Ask a Bookseller

• Ask a Bookseller: ‘The Practice, The Horizon and the Chain’ by Sofia Samatar

  On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.For the next few weeks on Ask a Bookseller, we’ll be doing something a little different: focusing on books of hope. Danielle King of Left Bank Books in St Louis, Mo., knew right away what she wanted to recommend: Sofia Samatar’s sci-fi novel “The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain.” Weighing in at 128 pages, this short novel packs a transformational punch. The setting for this novel is the stars, where humanity lives, powered by an enslaved underclass, the Chained. The story focuses on a boy who is pulled from the Chained class and given an elite education, and his life is transformed by connections with two people in succession: a man called the Prophet and a woman (formerly Chained, herself) called the Professor. Danielle King describes the story as: A transformation of the connection between people that are socially structured to be apart from each other. These people have so much in common, but they’re kept from one another, and when they finally can come together, it is one of the most uplifting stories I’d ever seen.  Fun fact, I was training to be a political philosopher before I became a bookseller. I used to study racial group consciousness, and I’ve read a lot of books about racial group consciousness. In this little, tiny science fiction tone, Sophia Samatar did what thousands of race scholars have been unable to do — which is talk about the way racial group consciousness affects the people in that group, really accurately, really beautifully, and in a way that makes you feel like the way that the world is needn't be the way that the world is, because every day we have this opportunity to connect to one another, and in that connection, be transformed.— Danielle King 

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• Ask a Bookseller: ‘Blob: A Love Story’ by Maggie Su

  On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Theresa Phung works at Yu & Me Books in Manhattan’s Chinatown. She recommends “Blob: A Love Story” by Maggie Su. Su tells of Vi Liu, a young Taiwanese-American woman, who discovers a sentient blob and attempts to mold it into her ideal partner, leading to unexpected consequences.Theresa says: The blob, as it watches TV, starts to gain more and more human emotions, human physical features, and is basically becoming a human being. Our heroine decides, “What better thing to do than to groom this blob into the perfect boyfriend?”So it doesn’t go that well, at least initially, in many ways, like her, trying to teach this blob to be a person ends up sort of revealing a lot of the ways in which she is not a very good person — whether that means her job, her personal relationships, her family, her friendships. The more she tries to sort of teach this alien entity how to be a human being, she really ends up teaching herself how to be one. — Theresa Phung

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• Ask a Bookseller: ‘Black Woods, Blue Sky’ by Eowyn Ivey

  On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Eowyn Ivey launched onto the literary scene in 2012 with her New York Times Bestselling debut “The Snow Child,” which grounds the fairy tale of a couple who makes a child out of snow in the hard reality of a 1920 Alaska homestead. Ivey weaves a world that feels both real and magical at the same time. Thirteen years later, Ivey is out with her third novel “Black Woods, Blue Sky.” Olga Lijo Serans of Hearthside Books and Toys in Juneau, Alaska, says Ivey is “getting better and better at what she does.” The novel is marketed as a twist on Beauty and the Beast. Lijo Serans says a better comparison would be within Native Alaskan mythology. Set in contemporary Alaska, “Black Woods, Blue Sky” tells the story of a single mother, Birdie, who is struggling to make ends meet. She falls in love with a reclusive man and decides to join him, along with her daughter, in his isolated cabin in the mountains. Theirs is a subsistence-living existence tied to nature, and at first Birdie finds it idyllic. But her partner has a secret. This could be the set-up of a horror novel, but while Lijo Serans describes the book as “raw” with thriller elements, the story goes in a different direction. Lijo Serans describes Ivey’s writing: “She’s totally grounded in the Alaska landscape and the Alaska way of life. But at the same time, she introduces an element of magic. The introduction is very slow. You sometimes aren’t really sure if the magic element is there or when it actually appeared. I found it totally engrossing, and I think that it’s just the thing to read on a winter night.” 

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• Ask a Bookseller: ‘A More Perfect Party‘ by Juanita Tolliver

  On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Makkah Abdur Salaam of Black Garnet Books in St. Paul recommends the nonfiction book “A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics” by Juanita Tolliver. Abdur Salaam describes it as a “roadmap” for cultivating community. Chisholm and Carroll both claimed important firsts for Black women. In 1972, Chisholm was the first Black woman to run for president. Carroll was the first Black woman to win a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical (for Richard Rodgers’ “No Strings”) in 1962.  Tolliver zeroes her focus on one event: a party hosted by Carroll in Hollywood to introduce Chisholm to a community of influencers to support her presidential run. Among the big names in attendance were Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party; Berry Gordy, founder of the Motown Record label; and actors Goldie Hawn and Flip Wilson. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different guest in attendance. Makkah Abdur Salaam recommends reading this book as a great way to start Black History Month. “[Tolliver] lays out how Shirley Chisholm basically lays the foundation for the women to come after her, like Stacey Abrams, AOC, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Maxine Waters.” It was the coalition-building focus of the book that Abdur Salaam, age 26, found most hopeful. “I know that there’s a heightened — especially younger people — feeling of [being] isolated and lonely, not really knowing what to do in this kind of political sphere. So I think this book is a great road map on how to really stay grounded and how to just engage with the people who are around you. “It’s a really great book to learn how to cultivate community and learn how to engage in sisterhood and brotherhood with each other in a way that is based in empathy and compassion for each other, as well as the spirit of reciprocity. I have to emphasize that [Chisholm] gave and gave to her community, and when she asked for them to show up for her, they did.” 

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• Ask a Bookseller: 'The Serviceberry' by Robin Wall Kimmerer

  On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Fans of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” were looking forward to her new collection of short essays “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” which was published shortly before Thanksgiving. Beth Hartung of Pearl Street Books in La Crosse, Wis., says it was at the top of her list of favorite books from last year. Weighing in at 128 pages with accompanying illustrations, “The Serviceberry” is “a true gem of a book” that’s an “incredible joy to read,” says Hartung.  Kimmerer is a biologist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, whose essay collection “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” (published by Milkweed Press in Minneapolis in 2013) was called A New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Readers Pick. In that collection, and in “The Serviceberry,” her short essays consider our connections with the natural world and with each other.  Serviceberries are shrubs or small trees, including some varieties indigenous to Minnesota, whose tart fruit feeds pollinators, birds, animals and humans alike. Hartung explains that Kimmerer “uses the humble serviceberry as a metaphor to describe this world that she believes we can have, that we can exist in. And I believe it’s a world that many of us are longing to live in. “It’s this world where there’s this abundance and that we’re focused on [having] enough, and we’re not focused on the scarcity. She describes a world where reciprocity is valued, a world where, individually and collectively, we recognize that we humans are interconnected with all of nature around us, and as we walk through the world, she urges us to really take note that what we do impacts everything else. And she describes [how] we can all adapt to or adopt sustainable living practices if we choose gift economy over capitalism. “It’s just such an incredibly beautiful book. Every single page. I just wanted to pause after I read it and reflect on it and reread it. I’ve read it out loud to friends. I’ve gifted it to quite a few people already.” 

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