Love, Dating and Other Disasters

I read "The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance" for two reasons: 1) when going through the Penguin Fall 2009 catalog, it intrigued me when I found out the local Mormon bookstores weren't ordering copies, and 2) I was given an advanced reading copy.

I'm normally opposed to reading "memoirs" by people who haven't passed the age of 30 (have you really done enough to make me want to read about your life?), but because of the description in the catalog and on the book cover, it sounded intriguing- so I dove in, finishing the book in just a couple of days.

Elna Baker is a young LDS (Mormon) woman living in New York who has an internal war taking place between head and heart. Being Mormon means no drinking alcohol or engaging in pre-marital sex, among other things, and this seems to conflict with most of the non-Mormon men she attempts to date. As Elna relates, her longest relationship lasted a month and that was because the guy was out of town for two weeks. Her search for love and acceptance leads her to fall for the most unlikely of men- an atheist. A man who seems to be the exact opposite of a practicing Mormon, yet one who seems to be everything she wants in a potential husband. Can she make it work?

"The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance" is a funny story of how a young Mormon woman navigates dating, love and other disasters. While an engaging read, some parts of the book slow down, due not to story, but to the occasional awkwardness of Baker's writing style. When dealing with Mormon issues and doctrines that play a role in her story, Baker does a satisfactory job of explaining her religion to non-Mormons, but a few statements on Mormonism aren't explained well, and would only be fully understood by a member of the LDS faith. Conversely, there will be many practicing members of the LDS faith that will be offended by some of the language Baker uses as well as some of her feelings about, descriptions of, and encounters with sexual situations.

A book that made me laugh out loud and question my own beliefs and doubts about God and religion, "The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance" will find a niche, both inside and outside Mormonism, among those who enjoy a quest for self and a good laugh along the way.

"The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance" is available to order from our online affiliate Powell's, or by coming into the Bookmark at the U.

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Pieces of Me | Guest Blogger Mattox Roesch

Note: Occasionally we invite authors to write a blog post on any topic they choose. This post is being written by Mattox Roesch, author of "Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same" his debut novel. I am excited to have Mattox sharing his thoughts on how writing is affected by our own lives. -Drew Goodman

“Fiction’s about what it means to be a fucking human being.” –David Foster Wallace

At the same time my good friend was sentenced to three years in a penitentiary, I moved off the North American road system, to Unalakleet, AK. This is similar to the plight of the narrator in my novel Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same, and yet, I hardly made the personal connection when writing it. I thought I was writing the book to better understand the humanity behind imprisonment—how it affects the inmate and his/her family. And I was. But recently, while flipping the pages to find something to read at upcoming events, I saw another reason for writing the novel. I think I was trying to save my friend, using a pen instead of a megaphone. And by leaving Minneapolis I felt like I failed him.

Angela Y. Davis, in her book Are Prisons Obsolete? argues that “Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison.” It’s important that we question everything, (right?) politically and socially, including prisons. But how often do you hear a guy on the street corner with a megaphone yelling “Close the prisons!”? It seems we generally don’t question things until they are personal. I didn’t question prisons until I was passing my ID through a slot and walking through magnetically sealed doors and sitting at a booth to talk to the same person I had shared nachos with a few weeks earlier. We see this every day. We see authors write the same memoir over and over, and authors write the same characters over and over. And then I wondered if I was doing the same. Was I only expressing an interest in issues that I had experienced firsthand? It seemed to be the case with my novel. Prison, personal. Spirituality, personal. Mental illness, personal. Rural Alaska, personal.

But when I think about it, I hope that’s not the case. I don’t think it is. Not for most of us, anyway. Of course nobody is perfectly compassionate, but many of us have baked bread for a friend who lost her job, or driven an extra hour to give a family member a ride, or threw in fifty bucks to a local youth group fundraiser. Even if we had never lost a job or waited for a bus or went to church, we felt empathy for those who had.

And I look at some of the best-selling contemporary novels lined up on my bookshelf—Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich, What is the What by Dave Eggers, Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. These all, in a way, personalized an issue or two for me that I hadn’t experienced. These novels, in a way, changed my life. So maybe the easy answer is that stories, explicitly and implicitly, transform the personal into the communal.

So by writing about an ex-gangbanger whose older brother is locked up for life, maybe I was, on some level, trying to save my friend. And sure, maybe I was trying to convince the reader to care. But I didn’t write the story with the same motivation that I have for reading stories. I wrote the novel to convince myself to care, over and over, edit after edit. I wrote it to feel this life more fully. I wrote it, standing in front of a mirror with a megaphone, paraphrasing David Foster Wallace, “This is what it’s like to be a fucking human being.”

"Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same" by Mattox Roesch is available at the Bookmark at the U and at our online fulfillment partner, Powell's Books, and wherever great books are sold.

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September 2009 Book of the Month

I little while back, I wrote a post about my favorite independent publishing house, Unbridled Books. They consistently publish great authors with well written books, and the Book of the Month for September 2009, "Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same," by Mattox Roesch, is no exception.

Cesar, the teen gang-banger from Los Angeles, watched his older brother, Wicho, go to prison for his gang activities. Cesar's mother, determined to keep him from the same fate, moves herself and Cesar back to her native village in western Alaska. The only thing that the pessimistically minded Cesar wants is to do is get back to LA, but, Go-boy, his older, overly optimistic cousin bets that Cesar won't go back.

How these two cousins affect each other, and how their surroundings affect both of them is the basis of this wonderfully told story of life in a small village where everyone knows who you are and what you do. Infused with doses of melancholy and humor, "Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same" is a touching novel of how we are often more alike in our wants, needs and feelings than we really like to admit to ourselves and others.

"Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same" by Mattox Roesch is available at the University Campus Store or through our online fulfillment partner, Powell's Books.

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Well Written, But, Kind of Boring

The other day I sent a message out to the world on Twitter that said, “Major author + really good writing, but = somewhat boring story. I almost feel like I wasted a few days of my life reading the book.” That of course, brought a number of responses from my Twitter followers. Some wanted to know who I was talking about, others tried to guess, and one bookseller hit it right on the head on his first guess. At that point, I felt like I had to come clean; to admit to everyone who I was talking about. I also felt like I was committing bookseller blasphemy.

The author is E. L. Doctorow and the book I was talking about is his newest novel, “Homer & Langley.”

Before I go further, let me just say a couple of things. I like Doctorow. I mean, I really like him. I was introduced to writing fiction in high school by being told to read “World’s Fair” and learn to write emulating him. “Billy Bathgate” was incredible. Doctorow easily has more awards for his writing than I have years in my life. I would love the chance to meet him one day. But, while immaculately written, “Homer & Langley” was not my favorite Doctorow novel. Why?

“Homer & Langley” is a fictional biography of the infamous New York City Collyer brothers who, while living in a mansion on Fifth Avenue, became the poster boys for pack-rats worldwide. They were born in the 1880‘s and died in 1947. Doctorow changed their timeline, moving them forward into the twentieth century so they could experience all the great events from World War I to the Vietnam War and the moon landing. While an interesting story to have two recluses experience the major events and watersheds of twentieth century United States from inside their mansion, the story also seemed a little contrived, kind of like Forrest Gump becoming inadvertently involved in most of the major political and cultural events of his lifetime.

While excellently written (Doctorow is incapable of writing a poor sentence), the story itself did not envelop me, pull me along and make me want to turn the page before I had finished reading the one I was on. The best episode of the entire story, where Homer and Langley are forced to house a wounded gangster, falls in the middle of the book.

If you are a Doctorow fan, “Homer & Langley” is a book worth reading, but I don’t expect this new novel to win new fans for this traditionally amazing author.

"Homer & Langley" by E. L. Doctorow, available September 1, 2009, is available for purchase by coming into the Bookmark at the U or by ordering from our online partner, Powell's.

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You Can Go Home Again | Guest Post by Emily St. John Mandel

Note: Occasionally we invite authors to write a blog post on any topic they choose. This post is being written by Emily St. John Mandel, author of "Last Night In Montreal," her debut novel. I am personally very pleased to have Emily sharing her thoughts on reading with us. -Drew Goodman

I’ve been thinking a lot about reading lately. Books are a passion only recently rediscovered; I’m trying my best to make up for lost time, but I haven’t read very many books over the past decade or so. As a child I read novels constantly, and I’m not sure exactly how or when I fell out of the habit. It may have been around the time I left home—I moved across the continent at eighteen with only the belongings I could carry with me on the airplane, and the books I brought from British Columbia were only the small handful I absolutely couldn’t live without.

In the years after my airplane landed in Toronto I spent hours reading literary journals at the library, but mostly I’d become a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines. I developed an adoration for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker and I didn’t read books very often, although after a few years I found that I was trying to write one.

It’s been exactly twelve months since I sold my first novel. I think it’s really only been over the course this hectic and delightful past year that I’ve remembered how much books mean to me, and how soothing it is to find yourself in a room filled with them, and how perfectly a good book can transport you elsewhere. I’m not sure how I forgot these things.

I see people reading everywhere in my city, on benches during their lunch hours and on the trains to and from work. It’s partly a question of refuge: in a city as crowded as New York, books and headphones are our only privacy. In other places people commute alone in their cars; but packed into a subway car with a hundred strangers, the only way to be alone is to disappear into music or narrative.

But questions of escape aside, I’ve been thinking lately about the way the experience of reading a book over a number of days provides us with a certain continuity, a narrative thread that binds our days and our weeks. Like most writers, I lead a double life, and these two lives are entirely separate. There’s the day job: I do the filing and stare at spreadsheets and count down the hours to the end of the afternoon, and then I go home and attend to an entirely other, considerably more vivid life, a life that involves writing novels and approving copy edits and talking to booksellers and fielding interview requests.

My working and writing lives couldn’t possibly be more different, and it occurred to me recently that reading is the only bridge between them. The same book carries me from the morning commute to the calm hours of the late evening, the joys and responsibilities of the double life set aside for the day.

"Last Night in Montreal" by Emily St. John Mandel is available at the Bookmark at the U and at our online fulfillment partner, Powell's Books, and wherever great books are sold.

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The August 2009 Book of the Month

Our selection for the August 2009 Book of the Month is "The Meaning of Night" by Michael Cox. Recently, I was saddened to learn of Cox's death earlier this year, so I decided to make this the book of the month selection

The Meaning of Night is a fabulously written, historical mystery set in Victorian England, infused with life by a cadre of characters that inhabit its pages. The protagonist, Edward Glyver, a man undone by an event from his early childhood, feels the only way to reacquire what is rightfully his is to exact revenge on the man he blames for everything gone wrong in his life- Phoebus Daunt. But, what seems to be a straight-forward story of retribution and revenge takes turns both dark and twisted, ultimately revealing an outcome that leaves the reader surprised and satisfied in a morbidly curious way.

This is one of my top ten all time reads, and a must for mystery lovers.

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The July 2009 Book of the Month

Stieg Larsson finished a trilogy of books that he claimed he really wrote for his own pleasure. Shortly after finishing the "Millennium Trilogy," Larsson died. The first book of the trilogy, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was published posthumously to great international acclaim and success.



The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines a murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pieced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

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