We’re closed this Saturday, July 4.

The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed by Michael Meyer (Walker, $16.00).

When Jason went to China last year (before the Olympics) I was super jealous.  From all reports it seemed like an old world was disappearing forever in their big build-up for the games.  Michael Meyer’s book captures a place that was fast losing out.  Meyer first went to China in 1995 and in Last Days he shares his experience of living in the old quarter of Beijing–the Dazhalan, on one of it’s famed twisty and tiny lanes. He lived in a shared courtyard house and taught at the local elementary school, and wove himself into the fabric of his neighborhood.  Last Days tells the stories of the varied characters that live beside him as they are forced to watch their neighbors evictions in the great build-out of new shopping malls and high rises.

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage (Walker, $26.00).

It’s all about food.  In some form or another food has been involved in social changes, political organization,  military conflict, economic expansion and who knows what else all over the world and throughout time.  Standage starts with the first civilizations built on barley and wheat in the Near East, rice and millet in Asia, and corn and potatoes in the Americas and runs all the way up to modern times with armies losing wars based partly on their inability to feed their fighters.  Standage weaves together many fields in this sweeping book–genetics, archaeology, anthropology, economics and much much more.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press, $16.00)

This has gotten rave reviews all over the place, and Graywolf pretty much only puts out quality stuff.  The unfortunately named Not Sidney is orphaned at age 11 but is fabulously wealthy–his mother invested heavily and early in shares of Ted Turner’s corporation.  The young Not Sidney moves into Turner’s house, subjecting himself to Turner’s odd and hilarious non-sequiturs and the often racist reactions of the very wealthy white Atlantans to the young rich black Not Sidney.  An episode of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinnerensues. The other leading force in his life is an odd Morehouse College professor named Percival Everett, another self-reflexive technique.  Absurdity abounds in this novel but Everett’s smart and funny writing keeps it all under control.

Tiffany Sutton’s photography.  Up  through July 19.

In Milton Lumky Territory by Philip K. Dick (Tor, $14.95).

There are a handful of PKD novels that he wrote in the 1950’s that pre-date his crazy, drug-induced, paranoid, trippily themed 1960’s novels.  Milton Lumkey is one (although it seems like they keep unearthing them).   This is a completely normal book, telling the tale of Skip Stevens, a traveling salesman who is trying to get a good deal on wholesale typewriters so that he and his wife can start their own business.  His ramblings throughout the American west capture the working class of the 1950s, including the anxiety developing between the dying-breed traveling salesman and the newly arrived discount stores.

The Color of Earth and The Color of Water by Kim Dong Hwa (First Second, $16.95 each).

These are the first two installments in the Color Trilogy, of which The Color of Heaven is the third and due for release in September.  The Color of Earth comes first and traces the relationship between young Ehwa and her mother in their rural Korean village.  It is a spring that brings the first stirrings of love in Ehwa and a first romantic entanglement in many years for Ehwa’s mother, a young woman widowed early in her life.  The mother’s status as a single woman raises eyebrows in the village, and the use of women as protagonists in Korean manwha is unique in its own right.  One of the most surprising aspects for most folks is that Kim Dong Hwa is a man, but so accurately captures the lives of his female characters. 

In The Color of Water both characters have aged slightly, with Ehwa growing into a beautiful young woman.  Ehwa meets a handsome wrestler and begins to romance him on the sly, lying to her mother for the first time in her life.  Her mother’s affair from the first book has continued and that relationship intensifies.  Ehwa, however, quickly learns about longing and heartbreak.

Kim Dong Hwa’s drawings are starkly contrasted black and white and incredibly sparse, with very fine lines.  Most of the panels have a simple white background, which makes the few highly decorated ones really stand out, especially the drawings of the Korean countryside.

The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim (First Second, $16.95).

This volume features three stories that are stylistically quite different from each other (and completely different from the Color Trilogy).  The first story features a prince fighting his mortal enemy in a world that confuses reality and fantasy.  The panels in this story are mostly dark with a black background and lots of action with very little dialogue.  The second story’s main character is a frog who longs for a pool full of gold, but learns the world of high finance is far more complicated than he’d imagined.  These panels are bright with lots of greens and blues and very text heavy.  The third story tells the tale of Janet who gives her finances to a Nigerian prince who contacts her via email.  These illustrations are completely different from the other two.  The paper is now a light yellow and the drawings have a blurrier watercolor-like feel. Most folks will recognize Yang as the author of American Born Chinese, a Printz and Eisner awards winner.

First Second is a relatively new imprint dedicated to bringing good graphic novels to the American market that are appropriate for young adults, but still interesting to grown-ups.

Come to the St. Louis Public Library, Buder Branch, 7pm dressed in your best prom dress and hear YA novelist Susan McBride discuss and then sign copies of The Debs: Love, Lies and Texas Dips.  Four up-and-coming teenage debutantes cross paths–and each other–in McBride’s second installment in the Debs series. It’s “Gossip Girl” on mint juleps.  Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Buder Branch is located at 4401 Hampton in south city.

The Moleskine 18-monthers start July 1 and run through all of 2010.

And…

we have a ton in stock, both pocket and large size.

They’re the Weekly Soft Cover version, with the week on one page and a blank facing page.

Hardcover:

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2666 by Roberto Bolano

How to Win a Cosmic War by Reza Aslan

Waiter Rant by A Waiter

Paperback:

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (by a freaking landslide)

Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll editied by Todd Robinson (featuring St.Louisan Jed Ayres)

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Children’s/YA:

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country by McSweeneys

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Ovid drops by and offers to change you into one of the following for a day.

What do you want to be?  It was cat by a landslide.

41% a cat on a sun-warmed windowsill

20% an oriole

14% a 100-year-old pin oak in an Ozark meadow

13% a rainbow trout shunting through a clear mountain stream

7% a flowering dogwood

4% a large cockroach scaling the side of a Dumpster