P R OC R A S TIN ATOR’S GIF T GUIDE
HIT THE BOOKS
Find these 2014 titles for your favorite bookworm
Do Not Sell At Any Price:
The Wild Obsessive Hunt for the World’s
Rarest 78RPM Records
BY AMANDA PETRUSICH. SCRIBNER, $18.95.
Do Not Sell At Any Price
is an engaging, well-paced
peek into the world of buying,
selling and coveting rare 78-
RPM records. (SPOILER
ALERT: Did you know one
of the world’s leading dealers
of 78s lives just down the
road from Eugene in Grants
Pass?)
The 78 was a short-lived
format from the dawn of the
recording industry. Some
audiophile purists — such as
belovedly eccentric cartoonist Robert Crumb and famous
music anthologist Harry Smith — contend the 78 is the
very best format of all. Country blues recordings on 78
from the early part of the 20th century are some of the
most rare, sought-after and valuable items in the history of
recorded sound.
Alongside plenty of music-nerd-a-philia and Antiques
Roadshow-style fetishism (Petrusich dives to the bottom
of the Milwaukie River in search of fabled 78 masters), Do
Not Sell examines the psyche of the collector and the allure
of objects in our digital and disposable modern world.
Petrusich
writes,
“‘I
have
a
recurring
dream about finding Skip James’s “Devil Got My Woman,”’
Heneghan said, leaning in, his voice low and solemn.”
It’s this intensity that Petrusich (herself an obvious music
lover) seeks to understand.
In a world where music can be (virtually) free, here’s a
chance to travel back to a time when recorded sound was
king and meet a motley bunch of big-hearted and obsessive
romantics, hell-bent on preserving what they can before it’s
too late. — William Kennedy
To my relief, Twelve Days skillfully explores all of our
lovely state, from east to west and north to south.
The picture book, with colorful illustrations by Carolyn
Conahan, tells its story through letters from Damon, who is
visiting family in Oregon and writing to his parents about
all the sights and sounds he’s experiencing. Among other
locales, Damon visits Multnomah Falls, Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge in far Eastern Oregon, Mount Bachelor near
Bend and Sea Lion Caves along the coast. And, of course,
it’s Christmas-themed, so each stop represents another verse
to the song: four thundereggs (Oregon’s state rock), seven
gray wolves howling, 10 Portland food carts, etc.
The book is adorable, and sure to delight young
Oregonians everywhere. — Amy Schneider
I’m a sucker for a dog book, but Lessons in Balance
is not just a dog book, it’s pictures of a patient, soulful
pitbull balancing things on his head accompanied by
pithy wisdom. Scout takes balancing things on his square,
blocky head very seriously, crossing his brown eyes in
concentration. “Nothing else matters to him at that moment;
his concentration is unbreakable,” his dog mom Jen Gillen
writes. It’s a perfect little book for the owner of a rescue
dog (as Scout is) or any dog lover. — Camilla Mortensen
Bending Adversity:
Japan and the Art of Survival
BY DAVID PILLING. PENGUIN PRESS $29.95.
Having grown up in southern Oregon, I’m more attached
to Crater Lake and the Oregon Caves than Mt. Hood and
the Columbia Gorge. To each their own. When I picked up
The Twelve Days of Christmas in Oregon, I had one fear:
that northern Oregon would dominate the book, leaving
poor children thinking Oregon consists only of Portland
and its surrounding areas.
BY LEZLEE BROWN HALPER & STEFAN HALPER. OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS, $29.95.
This book focuses on the political maneuverings of
China and surrounding great powers after World War II. At
a quick 254 pages, it does a zippy job of presenting how the
West first gained interest in Tibet, with the U.S. eventually
using it (however briefly) as a pawn in the Cold War games
with China, India and Pakistan.
An inclusion I found most fascinating was secret CIA
operations training Tibetans to organize resistance, which
only lasted while China was deemed a threat, before
Kissinger, Nixon and Bush decided to let down the golden-
plastic, capitalist curtain and meet with Mao, accepting the
PRC as an official political entity.
The book speeds to modern day where the 2008 riots are
quickly glossed over, ending with the current count of self-
immolations by young Tibetan monks in protest.
This is a book for those who like reading detailed
history over popular non-fiction. There is no spoon-fed
moral, as much as an illustration of how Tibet has remained
an occasional focal point in the shifting, hot-lava floor
of international politics. It juxtaposes the fetishization
of an exotic culture against the misfortune of being
geographically and strategically bound between cultures
uninterested in or incapable of living peacefully. — Paul
Quillen
BY JANDY NELSON. DIAL BOOKS, $17.99.
BY SCOUT (STAR OF STUFF ON SCOUT’S HEAD).
RUNNING PRESS, $13.95.
BY SUSAN BLACKABY. STERLING CHILDREN’S BOOKS,
$12.95.
Tibet: An Unfinished Story
I’ll Give You the Sun
Lessons in Balance:
A Dog’s Reflections on Life
The Twelve Days of Christmas in Oregon
cache or analyzing their birth rates.
He certainly recites standard Western-style economic
dictates and does some dithering in acknowledging the
opaque nature of economic oracular activity, but Pilling
retains an honorable respect for Japan, keeping his eyes
open to the unpredictability of historical motion, respecting
the near impossibility of easily defining a populous
nation by trying to draw simple, straight lines through its
multifarious nature.
By book’s end he’s focused mostly on recent Japanese
politics and history. His respect for complexity makes this
an interesting book, and I will hazard the claim that this is
a worthwhile read for anyone interested in Japan. — Paul
Quillen
Japan remains a mysterious place to many, despite a
growing acquaintance with its culture and an ever-growing
list of appropriated products, food, literature, movies and
practices like Tabata and, of course, martial arts forms.
This books feeds on and is fed by this growing, more-or-
less, mainstream passion for all things Japanese.
The book recites many of the cliché anecdotes regarding
Japan’s culture and history as most books written on
the topic by a Westerner will, but Pilling toys with the
anathema notion that nations cannot be quickly defined and
understood by noting their GDP, registering their weapons
Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give
You the Sun tells the story of
Noah and Jude, artistic twins
who are as close as close can
be. Until they’re not. And then
they are again.
Stylistically
written,
Nelson’s YA novel switches
back and forth between
storylines, offering readers
differing perspectives on one
family’s tragic events. The
early years, when the twins are
13, are Noah’s to tell. Socially
awkward, and constantly drawing, Noah strives to win the
affection of his art-critic mother by getting into the CSA,
a highly selective fine-arts high school Mom wants both
twins to attend. But three years later, much has changed:
A car accident has taken their mother’s life, Noah has
abandoned his art and is wrestling with his sexual identity,
and the formerly wild-child Jude has become convinced
her grandmother and mother are haunting her.
These later years are Jude’s to narrate, and as she
seeks the mentorship of a renowned stone sculptor, Jude
begins piecing together the real reasons she and Noah
have drifted so far apart. While the novel’s multiple love
stories (everyone seems to be falling helplessly in love with
someone they shouldn’t be) are a bit heavy-handed and
cliché, Nelson’s ability to authentically portray complex
sibling relationships — as well as her ability to show how
what we think we know is rarely how things actually are
— makes I’ll Give You the Sun a colorful and memorable
read. — Eliot Treichel
eugeneweekly.com • December 18, 2014
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