Thursday, March 31, 2011

Ye Olde Partners Page

*News From the Glamorous World of Bookselling*


"When I am king, you will be the first against the wall
with your opinion which is of no consequence at all . . ."
--Radiohead, Paranoid Android
B. TRAVEN JR. -- CONSPIRACY THEORIST AT LARGE

B. Traven Jr. here. Please don't confuse me with Sandy Nichols, who is the founder and president of Alien Research Group and a Gary Busey look-alike, he is quite literally out of his mind. Ha, ha! I mention Mr. Nichols because TMZ claims he is an expert on Sammy Hagar's allegations of being abducted by aliens in his new book, Red (9780062009289) 26.99. Sammy said, "[Aliens] were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren't even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, 'F***, they downloaded something into me.'" Sounds like somebody has been watching a little too much Stargate SG-1 while hitting the tequila, I think we're all familiar with the SG-1 episode where an Ancient device downloads all of their knowledge into Colonel Jack O'Neill's brain. Sandy, of course, says the exact same thing happened to him. Ooooo, what a coincidence.

There are some charlatans in this discipline, but my good friend Chad Lewis is not one of them. In fact, I have been waiting with baited breath for his new book, Wisconsin Road Guide to Mysterious Creatures (9780982431429) 14.95 and yes, it is everything I dreamed it could be. It also inspired me to pen these lyrics (sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies):

"Come and listen to a story about a man named Chad,
A cryptozoologist, he thought he'd been had,
Then one one day he was shootin' at some food,
And instead, he'd hit one angry Bigfoot dude.


Sasquatch that is, Swamp Ape, Skukum


Well the first thing you know ol' Chad's wrote a book,
Kinfolk said Chad you need another hook
Said Roswell is the place you really ought to be
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Sandy.

Springs, that is, phantom chickens, alien autopsies . . ."
There aren't many books that go beyond the official narrative in Afghanistan, but The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (9780061732379) 24.99 by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is one of the exceptions. This is one woman's inspirational story that the Taliban doesn't want you to see . . .
Odds & Sods

Liz Taylor is still dead. HarperCollins has moved up the date for the tradepaper of Sam Kashner's Furious Love (9780061562853) 16.99, but not as drastically as originally anticipated. We should have stock on April 19. Meanwhile, our good friends at Triumph Books have put together a retrospective, tenatively entitled Elizabeth Taylor (9781600786655) 14.95 that will be here next week . . .

Cool Kids Book of the Week: Douglas Florian's Dinothesaurus (9781416979784) 17.99, which features his paintings and prehistoric poems is a hoot. Mr. Florian is the same guy who did Insectlopedia (9780152163358) 8.00. And that one is a classic.

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