Anthology Book Company

Where do you buy your books? I know if you’re reading this, you probably get at least a portion of your books from us here at Anthology. We all know how easy (and cheap) it is to go online and order books (along with anything else) on Amazon. We all know that you can easily run over to Barnes and Noble or Wal-Mart or Target and find most of the same titles and save a couple dollars. But what exactly is at stake here? What is the importance of supporting local businesses and why should you care?

With every purchase that you make, you cast a vote. A vote that quite possibly has more of an impact on our world than the one you cast at the polls. In our current age, corporate mega-retailers may be the norm, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When’s the last time you walked into Wal-Mart and they welcomed you on a first name basis? (I wouldn’t know for sure that they don’t do this, just an assumption; I haven’t stepped foot inside that depressing soulless warehouse in years) Now more than ever, local businesses need your support. It’s these unique, one-of-a-kind places in our beloved downtowns that give our cities a sense of community. In the case of Anthology and The Coffee Tree, these businesses serve as a hub of community; a place where friends can meet together as well as enjoy great books, coffee, and food. The size of the chain retailers and government tax breaks allow them to charge less for their products which results in a loss of business for local establishments. So it may be cheaper and more convenient to take advantage of mega retailers, but is it better? I don’t think so, and I must urge you to invest your wallets in your own community this holiday season. We don’t have to be a culture of consumers, we can be a culture of community and appreciation instead. Since the 1990’s tens of thousands of locally owned businesses in America have disappeared. Loveland is no exception. In 2005 Wal-Mart accounted for one of every ten dollars spent by Americans. Is this progress? Is this the future world you want for your children? It is a myth that these retailers provide economic growth and create jobs. The predatory nature of these retailers forces local businesses who can’t compete to close, so people are actually losing jobs. When you spend your money locally, it stays in the community. It has about three times the local impact than it does when you spend it in a chain store. Most local businesses bank locally, advertise in local newspapers and hire other local professionals such as accountants and web designers. Whereas corporate chains require very little of local goods and services and their profits are not re-invested in the community. Sprawling shopping malls and concrete jungles of parking lots devoted to giant retailers make towns indistinguishable from each other.

So what is the true cost of mega retailers? Is your community worth preserving? Is your downtown something worth saving? That is for you to decide. Local businesses are about community. Independent bookstores are especially about community.

So, do your community a favor. Do your family a favor. Do yourself a favor, and support local businesses.

Thanks for reading!
Matt

Independent bookstores fight for your right to access the books that you want to read, whatever the content may be. We have a display up right now showcasing over a hundred books documented as banned or challenged - we carry them, and are fiercely proud to defend them. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression collects tools and information to help

In the United States, “banned books” are not illegal to print and sell. However, they are challenged and sometimes removed from libraries, including school, prison, military base, and public libraries. You are entitled to dislike a book, but when a book is removed from a library, you are restricting your fellow citizens’ access to information.

Many sites provide lists of banned books without citing any sources or giving any history at all. This report from the American Library Association provides a list of documented challenges in the US for 2009-2010, and this resource page is an authoritative resource for documented challenges. However, surveys indicate that 85% of challenges are never reported to the ALA.

Here is a map of documented book bans and challenges in the US for the last four years, including three here in Colorado:

“The rights and protections of the First Amendment include children as well as adults. While parents have the right — and the responsibility — to guide their own children’s reading, that right does not extend to other people’s children. Similarly, each adult has the right to choose their own reading materials, along with the responsibility to acknowledge and respect the right of others to do the same.

When we speak up to protect the right to read, we not only defend our individual right to free expression, we demonstrate tolerance and respect for opposing points of view. And when we take action to preserve our precious freedoms, we become participants in the ongoing evolution of our democratic society.”

- Robert P. Doyle, ALA Banned Books Report 2010

This past Tuesday, August 4^th, the Scifi Book Club met to discuss The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, first published in 1959. Our next meeting will be September 6^th, for Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okafor. Both of these books are in the store right now for 20% off!

The edition of The High Crusade that we carry in the story is the 50^th Anniversary Edition, which includes an introduction and five “appreciations” from big-name scifi authors. Poul Anderson was hugely influential in the Golden Age. He was extraordinarily prolific, with over 100 novels and enough short stories to fill 40 collections, and this is one of his most beloved books.

Just as King George’s knights are mustering up for another crusade, a spaceship lands in their village. Since they’re all soldiers anyway, they ruthlessly attack the disembarking aliens and kill all but one of them. (A couple of laser pistols are ineffective against a mass volley of English longbows and a line of charging cavalry.) Through a mix of (mis?)fortune, leadership, and pure bald-faced guile, the English take their Crusade to the stars, conquering and converting the aliens as they go. I was amused to discover that Anderson was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

It’s very short, under 200 pages, which keeps the story taut and the action quick. It reminded several people of a movie script. (It was apparently made into a movie in the 90s but none of us had seen it.) There are few digressions, which is rare in a funny book. For example, a few months ago we read Shades of Grey, which is full of quirky little sidebars that provide a lot of the humor. Here, there is some physical humor and a lot of sly maneuvering around the truth when talking to the aliens. My favorite bit: the alien wants to know if Sir Roger has the authority to bargain with them. Sir Roger replies, “my ancestor Noah was the commander of all the fleets of Earth.” Several of our members found the humor very British, “almost pre-Monty Python.” Given the appreciations included in the front of the book, we wondered if this book directly influenced writers like Douglas Adams and the Monty Python people, too.

Anderson keeps the tone light by glossing over the deeper aspects of his satire. Instead of conquering tan people and brown people, Sir Roger conquers blue people (and people who live in a box because they breathe a different atmosphere). When they board the ship, the English bring along the entire village, complete with livestock- so when they defeat the aliens, they actually establish a colony on the newly-deserted planet. There is a debate about whether the blue aliens have a soul, and whether they can be converted and baptized.

All of these potentially serious issues are played for laughs. For example, the cattle in the ship make a horrifying stench, and the English cook over an open fire in the hold. Since the aliens have superior force and technology, the English are the underdogs and thus totally justified in tricking and double-crossing the (remarkably naïve) aliens to win. The chapters are very short, and just one or two chapters from an alien perspective could have given the whole thing more depth. To me, it almost reads as though an early draft might have included something like that, but Anderson (or his editor) said, “whatever, our audience is 12-year-old boys, they don’t care, take it out.” As a result, we get this quick, funny reversal of the usual historical narrative – white English dudes are the underdogs, with inferior technology, trying to stay afloat in a much more “advanced” civilization. It remains an open question whether the casually imperialist attitude is simply the usual Golden Age chauvinism or that attitude it is itself being satirized.

The consensus view in our discussion was that the absence of explicit judgments was the very thing that made the book so good. If you want to do a lot of analysis, the material is available there in the story. But, because the issues are only implied, the book remains a quick, fun read. Most of our members said they probably wouldn’t re-read The High Crusade, but it did make some of us interested in Anderson’s larger body of work. I for one intend to read a couple of his other novels for comparison’s sake.

Bechdel Test results: Fail. There is exactly one woman in this story, unless you count her two-year-old daughter. There is an alien character from a race that doesn’t have different sexes, but the aliens are referred to as “he.” Both the woman and the alien are portrayed as weak, conniving, and, in the end, traitorous. This is disappointing, but not surprising in a scifi work from the 1950s.

Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel Tinkers was to me like a long poem. The language is exceptionally beautiful and moving, delightful to the imagination, demanding full attention with many passages meriting a second read. The novel, reminiscent of Whitman and Thoreau, teaches us to see and appreciate the intricate workings of the cosmos and man’s attempt to understand and emulate nature. It is a story of fatherhood and memory, wrought with joy and sadness, as an old dying man is propelled deep into his own past to relive the wondrous journey of his life. The words are alive with passion and meaning, and Harding, with his trance inducing prose, is able to paint for us a masterpiece to be marveled at and savored. Here is one paragraph that struck me as especially lovely:

“The true essence, the secret recipe of the forest and the light and the dark was far too fine and subtle to be observed with my blunt eye – water sac and nerves, miracle itself, fine itself: light catcher. But the thing itself is not forest and light and dark, but something else scattered by my coarse gaze, by my dumb intention. The quilt of leaves and light and shadow and ruffling breezes might part and I’d be given a glimpse of what is on the other side; a stitch might work itself loose or be worked loose. The weaver might have made one bad loop in the foliage of a sugar maple by the road and that one loop of whatever the thread might be wound from – light, gravity, dark from stars – had somehow been worked loose by the wind in its constant worrying of white buds and green leaves and blood-and-orange leaves and bare branches and two of the pieces of whatever it is that this world is knit from had come loose from each other and there was maybe just a finger width’s hole, which I was lucky enough to spot in the glittering leaves from this wagon of drawers and nimble enough to scale the silver trunk and brave enough to poke my finger into the tear, that might offer to the simple touch a measure of tranquility or reassurance.”

As Marilynne Robinson put it: “Tinkers is truly remarkable”

Thanks for reading!

Matt

We’ve got a lot going on in July!

3rd & 4th - We are closed for Independence Day

5th - 6:30pm - Paul Kendel’s book signing for Walking the Tiger’s Path (Scifi book club rescheduled for July 12th)

8th - 6-8pm - Loveland 365 autograph party for Night on the Town

12th - 6pm - Scifi book club (reading The Company by K. J. Parker)

20th - 6pm - Anthology Reader’s Circle (reading One Day by David Nicholls)

Our Sci-fi book club discussion of “The Company” by K.J. Parker, scheduled to meet Tuesday July 5th, will now be meeting the following week, Tuesday July 12th, due to an event at the bookstore.

On Tuesday, July 5th, we will be welcoming Paul M. Kendel, author of Walking The Tiger’s Path: A Soldier’s Spiritual Journey in Iraq. Paul’s book addresses the horrors of war from an extraordinary human perspective. SSG Kendel discovered the teachings of Buddhism on the battlefield of Iraq where he put them into action. He did not lose his compassion in the face of grave risk, nor did he endanger fellow soldiers while he remained true to himself - rare feats in our violent world. Please join us for a discussion and book signing.

Feel free to join us the following week to discuss K.J. Parker’s modern sci-fi novel The Company, in which a group of soldiers colonize a virgin island together, but one of them is hiding a secret that will change everything. All of our book club picks are available in the store and are offered at 20% off the cover price.

Hope to see you there!

The new topic is Genghis Khan (Chinggis Khan) and the Mongols. Read any book you want about Genghis Khan and/or Mongolian history, and join us this Sunday, May 15, at 5:15 to discuss it.

My “Serious Book Club” idea has morphed into what I’m calling my Fake Classes - designed for those of us without the time and money to go to real classes. (This is not currently an official Anthology club with book discounts, etc.; I’m just using our space to host. Starting in June, meetings may be held in my house instead.)

The idea is that we will meet roughly every other week to discuss a mutually interesting topic. In the spirit of a class rather than a book club, we will meet more than once on each topic to give us a chance to digest and do further research based on our discussions. I’m not picky, really - if you can’t find a book that speaks to you, feel free to read some relevant Wikipedia articles. The Loveland Library has a pretty good selection, though.

The store closes at 5pm, so if you want to buy books or coffee before we start, make sure to come a little early. As with all after-hours book clubs, the side door will be left open so you can get in.

This morning I finished reading a book which will forever change and enhance my view of the universe and my role in it. Lynne McTaggart’s groundbreaking book “The Intention Experiment” explores the new scientific evidence of the effects that deliberate intention can have on our lives, our relationships and our world. Building off the science of McTaggert’s bestseller “The Field”, “The Intention Experiment” is a potentially life altering work if practically applied to daily life.

“The Intention Experiment” explains the science of intention, prayer, and meditation with incredible insight and clarity. McTaggert does a wonderful job of not being overly technical, enough so that most anyone can understand and benefit from the findings of the experiments. Detailed in the book are most of the major scientific studies on intention that have taken place throughout the previous century. McTaggert arranges the findings of these studies in a logical sequence that build upon each other for a staggering conclusion. With experiments in quantum physics and other cutting-edge sciences, McTaggert brilliantly shows the synthesis between spirituality and science and the interconnectedness of all life, things and indeed even thoughts. She then uses these findings to suggest for us practical ways in which we can use the power of our own thoughts to change our health, our personality, to manifest any desired outcome in life, to heal others and even to help heal the world. After all of the studies are explained in detail with all their failures and successes, McTaggert invites us, the readers, to participate in her intention experiment. She has built a website, www.theintentionexperiment.com to continue the research in the field of consciousness in a format where anyone can be a part of it. The experiments are explained on the website, along with the who, what, when, where, why and how of what we are trying to affect. The experiments range from small things like trying to make a specific plant in a lab grow faster to more ambitious projects like trying to reduce pollution or crime in a certain area.

“The Intention Experiment” is a mind bending, paradigm shattering work that could potentially alter the course of humanity. Be prepared to set aside your normal assumptions of time, space and reality. The profound studies expounded in this book are a perfect example that science is never set in stone and what we think we know is continually evolving and changing. The field of human consciousness is really just starting to be explored with discoveries that will change our entire worldview. This makes for an extremely exciting and hopeful time in human history and scientific advancement. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of consciousness, human potential, spirituality, quantum physics or just science in general.

“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known in nature.” - St. Augustine

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!

Matt