February 3, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent By the Author of George the Housewife By Sadie Stein Thinking about travel books reminded me of a great piece written for this site by Kim Beeman a few years ago. As she explained at the time, the cult figure George Leonard Herter “ran a sporting-goods store in Waseca, Minnesota, by day and self-published bizarre cookbooks, travel guides, and hunting books by night.” Read More
February 2, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Armchair Cookbooks By Sadie Stein Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Artistin, 1910. I’m changing. I have the right, don’t I? People are changing all the time. I have to think about my future. What’s it to you? —The Room Lisa’s right: you’re never too old to change. When I think that, a year ago, I had never heard the term armchair cookbook … and now I use it at least once a week! What a drab, colorless existence I’d led! Armchair cookbook: the words are delightfully contradictory, with their warring suggestions of action and relaxation, that cozy mix of nouns. I first encountered the term in reference to The Barbara Pym Cookbook. It seems clear that the term is an Anglicism, more in use north of the border than in the U.S. But it doesn’t refer merely to those books—like the Pym, from which I have never cooked—that combine recipes with straight reading material. At any rate, I use it rather more liberally. Read More
February 1, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Bon Voyage By Sadie Stein The shop closed last year. Not long ago, the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore—one of New York’s increasingly rare single-topic booksellers—shut its doors. And now its longtime proprietor, Arnold Greenberg, has died at eighty-three. Read More
January 29, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Truth in Advertising By Sadie Stein Martha Jane Burke (“Calamity Jane”), on horseback in 1901. Photo: C. D. Arnold. Via United States Library of Congress Another person is the best way to learn about a book. At least, it’s my favorite; good reviews are an art form, Web sites a modern marvel, but somehow my best-loved books have come directly from someone else’s recommendation, and the enthusiasm of those conversations is a pleasure in itself. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this particular chain of connection. When you think about it, most of the world’s great religions are based on book recommendation. I recently learned about the book I want to recommend to you today via someone whom I met while reporting a story. He, in turn, had been recommended the title by a horse trainer on a film set. Where that guy heard of it, I can’t say, but the chain is doubtless long—dating back, at any rate, to 1976, when Shameless Hussy Press published Calamity Jane’s Letters to Her Daughter. Read More
January 28, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Fur By Sadie Stein Quentin Blake’s illustration for Kitty-in-Boots. Image via Penguin Earlier this week, many of us were electrified by the announcement that an unpublished Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, would come out this September. The story was discovered in a cache of papers by the editor Jo Hanks. And Penguin has already released a tantalizing teaser: Read More
January 27, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Gothic Tale By Sadie Stein I don’t believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots. —Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) This is my second post about Karen Blixen this week, and you’d be forgiven, when you see that I’m about to share a Karen Blixen documentary, for thinking I’ve really fallen down a rabbit hole. You’d also be correct. I’ve long been an admirer of her work, and I find her personal history fascinating, but this film is something different entirely; I had to direct your attention to it. Read More