Kathy Gunst Event

Kathy Gunst, "Resident Chef" for WBUR's Here and Now, and author of Notes from a Maine Kitchen, will be at Porter Square Books on April 11th at 7 p.m. to read and sign books. Here she tells us a little bit about her new book:

"Notes from a Maine Kitchen is my love letter to Maine. It's a collection of essays and recipes that follow the calender year, starting in January with smelt fishing and stews, moving to April and foraging for wild ramps, on to garden season, everything you've ever wanted to know about lobster, and mushroom hunting in the fall. The essays tell stories of what it is really like to be in Maine--cook here, garden here, forage, and live here year-round, not just during tourist season. I've spent the past four months since the book was published last October doing book signings, cooking classes and demos, and I've been thrilled to discover that the interest and passion for my adopted state is huge--from New York to Oregon to Seattle to northern California.

I grew up in New York and the question I am asked most frequently is "How did you end up in Maine?" I left my job at Food and Wine magazine and moved here in the early 80's with my boyfriend, John, who later became my husband in a backyard clam bake wedding. As I tell it in the introduction to Notes from a Maine Kitchen, "We had decided to spend a year in Maine. I would write my first cookbook and John would work as a radio reporter. I remember thinking: Oh, a whole year in Maine! Like a year in Provence, or Tuscany, or Paris. It would be our little adventure, a year away, a time to experience New England.

That first cold winter we would wake up each morning and struggle to light a fire in the wood stove (New York City doesn’t provide much training for properly lighting wood stoves.) As the cast iron began to heat up and we watched the snow drifts outside, we would often ask each other, “What are we doing here?” And every time we had one of those “Wow-we-made-a-BIG-mistake-moving-to-Maine-in-the-dead-of-winter” days we would go out and buy lobster. When all else failed, it was lobster that kept us going. Lobster equals Maine and lobsters were a known entity. They were delicious and made us feel so much better about being here. We would buy the largest lobsters we could afford, and marvel at how cheap they were (in those days they really were cheap, particularly in comparison to New York City prices) and steam them and dip the meat into butter and between mouthfuls say to each other, “This is why we moved to Maine.” And for a short while, with bellies full of sweet, briny lobster meat, we were just fine. But it got dark at four in the afternoon and temperatures dropped to near zero, and the holidays crept up with our families hundreds of miles away, and again we asked ourselves: “What in hell have we done?”

Come see me on April 11th at 7 p.m. and hear more. I may even bring a few goodies to sample. Hope to see you there!"
-----Kathy Gunst

Interview with Joshua Mohr

Joshua Mohr is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle bestselling novel Some Things That Meant the World to Me and Termite Parade, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. His latest novel, Damascus, is about art, protest, war, and more. The tension between fate and responsibility. A bartender with a birthmark that looks like Hitler’s mustache who buys a Santa Costume from a homeless man. A man with terminal cancer hiding his decline from his family. Mohr’s novel whorls around a dive bar in the mission district of San Francisco that hosts a controversial art show, brushes elbows with and sometimes plows right through many of the major questions and themes in contemporary American culture.

The climatic conflict of Damascus involves an art show with a very powerful, very pungent anti-war statement. Are there any topics that art should not explore or statements art is not allowed to make or not capable of making? Can art stop war?

I think art can teach empathy. It forces the reader to occupy different mindsets, different moral codes, varied sets of perceptions. So from that perspective, hopefully art can force us to examine our own beliefs. But in terms of stopping war, I doubt it. We seem to be too stupid to learn from most of our geopolitical mistakes. If Damascus is an anti-war book, it works similarly to Casablanca: the war is the backdrop, the setting, yet the story is all about the characters—the existential struggles that we all face each day.

At one point, a character is forced to choose between destroying art and being bodily mutilated. Is art worth bodily mutilation? Is art worth dying for?

I wouldn’t die for my art. Yet for the sake of the book, I pushed the metaphor to the ultimate extreme: what about yourself are you willing to sacrifice for your artistic values? I love questions that don’t have answers. Hopefully, devices like this involve the reader more deeply, as he/she stakes out his side of the argument. The reader emotionally invests in the character’s dilemma and thus becomes a part of the story himself.

In Damascus, the sources of many of the characters’ problems are beyond the characters’ control. One character has a birthmark that looks like Hitler’s mustache, can’t grow a real one, and can’t afford surgery to get it removed. Another has terminal cancer. Literature and fiction tend to shy away from the forces characters can do nothing about. How should literature and art confront and explore the problems we can’t solve? Should we tell stories where some things don’t change? Why or why not?

I think it was Milan Kundera who very poignantly said that a novel shouldn’t concern itself with answers: it should solely focus on posing the questions. The reader gets to populate her own set of answers. And in the case of Damascus, I cover a lot of very tough, very uncomfortable questions, varying from alcoholism to war to self-esteem battles to cancer. Different readers are going to have wildly different interpretations of the book.

Speaking of the cancer thread, the cancer patient in the novel, No Eyebrows, is based loosely on my father. He died about ten years ago from stage-four lung cancer. Writing about this topic was catharsis for me, deeply purging. So many people have lost loved ones to cancer that I hope the storyline appeals to a lot of them. Plenty of things happen in our lives that don’t make sense: what are we supposed to do with those pummeling confusions?

One of the primary motivators for the characters in the book is shame. Literature doesn’t usually look at shame in this way, but can shame be a positive or productive emotion?

I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic so shame is something I know a lot about. I did many things I’m not proud of. It’s a big part of my writing because shame is honest. Shame is the examination of action. It’s mostly expressed within our thought processes, how we talk to ourselves when nobody else can hear. In a novel, however, the reader can hear these thoughts, as they just so happen to be the voyeur peeking inside the character’s skull. Going back to what I said earlier about empathy, that’s my ultimate goal as an artist: to make a reader care about somebody they might typically disregard or discard. Letting the reader be privy to rationalizations or the shame that tumbles around our psyches goes a long way to building camaraderie between reader and main character.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is how you play with the symbols of “Hitler” and “Santa Claus.” Given how much they’re used, especially Hitler, are they still meaningful symbols? Is there a role for rote symbols of good and evil in culture? Are such symbols good, bad, neither? How should artists relate to these big monolithic symbols?

What a fantastic question! Yes, there’s absolutely a place for stock symbols, especially when we find ways to contort them to have new meanings. It’s a subversion, of sorts, a reappropriation: the Hitler birthmark in my book is idiosyncratic to the character. Its meaning springs forth from his consciousness. It’s personal. It’s alive.

Same with Santa Claus: the ol’ Saint Nick in Damascus won’t be shimmying down anyone’s chimneys come December. His presence in the book is closely tethered to one of the main characters. It’s vibrantly alive with the very unique perceptions of that player.

At times, the narration turns briefly to events in the wider world, hinting at everything going on that is left out. How important to a story is what is not told? When you’re reading, do you think about the world outside what is told in the book? How valuable is the act of excluding events, in writing a book?

Exclusion is a great option every writer has at her disposal: what makes the book versus what exists as implications in the narrative versus overt omissions. Each novel will approach these things in its own way. With Damascus, it was important for me to remind the reader that even while we spend so many pages incarcerated in a dive bar in San Francisco, the spinning world outside is a reminder of what brought each character to sit on a barstool and hold on for dear life. They all have their own reasons for ending up at Damascus. Most drunkards are trying to get away from something, so periodically reminding the reader of all the action happening around the globe helped to buoy the dive bar into the greater context of life.

What are you reading?

I teach in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and am reading nothing but student work right now. It’s a congested semester, but I’m having a blast. I feel so thankful to have so many insightful and thoughtful students. I bet in a couple years, you’ll be asking them these questions!

Try the IndieBound Reader App, Get a $5 Gift Card

I’ve been using the IndieBound Reader app on an Android Tablet for months now and really enjoy it. (You can read my full review of the app here: ) It’s a got great reading functionality and lets you show your support for shopping local and independent. We want you to try it.

For the month of March, if you come into the store and show us that you’ve installed the IndieBound Reader app on your device we’ll give you a $5 gift card good on all in-store and online purchases. When you come in, we’ll just ask for your name (one gift card per person please) and what type of device you have. You can also sign up to receive email about ebooks. We can even guide you through your first ebook purchase.

Here are what some people are saying about the IndieBound Reader App.

For Android:

This is app s great! It's running on my Asus Prime which is using ICS and reader is running flawlessly. So happy to by buying my ebooks locally, this app is even running on my friends Kindle Fire! Matty

This is an amazing app, and works seamlessly with bookstores around the country. I work on the road, and can now buy ebooks from whichever store is closest! Mick

Once it's set up with the bookstore of choice this App is really easy to help you search and support the store. Simple and easy. Sara

For iPad:

One of my recent purchases from the Books, Inc. website was damaged every time I tried to download it from Google Books, so they steered me toward this app. Works like a charm. ewestby

Easy download from my local independent bookstore website, then simple download of books from my store account. Reading on iPhone, and so far seems straightforward and as pleasant as you get on this size. So pleased to have buying local so easy! Wren54

Hyperlinked Infinite Jest: This is What iPads are For

When ebooks were in their infancy, Infinite Jest was the first book I thought of. Not only is it the size of a small dog, but it is also has end notes. (And no, you can’t skip them. I mean, no one is going to show up at your house and make you read them, but you miss out on a whole level of the story if you skip them.) This means, that you are constantly flipping back and forth between two bookmarks in a book that wouldn’t look ridiculous in a stroller.

But, now, the Google editions .epub version, at least read in the IndieBound Reader on a touch screen is hyperlinked. Just touch the annotation in the text and you are taken to the note. At the end of the note is another link that says “Back to Text” which takes you, well, back to the text. You can also search in the text, which for a book with as complex a structure as Infinite Jest, gives you another tool for keeping all the characters, ideas, and events straight in your head. And you can add linked bookmarks, like to the page that shows the chronological order of the sponsored years, that can take you back and forth between events. And you can add your own notes. And it's $9.99.

To me, this is what makes ebooks important; they can allow for a deeper reading experience than print books because of how they allow the reader to interact with the text itself. And, this means are there no longer any excuses for not reading Infinite Jest.

Most Anticipated Addendum

A couple of books have crossed my path since the last post that I wanted to share with you. (And hope you remember them when they do come out.)

You & Me by Padgett Powell. Powell’s last novel The Interrogative Mood was a book composed entirely of questions. I had my doubts about it at first, but at some point, I realized that you would learn a lot about yourself if you actually bothered to answer the questions themselves. Even without that element, it is still a strange and mysterious, yet compelling book. Powell’s new book, You & Me, is coming out in August, and is described as a Southern send-up of Waiting for Godot. Any other author I would be very suspicious of reinterpreting such a precisely surreal and truthful work, but I’m excited to see Powell’s take on it. In some ways, The Interrogative Mood is about living without answers. Since Waiting for Godot is, in many ways, also about living without answers, I can’t way to see Powell tackle it.

Amsterdam Stories by Nescio. You are probably going to get sick of hearing me talk about this book. Beautiful. Truthful. Artistic. Vibrant. Did I mention beautiful? For me at least, reading these stories has been akin to watching Casablanca; you try to open your eyes and ears as wide as you can to take everything in, knowing that something staggering and beautiful is just out of sight and just out of earshot, and even though you can’t say specifically what made that shot work or that line stunning, you know that whatever it is, is perfect. Amsterdam Stories is scheduled for release on March 20.

My Most Anticipated Books of 2012

The literary website The Millions has put together an extremely thorough list of most anticipated books of 2012. If you love books and especially love staying on the cutting edge of literature it is a fantastic resource. But to be thorough it has to be long and detailed and your eyes can go a little cross-eyed scanning through the whole thing. So I’ve pulled out three books on the list that are, for whatever that’s worth, Josh’s Most Anticipated books of 2012.

Varamo by Cesar Aira: In some ways you could say Cesar Aira does the same thing over and over; he writes short, strange, beautiful, intelligent, mysterious, philosophical novels. But each novel is different. They have different tones, different themes, even different prose styles, and they are all fantastic. I’ve read three of them; Ghosts, set in an apartment complex still under construction on New Year’s Eve, The Literary Conference, which involves pirate treasure, cloning, and works in translation, and How I Became a Nun, which starts with an accidental poisoning by cyanide-laced ice cream and goes, well...elsewhere. Whatever Varamo is, it’s sure to challenging, interesting, and exciting. Varamo is scheduled to be released in February.

A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava was originally self-published and is now being brought out by the University of Chicago Press. It’s gathering comparisons to some really big, really amazing, really ambitious books, such as Infinite Jest, Underworld, and even Moby-Dick. Following a New York City public defender who has never lost a case, De La Pava explores the underpinnings of our understanding of justice and order. What excites me about the book is the praise from critic Steven Moore, author of The Novel: An Alternative History (volume 2 please!). If he’s excited about this book then so am I. A Naked Singularity is scheduled to be published in May.

Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff: I’ve read much of this book as a PDF on my computer so I am thrilled to see it come out as a printed book. Playing with language, translation, narrativity, and the construction of words into books, and featuring a pretty great running joke about If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (can there be any other kind of joke about If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler?). Your Name Here will (I hope) finally earn Helen DeWitt the attention and acclaim she deserves as one of our most innovative writers of fiction. It follows her daring, scathing, satirical novel Lightning Rods (which was a staff pick here) and picks up with the innovation and exploration that made The Last Samurai such a compelling book. Your Name Here is scheduled for publication some time this fall.

A Tale of Two Apps

Odds are, this holiday season some of you got some fancy gadget on which ebooks can be read. If you got a Kindle Fire or a Nook Tablet, please see our post from last week about how to read our ebooks on those devices. Regardless of what device you’ve got (or are going to get), there are two apps for reading our ebooks on both Android and iOS devices. Both apps have their strong points, so which one you use depends on what you want out of reading ebooks.


IndieBound Reader App: If you use an Android device, this is the app for you. It allows you to shop with Porter Square Books (or the indie bookstore of your choice) directly through the app and since we added stored credit card information, you can buy and read PSB ebooks in mere moments. The app also supports highlighting and annotation and has a whole range of display settings, from font size to brightness. It also plays well with other ebooks sites like Project Gutenberg and NetGalley. (And probably any site that uses .epub ebooks, but I haven’t tried any of those yet.) With Project Gutenberg and NetGalley, at least, when I chose to download the ebooks I was given the option of importing them directly to my IndieBound Reader app library. I got the five-volume complete works of Edgar Allen Poe in about a minute. It also supports PDFs so you can download PDFs directly to your library and read, bookmark, and annotate them, making it a useful tool for readers and writers.

If you’ve got an iPad or iPhone or other iOS device, you still have to purchase ebooks through your browser and then download them into your app. Once you’ve purchased the ebook click on “download” and the ebook will download to your IndieBound Reader app library.

IndieBound Reader App for Android and iOS

Google eBooks: The Google Books app is really handy if you plan on reading ebooks on multiple devices. Because the books are stored in the cloud, if you start reading something on your iPhone on the train, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off on your iPad at home. It’s also a good choice if you want to conserve memory space on your device. You still have to use your browser to purchase the ebooks, but once purchased, you can instantly access them on every device with the app.

Google Reader App for Android and iOS

Both apps have their strong points and both apps give you the freedom to get ebooks from many different sources. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using both of them for different books or situations. Also, because our ebooks are .epub, you can read them on all kinds of other software like Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre.