Joshua James's blog

Local Spring to Spring Calendar and CD!

Local musician/record label owner/evergreen professor Ben Kamen curated this beautiful spring to spring (march 2009-march 2010, respectively) wall calendar, designed by local artist Eric Sarai. While the calendar would be impressive by itself, it also comes with a CD compilation that has a song for every month of the year. While the CD has some nationally/internationally well-known acts (Paleo, Karl Blau, Viking Moses), I feel our local Olympians steal the show; the Twig Palace and Eleanor Murray tracks are by far the most fully-developed and innovative songs on the disc, and the Ben Kamen track is just pure pop genius (all three of which just happen to be on his Anonymous Monk record label).

So come in and support your local artists. You won't regret it.

($10, in store)

Jesus Christ Superzine Vol. 1

Jesus Christ Superzine by Olympia's own Ariel Birks is getting glowing reviews all over the place; UTNE Reader, Razorcake, blogs galore. I'm here to tell you it's well deserved. Check it out.
"Reading Jesus Christ Super Zine is better than remembering my own stories as an ex-Religious Freak. I can rest assured that others have been through the same experience: first hopelessly devoted, then utterly apathetic, and finally truly embarrassed. This trip down the memory lane of impressionable youth turns that embarrassment into entertainment, portraying a light-hearted coming-of-age tale." -UTNE Reader

 

*since this book does not have an isbn, it is only sold in store.

Reviews

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What the Living Do: Poems (Paperback)

By Marie Howe
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780393318869
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 4/1999
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In What the Living Do, I hear Marie Howe saying again and again, "you're alive, look at what you're doing with it!...oh, right, I'm doing it, too."

While this book is filled with death, seperation, estrangement and the like, I come away from it renewed and inspired everytime; in all this tragedy there's something here that borders on religion, something that makes you recognize (even if it's just for a moment) the wonder of being alive.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Paperback)

By Alison Bechdel
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780618871711
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 6/2007
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Fun Home is an engaging, somewhat surprising graphic memoir about a girl and her obsessive/small town/intellectual/in-the-closet/ domineering/mortician/gardner/interior designer/passionate/frustrated father. It's about her mom and wanting to be a boy and her brothers and being a lesbian and literary classics, too. But mostly her dad.

Talk Dirty to Me (Paperback)

By Sallie Tisdale
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780385468558
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Anchor, 10/1995
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When the year started, I didn't expect that the best book I'd read would be a somewhat over-intellectualized collection of New Yorker/Harper-ish essays on sex. Talk Dirty to Me by Sallie Tisdale is, in most ways, fantastic. And her scope is large: gender politics to prostitution, pornography to queer culture, phone sex to BDSM; along the way working out her own kinks and fears. Maybe not everybody will be as taken, but, in my opinion, it's ridiculous how good this book is.

Best Music Writing 2008 (Paperback)

By Nelson George, Daphne Carr
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780306817342
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Da Capo Press, 10/2008
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2008's Best Music Writing contains an essay from one of my favorite writers, Mr. Craven Rock. While not a household name like Chuck Klosterman or Nick Hornby, for years now Rock has done Eaves of Ass, one of the finest and most underrated zines around. When he released the music issue earlier this year (issue 6, which we at Orca also carry for the lowlow price of three dollars), I knew he was bound for glory. His music writing is not some dry analysis of music or bands or albums, it's about the great many ways our lives connect to music and how the stories of our lives can connect back to a song, a band, a concert; how a piece of music can define a period of your life. So, now you have an excuse to pick up 2008's Best Music Writing, which was probably already tempting.

The Musical Life (Paperback)

By W. A. Mathieu
$19.95
ISBN-13: 9780877736707
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Shambhala, 5/1994
"The other book" by the author of the ever-popular Listening Book, The Musical Life has much the same format, but (in my opinion) is a little bit better. Short (sometimes very so) essays that aim to makes you look at music and life different and seek to open you up to the music around you. Probably never a bad idea. The overall goodness of this book makes the occasional cheesy moment easily excusable.

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (Paperback)

By Jane Guskin, David L. Wilson
Email or call for price
ISBN-13: 9781583671559
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Monthly Review Press, 4/2007
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If you feel lost in the sea of opinions/information/misinformation about immigration and the issues surrounding it, The Politics of Immigration is a good place to get set straight. Set up in a Q+A format, pretty much every question you would think to ask is asked and well responded to. While openly biased towards a pro-open border stance, their research, fact-checking, and statistics keep it from being a preaching-to-the-choir/one person's opinions-type book.

Apple Shadows

Apple Shadows tells the tale of finding oneself through getting lost, along the way falling in love with humans, cities, fields, and highways. The book shows Cole Cunningham's unmistakable voice has matured in the four years since his last book. This work is subtle, so precise. These aren't words that demand your attention, there are no exclamation points to tell you where the action is, there aren't any titles to explain what it's all about. If you fall into it, you know what it's all about; it's about being unstable in the modern world, about what happens to desires in a culture of consumption. I want it all/(I want it all)/but not necessarily ever/and generally not now. It's full of lines that, in some way, perhaps, have gone through all of our heads before. The collective experience of trying to make the most out of life, but being very unsure how that is done.

 

*since this book doesn't have an isbn, it is only sold in store. 

These Are Not Secrets

Rhea Melina thrives on complications. In one poem she will seamlessly flow between subjects, give you reasons to get up in the morning and reasons why you should just end it now. She is clever and funny, looking at the world as if she already knows what's going to happen. Make a joke of r(h)eality, reminds us that we all create our own worlds, each interpretation being different, how we are all islands in that way. She makes good waves.

 *since this book doesn't have an isbn, it is only sold in store.

Shelf reviews

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The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth (Paperback)

By Stephen Harrod Buhner
$19.95
ISBN-13: 9781890132880
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 3/2002
The Lost Language of Plants fits a lot between its covers. In one fell swoop, Stephen Harrod Buhner takes on the pharaceutical industry, connects readers to the mycelial web, soapboxes for earth-based education, shows that sanity can be only a handful of dirt away, and gives us all good reason to stay the hell away from antiobiotocs. Broad ground to cover, but he makes it work. And does it well.

The History of Love (Paperback)

By Nicole Krauss
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780393328622
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 4/2006
Other Editions of this Title
A uniquely woven novel, as heartbreaking as it is hilarious, The History of Love is a strangely beautiful tale of age, connections, change, memories, and (you wouldn't have guessed it, but...) love. Sentences that speak volumes, take pieces of you, then gives them back as something you never knew you had.

Slanky (Paperback)

By Mike Doughty
$12.95
ISBN-13: 9781887128711
Availability: NOT AVAILABLE TO ORDER -- Please <a href="/used-book-request">click here</a> to submit a request for a used copy
Published: Soft Skull Press, 7/2002
Mike Doughty possesses a great imagination- what travels through phonelines; the possible worlds inside show business; the best ending you can imagine. He's a child wishing for a hydrogen bomb apocalypse; crossing coasts for his lover; singing insomniac love songs while lighting cigarettes off the kitchen stove. This book will not disappoint. (if you don't already) You will have fun reading poetry.

Some Ether: Poems (Paperback)

By Nick Flynn
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781555973032
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Graywolf Press, 5/2000
Nick Flynn has put out two of the finest new poetry collections I know of, namely, Some Ether and Blind Huber. Some Ether deals with childhood and losing his mother and the physics only kids should know. It is intense and a must read for any modern poetry fan.

Blind Huber: Poems (Paperback)

By Nick Flynn
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781555973735
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Graywolf Press, 10/2002
Blind Huber, on the other hand, is just beautiful and small. Going inside the mind of the blind man who discovered most of what we know about bees, he creates quiet little gifts. Switching perspectives from Blind Huber to Huber's trusty assistant to the workers to the drones to the queen, its subtleties are glorious.

Useful Knowledge (Paperback)

By Gertrude Stein, Edward Burns, Keith Waldrop
$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781581770766
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Barrytown Limited, 9/2001
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Useful Knowledge (Ms. Gertrude Stein's fine experiment in total absurdity) took me some time to get into. I kept checking it out from the library every few months because I'd get something from it stuck in my head. Then, when I'd actually have the book, it would lose me pretty quick. I'd get annoyed with it. Then I discovered the secret...you read it out loud. That's right, just sitting alone, reading aloud. Try it. It's tons of fun, as long as you take it in small doses (if her poems were music, I'd categorize them somewhere between bubblegum pop and noise). Let it sit around and pick it up from time to time. It's especially good if you've been feeling too sane for your own good. You'll feel like you've lost it and you couldn't be happier.

Ultramarine: Poems (Paperback)

By Raymond Carver
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780394755359
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Vintage, 10/1987
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Why Raymond Carver was celebrated as a short story writer and not as a poet, I'll never understand. Not to say I don't like his stories (I do), it's just that his writing style feels so much more at home in a poem. All of his collections are pretty good, but Ultramarine is, far and away, his best. I don't know if anyone else considers it his masterpiece, but I do.

Antebellum Dream Book: Poems (Paperback)

By Elizabeth Alexander
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781555973544
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Graywolf Press, 9/2001
How Elizabeth Alexander translates dreams to paper (and makes them, at turns, interesting, amazing, and hilarious) is beyond me. Her dreams are often pure social commentary, taking history, pop icons, civil rights heroes and running them through the blender of the dreamworld.
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