself. But as an older mother, I viewed this juggling act and ever-present fatigue as a small price to pay for the joy of raising a child. As a parent over forty, I’d had countless years of “me time,” during which I could travel, see friends, build a career. So spending a Saturday afternoon with my parents and Eleni was more than enough to make me happy. Having my mother prepare Greek meals and bring them to our house, or seeing my dad play so energetically in the park with my daughter, fulfilled me. I was grateful for my job, grateful to reside in a neighborhood with other adoptive families and little girls from China, and grateful for the multicultural city in which I lived. By some divine stroke of luck, everything seemed in order. 

But as it happens, the best-laid plans often go awry. On September 11, 2001, when Eleni was almost three, the World Trade Center was hit by terrorists, bringing our city to its knees. Several weeks later, the magazine at which I’d worked for nearly a decade folded, citing a consistent loss of revenue. Then, in the spring of 2004, my seventy-nine-year-old father—the bedrock of our family, a man with boundless energy—was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer. How supremely unfair it felt that a man who had valued his health and had so much to live for would be struck with such a fatal illness. Within six months of his diagnosis, my father died, leaving me with countless business affairs to look after, a broken heart, and a mother and daughter who were beyond bereaved. 

Eleni was five, almost six, when her grandpa died, so it was hard for her to comprehend how this vibrant man had left us. On the playground at school, Eleni would look up at the sky and see her grandfather’s wispy, white hair in the cloud formation above her. In class, she described his spirit as coming to her “like a wind,” helping her with her math problems. My dad was athletic, so in tribute to him, Eleni learned to play soccer and tennis. She was fast on her feet and adopted my father’s work ethic. 

My mother, on the other hand, was seventy-nine when her husband died. For years, her health had been faltering, first with coronary bypass surgery in her early fifties, then later with various issues causing memory loss and pain. My mother was surprisingly strong, having survived not only these health problems but also the shelling of Athens during World War II, yet somehow, she liked to convince everyone that she was weak, a victim who needed constant care. 

My father had been that primary caregiver, her rock—her lifeline to the world. When he died, my mother was understandably adrift. In order to protect her, my father had declined to tell my mother exactly how sick he was, perhaps believing he had more time to live than he did. But her lack of emotional preparedness and the relative speed of my father’s passing sent my mother into a tailspin. There were days when she stubbornly refused to take her medication and her memory loss worsened. There were times when she became short-tempered with Eleni and with me. 

As the weeks passed, I tried to keep our lives in Brooklyn in balance. My daughter was in first grade now, learning to read, write, and socialize. I was working from home as a freelance writer and editor, which gave me flexibility in terms of time and workflow. But every weekend, Eleni and I would run out to my mother’s house some fifty miles away to check up on her and a family friend who’d agreed to stay temporarily. My mother was sad, lonely, and increasingly confused, and it became clear she would soon need a higher level of care. The turning point came a short while later, when my mother arrived at my apartment for an extended visit. As she bent to tie her shoelaces one day, she slipped and fell, fracturing a vertebra in her back. It was the last day my mother would walk independently. She would soon need a wheelchair. 

Faced with this new set of circumstances and knowing my mother could no longer live independently, I decided to move her to Brooklyn, into a sunny assisted-care facility near my home. I hired loving professional aides to care for my mother and I visited almost daily. But although the logistics of having my mother close by made life easier, I was still wracked with guilt. I knew my mom was suffering. 

For one thing, my mother wanted to go home, and home meant her house on Long Island. Because of her deepening dementia and overwhelming grief, my mother couldn’t understand why she couldn’t live alone and why my father had left her. In an effort to comfort her and settle her nerves, I brought my mother some personal belongings, including a painting she loved of me and Eleni. I also brought my six-year-old daughter to visit her whenever possible. Sometimes Eleni would draw or play contentedly, and sometimes we would all sit together on the couch, watching TV. But on other days, both my mother and Eleni would vie for my attention while an aide was trying to talk to me. At still other times, Eleni found it too hard to visit. It was tough for her to reconcile the grandma she’d once known with the one now lying in a hospital bed. How could this be possible? 

For more than eight years, I was tasked with balancing the needs of both my mother and daughter. Early on, I decided it would be easier for me to see my mother on my own, preferably when Eleni was at school or at a friend’s house. I could sit and hold my mother’s hand or help feed her. I could take her to doctor visits, check on her medication, and talk to her aides without interruption. Eleni would come for shorter visits, after school or on the weekends. 

My days with Eleni at home and in the world were cherished times and often proved to be the antidote, the needed balance, to caring for an aging parent. As a first-time mother—and an older one, at that—I loved every stage of Eleni’s development. As she grew, my daughter played sports. She read and watched movies. She danced. She had friends. She grew taller than me and at times her grandmother barely recognized her, instead remembering her as a smaller child. While my mother drifted in and out of reality and often in and out of hospitals and hospice care, my daughter found joy in real-life activities. She was thriving, and her curiosity about the world buoyed me. 

Eleni also knew intuitively that I was doing my best in a difficult situation. From the time she was six until she was fourteen, Eleni watched as I cared for my mother as she edged closer to dying and bounced back again. She, along with family friends, helped me clear out our Long Island home with its more-than-fifty-years’ worth of possessions, and she was there on the tearful day we sold it to help pay for my mother’s care. Five years after my father’s mesothelioma diagnosis, I was diagnosed with early-stage endometrial cancer and required surgery. Eleni was there to greet me at home with her godparents on the day I returned from the hospital. I was fortunate in that Eleni had always been a considerate child and a fairly easy one to raise. And as she grew older and into her teen years, she empathetically cut me slack when my conflicting duties got the best of me. 

In hindsight, it’s hard to say how I—we, all three of us— got through those challenging years. Sometimes things fell apart, such as when an aide, Eleni, and I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment and got stranded when our wheelchair-accessible transport failed to arrive. Other times, I lost my patience; occasionally, I completely lost my temper with everyone. Eleni had hard days of her own and sometimes seemed inconsolable despite my best efforts to support her. But even in my worst moments, I was lucky enough to have a village to help raise my child and care for my aging mother. 

During those years, I thought often of my father and how he had run marathons later into life, driven by a will of steel. When he died, it felt as if I’d followed in his footsteps. My marathon, however, was of an emotional nature, a very long race that would call for a great deal of energy, determination, and grit in order to reach the finish line. But because I was an older parent in my late forties and fifties during those “sandwich” years, I was able to draw on decades of my own life experience and find wells of strength I never believed I had. 

I was also willing to refocus my priorities on both my mother and daughter, knowing I had one shot to get this right. (As a result, my career and personal life were indefinitely put on hold.) It soon became clear that I couldn’t help my mother get “better,” but I was dedicated to helping her find some measure of comfort and peace. Over time she became less verbal, making it hard to know exactly what she needed and why she held on for so long. But as one of her nurses once told me, “She has too much love. She’s not going anywhere.” As for Eleni, I had waited so long to become a mother that I wanted our experience together to be memorable. I wanted to soak up all the time we had at each stage of her journey, whether it was the big things, like going to Disney World when she was nine, or the small things, like watching Harry Potter movies on repeat. Her joy, happiness, and sound emotional development were at the top of my to-do list each and every day.

In the end, my mother chose the time and place of her passing. On February 15, 2013, on what would have been my father’s eighty-eighth birthday and one week short of her own, my mother died in the Brooklyn hospital where I was born more than fifty years earlier. In another act of perfect symmetry, she was holding the hand of my daughter, a child who was then fourteen and had been named after her, years earlier. 

It was an emotional walk home from the hospital that night. But when we arrived back at our apartment, I pulled out my mother’s wedding ring, a simple, silver band with tiny, twinkling diamonds – a symbol of my parents’ long commitment. I slipped the ring onto my hand thinking I might wear it, but it just didn’t look right on me, so I offered it to Eleni. By some stroke of magic, it fit perfectly on her long, slender ring finger, and I joked that my mother’s ring chose its wearer, just like Harry Potter’s wand chose him. 

Eleni has worn my mother’s ring religiously since that night. It traveled with her and protected her on the subways she took to high school. It swam with her and glistened in the turquoise-dappled waters of the Aegean Sea. It accompanied her to college and to a semester abroad in Italy. It has been given a new life, a new set of adventures in a modern world. My mother’s ring was one that I loved and admired during childhood, and it’s a ring my daughter wears proudly now in memory of her namesake. It’s a symbol of the time that my mother, Eleni, and I all spent together—and a symbol that we all made it through. 


Tick Tock reading at Community Bookstore on Wednesday, 10/6 at 7:30PM EDT featuring Laura Broadwell, Cathy Arnst, Jean Leung, Salma Abdelnour, and editors Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin.

Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

Best of Summer: Summer Reader (2018)

August 19, 2020 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: anna storm

Whether you’re looking for a fun beach read or a serious time that’ll keep your mind sharp in the heat, we’ve got you covered with 10 of summer’s hottest books.

1. Florida, by Lauren Groff

This collection of short stories from the acclaimed author of Fates and Furies is a dark dive into the minds of people struggling with themselves—and with the menacing strangeness of the weather in the Sunshine State. A vacationer who waits out a storm with a creepy shopkeeper; a grad student who becomes homeless; and an author who frets over her sons’ futures are just a few of the characters you’ll meet in this meditation on what Groff, who lives in Gainesville, calls a “reptilian, dangerous, teeming” state.

2. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh

A kind of Valley of the Dolls set in post-Y2K NYC, Moshfegh’s third novel follows a wealthy 20-something so tired of her lonely, vapid life, she opts for a year-long regimen of pills that will help her “drown out her thoughts.” But when her dosages intensify, our zonked heroine spirals down a darkly comic rabbit hole. Publisher’s Weekly calls her devolution, “challenging but undeniably fascinating, likely to incite strong reactions and much discussion among readers.”

3. French Exit, by Patrick DeWitt

What more could sophisticated bibliophiles want in a summer read than a “tragedy of manners”? Such is deWitt’s French Exit, which follows a wealthy widow from the Upper East Side and her emotionally stunted, adult son, as they flee New York City scandal (and impending bankruptcy) for the cultured sanctuary of gay Paree. Along the way, they meet a number of characters as bonkers as they are—a doctor who makes house calls accompanied by his wine merchant, and a terribly shy PI, for instance—and continue to self-destruct in entertaining fashion. From the mind that brought you the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted, The Sisters Brothers.

4. Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, by Edith Sheffer

With Asperger’s Children, historian Sheffer probes the life of the Austrian pediatrician after whom the autism syndrome is named. Far from a compassionate champion of all children, Asperger may have been complicit in Hitler’s genocidal crimes, Sheffer alleges, trying to “mold” the minds of certain autistic children, while sending others, those deemed “untreatable,” to death camps. Though focused on the career of one man, her nonfiction account is large in scope. Says the NYT: “[Sheffer] shows how the Third Reich’s obsession with categories and labels was inextricable from its murderousness; what at first seems to be a book about Dr. Hans Asperger and the children he treated ends up tracing the sprawling documentary record of a monstrous machine…”

5. Lost Empress, by Sergio de la Pava

Publisher’s Weekly calls de la Pava a “maximalist worldbuilder,” and his latest novel does indeed seem to warrant the praise. Set in Paterson, N.J., Lost Empress centers on Nina Gill, a football strategist whose current job is an insult to her gifts, and Nuno DeAngeles, an intelligent convict who manipulates his way from Rikers Island to the comparatively nicer Bellevue Hospital, where he conspires with his fellows to commit a crime. As the story progresses, we glimpse the lives of other Paterson locals, such as telephone operators, EMT’s and mascots, via such diverse texts as phone transcripts, prison handbooks and sermons, to name just a few. New Jersey may not smack of exoticism, but with his signature talents, de la Pava makes it a world all his own.

6. I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put my Faith in Beyoncé, by Michael Arceneaux

With biting humor and unabashed frankness, Arcenaux has written 17 essays about his life as a gay black man raised Catholic in the South. Topics include a childhood in which he prayed to Jesus to “cure” him of his homosexuality; his misadventures as a young professional trying to make it as a writer (including the limited and limiting topics editors would assign someone of his race and sexual orientation); and his misbegotten dating escapades, with men who infested his apartment with fleas, and who—the horror!—worked for Fox News. A must-read for people interested in a witty take on the issues of our day.

7. Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

Misunderstood geniuses and those who want to profit off them—primarily in the publishing world—are the subjects of this short story collection that has been garnering high praise. An author ditches a lunch meeting with an agent in favor of holding an imaginary conversation with a far more logical robot; a reclusive writer is menaced by the indefatigable industry players who want to publish his work; and a woman decides to go to bed with a man simply because she can’t summon the energy to refuse him… These are just a few of the characters and situations that will entertain and challenge you in DeWitt’s sparklingly intelligent stories.

8. The Good Son, by You Jeong-Jeong

This novel, the first from the writer who is popular in her native South Korea to be translated into English, is a gift for lovers of thrillers and crime stories. We open with our hero awakening to “the smell of blood.” From there, he, our law-student protagonist with a history of seizures, enters his kitchen to find his mother dead on the floor. He tries to remember what he did last night, but can recall little more than the fact he went for a run. Is it possible he killed his mother? The plot twists from there as readers must determine just how much they can reply upon their narrator.

9. Kudos, by Rachel Cusk

The final installment of Cusk’s masterful trilogy sees our writer protagonist, Faye, traveling through Europe to give a series of talks and interviews. As with the series’ previous two novels, Outline and Transit, Faye takes a backseat to the people she meets: Kudos is comprised of conversations and interviews with, as well as simply the monologues of, those she encounters on her journey. In form and structure, Kudos is another untraditional narrative from Cusk. It seems to illustrate the primacy, even as it deconstructs, the popular notion of, ‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves In Order to Live.’

10. This Mournable Body, by Tsitsi Dangarembga

The Zimbabwean protagonist of Dangarembga’s first novel, Nervous Conditions, has become a middle-aged woman tired of her dead-end job at an ad agency. After quitting, Tambudzai secures work as a biology teacher, all the while dreaming of the life she will one day lead. When her former boss offers her a glamorous-sounding job, she thinks her moment has arrived. But Dangarembga’s is no facile, make-you-feel-better-about-yourself fiction; Tambudzai suffers one blow to her fantasies after another until she must finally acknowledge the fact that her lived reality is nothing like her dreams. In addition to chronicling the journey of one remarkable character, This Mournable Body is a searing indictment of capitalism and post-colonialism.

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: anna storm

Your Winter Reader List: Upcoming Release and Timeless Classics Fit For the Season

February 26, 2019 By Erika Veurink Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Earlier evenings and lower temperatures combine for optimal reading weather. Tucked inside walk ups and brownstones, lining the snowy streets of Park Slope, are toppling bookshelves. They boast buzzy new novels with stunning covers, forgotten required reading from undergrad, and beloved favorites with turned in pages. Even the most seasoned of readers can feel the all too familiar uncertainty of what to read next. There’s nothing like the perfect recommendation to get you out of the decision slump. That’s where local bookstores come in. Chris Molnar from powerHouse Books (1111 8th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718-666-3049) or www.powerhouseon8th.com online) was happy to share his thoughts on what’s to come and where to begin your winter reading adventure. 

What new novels are you most excited about carrying this winter? 

I can’t wait for Tessa Hadley’s Late In The Day. In my opinion she’s without peer in the New Yorker-approved mainstream of literary fiction. Her short stories have always been marvels of concision, depth, and atmosphere, but lately has her longer work gotten just as good.  With a book club ready plot (two couples that are old friends; one dies and secrets emerge) and coming off 2015’s career-best The Past, I think this has the potential to be a real breakout for her. 

Darius James’ Negrophobia isn’t technically new, but the upcoming NYRB re-release will be a high profile event, reintroducing a brilliant satire on racism that casts a long shadow over everything from The Sellout to Atlanta to Sorry to Bother You.

Are there new authors you think would have special appeal to the Brooklyn reader?

Like a garage rock revival band, Andrew Martin’s debut novel Early Work is a book out of time, a total throwback despite all the current references to Kanye West or Only Lovers Left Alive.  The obvious heir to Philip Roth or David Gates and their cosmopolitan antiheroes, not to mention dishy literary world rom-coms like The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., it’s the kind of book that used to be omnipresent in Brooklyn, but which now has the field to itself.  It is so blithely against the topical trend that it somehow feels bold despite being a breezy, almost guilty pleasure.  Not to mention that beautiful, Balthus-featuring, Rodrigo Corral-designed cover.

Classically, is there a type of novel you find Park Slope residents are drawn to? An all-time favorite author of the neighborhood?

Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and Knausgaard’s My Struggle series are both standards, and it makes sense – their mix of epic sweep and quotidian warmth is perfect for such an iconic yet family-oriented neighborhood.  It’s no contest, though; the all-time favorite is Haruki Murakami.  No matter the month, he’s always in the top ten bestselling authors here.  I’m not completely sure why that is, but I can definitely see something about those vanishing cats and women fitting in perfectly with the neighborhood, the mystery you feel looking down a row of beautiful, secretive brownstones at dusk.

 Along with new novels, are there any classics you can recommend readers revisit in the winter months?

You can never go wrong with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.  It’s so short that you can read it in one sitting, but his mastery of late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century American history is so complete that you feel transported to another time, the action so liquid, so organically strange, so true-to-life in a way that historical fiction rarely is.

Between that and Robert Caro’s riveting (and much, much longer) biography of master builder Robert Moses, The Power Broker, you can pretty much get a full curriculum in the development of America’s wilds, even if it’s just through the eyes of a fictional character and an unelected parks official.

For more recommendations, stop in the store and say hello, tell them the Reader sent you. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your  literary inclined friends. I’m excited for The Au Pair, a debut by Emma Rous and The Care and Feeding of of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray. Perennial winter favorites I find myself returning to include Fates and Furies by Lauren Gross and Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard.

Lastly, don’t forget to check Instagram or as the book inclined community using the app refers to it as, #bookstagram. Follow @powerhouseon8th for booksellers’ most recent loves.

Art by Heather Heckel

 

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Summer Reading

July 20, 2018 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Park Slope Reading

“Whether you’re looking for a fun beach read or a serious tome that’ll keep your mind sharp in the heat, we’ve got you covered with 10 of summer’s hottest books.” 

1. Florida, by Lauren Groff

This collection of short stories from the acclaimed author of Fates and Furies is a dark dive into the minds of people struggling with themselves—and with the menacing strangeness of the weather in the Sunshine State. A vacationer who waits out a storm with a creepy shopkeeper; a grad student who becomes homeless; and an author who frets over her sons’ futures are just a few of the characters you’ll meet in this meditation on what Groff, who lives in Gainesville, calls a “reptilian, dangerous, teeming” state.

2. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh

A kind of Valley of the Dolls set in post-Y2K NYC, Moshfegh’s third novel follows a wealthy 20-something so tired of her lonely, vapid life, she opts for a year-long regimen of pills that will help her “drown out her thoughts.” But when her dosages intensify, our zonked heroine spirals down a darkly comic rabbit hole. Publisher’s Weekly calls her devolution, “challenging but undeniably fascinating, likely to incite strong reactions and much discussion among readers.”

3. French Exit, by Patrick deWitt

What more could sophisticated bibliophiles want in a summer read than a “tragedy of manners”? Such is deWitt’s French Exit, which follows a wealthy widow from the Upper East Side and her emotionally stunted, adult son, as they flee New York City scandal (and impending bankruptcy) for the cultured sanctuary of gay Paree. Along the way, they meet a number of characters as bonkers as they are—a doctor who makes house calls accompanied by his wine merchant, and a terribly shy PI, for instance—and continue to self-destruct in entertaining fashion. From the mind that brought you the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted, The Sisters Brothers.

4. Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, by Edith Sheffer

With Asperger’s Children, historian Sheffer probes the life of the Austrian pediatrician after whom the autism syndrome is named. Far from a compassionate champion of all children, Asperger may have been complicit in Hitler’s genocidal crimes, Sheffer alleges, trying to “mold” the minds of certain autistic children, while sending others, those deemed “untreatable,” to death camps. Though focused on the career of one man, her nonfiction account is large in scope. Says the NYT: “[Sheffer] shows how the Third Reich’s obsession with categories and labels was inextricable from its murderousness; what at first seems to be a book about Dr. Hans Asperger and the children he treated ends up tracing the sprawling documentary record of a monstrous machine…”

5. Lost Empress, by Sergio de la Pava

Publisher’s Weekly calls de la Pava a “maximalist worldbuilder,” and his latest novel does indeed seem to warrant the praise. Set in Paterson, N.J., Lost Empress centers on Nina Gill, a football strategist whose current job is an insult to her gifts, and Nuno DeAngeles, an intelligent convict who manipulates his way from Rikers Island to the comparatively nicer Bellevue Hospital, where he conspires with his fellows to commit a crime. As the story progresses, we glimpse the lives of other Paterson locals, such as telephone operators, EMT’s and mascots, via such diverse texts as phone transcripts, prison handbooks and sermons, to name just a few. New Jersey may not smack of exoticism, but with his signature talents, de la Pava makes it a world all his own.

6. I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put my Faith in Beyoncé, by Michael Arceneaux

With biting humor and unabashed frankness, Arcenaux has written 17 essays about his life as a gay black man raised Catholic in the South. Topics include a childhood in which he prayed to Jesus to “cure” him of his homosexuality; his misadventures as a young professional trying to make it as a writer (including the limited and limiting topics editors would assign someone of his race and sexual orientation); and his misbegotten dating escapades, with men who infested his apartment with fleas, and who—the horror!—worked for Fox News. A must-read for people interested in a witty take on the issues of our day.

7. Some Trick, by Helen DeWitt

Misunderstood geniuses and those who want to profit off them—primarily in the publishing world—are the subjects of this short story collection that has been garnering high praise. An author ditches a lunch meeting with an agent in favor of holding an imaginary conversation with a far more logical robot; a reclusive writer is menaced by the indefatigable industry players who want to publish his work; and a woman decides to go to bed with a man simply because she can’t summon the energy to refuse him… These are just a few of the characters and situations that will entertain and challenge you in DeWitt’s sparklingly intelligent stories.

8. The Good Son, by You Jeong-Jeong

This novel, the first from the writer who is popular in her native South Korea to be translated into English, is a gift for lovers of thrillers and crime stories. We open with our hero awakening to “the smell of blood.” From there, he, our law-student protagonist with a history of seizures, enters his kitchen to find his mother dead on the floor. He tries to remember what he did last night, but can recall little more than the fact he went for a run. Is it possible he killed his mother? The plot twists from there as readers must determine just how much they can reply upon their narrator.

9. Kudos, by Rachel Cusk

The final installment of Cusk’s masterful trilogy sees our writer protagonist, Faye, traveling through Europe to give a series of talks and interviews. As with the series’ previous two novels, Outline and Transit, Faye takes a backseat to the people she meets: Kudos is comprised of conversations and interviews with, as well as simply the monologues of, those she encounters on her journey. In form and structure, Kudos is another untraditional narrative from Cusk. It seems to illustrate the primacy, even as it deconstructs, the popular notion of, ‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves In Order to Live.’

10. This Mournable Body, by Tsitsi Dangarembga

The Zimbabwean protagonist of Dangarembga’s first novel, Nervous Conditions, has become a middle-aged woman tired of her dead-end job at an ad agency. After quitting, Tambudzai secures work as a biology teacher, all the while dreaming of the life she will one day lead. When her former boss offers her a glamorous-sounding job, she thinks her moment has arrived. But Dangarembga’s is no facile, make-you-feel-better-about-yourself fiction; Tambudzai suffers one blow to her fantasies after another, until she must finally acknowledge the fact that her lived reality is nothing like her dreams. In addition to chronicling the journey of one remarkable character, This Mournable Body is a searing indictment of capitalism and post-colonialism.

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading

Mark Nepo: We Are They

July 18, 2018 By Mark Nepo Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: mark nepo

I was waiting in front of my hotel to be shuttled to the airport, when the early sun revealed a block-long line of homeless souls waiting for food. The light illuminated our closeness, our interchangeable fate, and our kinship. Just then, the Ethiopian bellman, who insisted on loading my bags, began telling me about his three-year-old son who was imitating everything he saw his parents do. The early light spilled on our faces as this elegant man, in his adopted culture’s uniform, said, “We’re careful now what we say and do. He watches and copies everything.” 

I looked to the weary waiting in line and realized that we all must be careful of what we say and do. For the gifts and cruelty of one culture are watched and copied into the next, one kindness and harshness at a time. The human experiment depends on what we model and what we imitate from generation to generation. So how do we model care? How do we imitate integrity? How do we acknowledge our kinship? How do we learn to animate our gifts so we can feed each other? Every society begins anew while extending the lineage of community throughout the ages.

A recent issue of Time magazine reported that if all the uprooted individuals… around the world were to form their own country, they would make up the world’s 29th most populous nation, as big as South Korea.

What keeps us from caring for each other? What keeps us from pretending that the world’s twenty-ninth largest population doesn’t exist? Is it our fear that we could so easily be them? Is it our fear that if we give to them, we’ll drown in their despair? Is it our fear that if we give to those in need, we won’t have enough for ourselves and our families? These questions have stirred and thwarted communities and civilizations throughout history. And each generation, each nation, each neighborhood and family, gets to wrestle with these questions freshly. Including us.

It seems the need to reanimate a true sense of community is more important than ever. Under all our differences, our capacity to behold, hold, and repair what we have in common is part of a lineage that goes back to prehistoric clans that survived the elements by caring for each other. We need to recover and extend that lineage of care. I hope this book is a contribution to the reawakening of our common humanity and our common capacity.

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, six years after World War II, after the defeat of Hitler and fascism, six years after the Holocaust, in which some of my family perished. As a child, I was frightened by images of the atomic bomb’s obliteration of Hiroshima. In grade school, we practiced hiding under our desks, as if that would keep us from being incinerated. I came of age in the sixties, part of a hopeful generation who questioned the war in Vietnam. I later saw the Berlin Wall come down, and, in time, witnessed the first African-American president sworn in on the steps of a White House built by slaves. During my lifetime, there has been a slow, steady awakening of community that has upheld America as the land of the free. Through all this, I have grown to understand that, different as we are in what we believe, there is no they. We are they. 

And so, I try to stay true to what I know while listening to the opposite views of others. Listening this way, I’ve come to see that the underpinnings of our current divisions as a nation fall below politics, below Democrat or Republican. More and more citizens are losing themselves in a world built on fear and hate, where tolerance for difference is tissue paper thin, and their understanding of security is based on striking out against others. 

As I witness the racism, sexism, xenophobia, and unprocessed anger that is being unleashed, I fear that our isolation and self-interest, as a government and a people, have poked and stirred the darker angels of our nature. Now, we are forced to take our turn in facing the ever-present challenge: to give in to fear or to empower each other to be brave enough to love, brave enough to discover and accept that we are each other.

For no matter where we come from, no matter how we got here, we all yearn to be seen, heard, and respected. I believe that, under all our fear and brutal trespass, we are innately kind and of the same humanity. Under what divides us, we all long to belong and to be understood. We are they, despite the terrible violence that surfaces between us. And all our gifts are needed to stitch and weave the tapestry of freedom.

From the history of our interactions, we can try to understand what we’ve learned as a human family. Often, we only look to confirm what we already know, but when we can acknowledge what is true or broken, we can engage others, soul to soul. We can put down our arrogance and admit that we’re on the same journey. Then our questions about life create connections. No matter what anyone tells you, we don’t ask questions for answers, but for the relationships they open between us. And when we can admit to all that we don’t know, we begin the weave of community, by keeping what matters visible a little while longer.

But today, I am afraid that the noise of hate is drowning out the resilience of love. I fear that we are tripping into a dark age. And like the medieval monks who kept literacy alive during the Dark Ages in Europe, we are challenged to commit to a life of care and to keep the literacy of the heart alive. 

Now, all the things we have in common, all the endeavors of respect that we treasure, all the ways that we find strength in our kindness—all our efforts of heart—matter now more than ever. We are at a basic crossroads between deepening the decency that comes from caring for each other and spreading the contagion of making anyone who is different into an enemy. And, as history has shown through crusades, genocides, and world wars, if we don’t recognize ourselves in each other, we will consume each other.

We must remain open and steadfast in the face of fear and violence. We must never make a principle of the pains and losses that darken our hearts. And we must keep voicing the truth of human decency, no matter the brutalities that try to quiet us. Without this commitment to truth and to caring for others, we will become heartless and lost. 

Most of all, we must pick each other up when we are heavy with despair. For the sun doesn’t stop shining because some of us are blind. Nor will the grace of democracy vanish because some of us are afraid to be in the world and react violently out of that fear. 

Still, we are they. And the timeless choice between love and fear, as individuals and as a nation, is not a choice of policy. It is the choice of decency that keeps us human. In the face of the disturbances stirred up by fear, I implore you to be kind and truthful, to be a lantern in the dark, and to call out prejudice wherever you see it. In addition to whatever ways each of us is called to gather, participate, legislate, or protest, I implore you to never stop watering the seeds of human decency.

I implore you to stay devoted to the proposition that, when filled with love, we can work as angels here on Earth, using our caring hands as wings. 

*  *  *

Excerpted from Mark Nepo’s new book, More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in Our World (Atria Book, July 2018).

As a companion to the book, readers are invited to explore an online community guide so you can gather with others to share your own stories of community and strengthen your ties with others. The guide is available online or as a download. 

Video for More Together Than Alone

 

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: mark nepo

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