LYB Weekly 3/5-3/9
Hours (including Monday evening this week!), new arrivals, reading updates
Hello! Another week! Lots of things going on at Little Yenta headquarters.
Hours
This week, we’ve decided to be open more than ever before. We’ll be open Thurs/Fri 4:30-7 PM, Sat/Sun 11 AM (an hour earlier than before)- 6 PM, and Monday 4:30-7 PM. We keep arriving at the store before 11 on weekends anyway, so why not make it official! I’m curious to see what it's like to be open on a Monday evening. Perhaps this will be a convenient time for you to come by if you are in the restaurant industry!
Also, an early warning that we will be closed 3/19-3/22 for travel plans we made before Little Yenta was even a twinkle in our eye :( I think I will be using that time to read War and Peace, so if you have a favorite translation, let me know (leaning towards Pevear and Volokhonsky’s at the moment, I read their Anna Karenina translation and also read this article by translator Michael Katz that recommends P&V).
New Arrivals
We have so many new arrivals that it is kind of nuts! Lots of new fiction and also, despite our best efforts, some more nonfiction. I unfortunately didn’t take pictures beyond what’s on our Instagram, but we have lots of John McPhee’s essays and Tom Stoppard’s plays, some great poetry, including Richard Siken and John Ashbery, Harlan Ellison, a cool James Blish Cities in Flight omnibus, and lots more.
We also have lots of cool new collectible books!
First editions of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Beloved, a first U.K. edition of The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and a first American printing of Marx’s Capital Vol. 1!
What We’re Reading
Ariel: This week, I finished Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti.
Gilead, in which a dying reverend reflects on his life and faith in a letter to his young son, is a very beautiful book that I didn’t really connect with. It is certainly preachy and slow, which makes sense given the narrator and premise, with lots of reflections on the meaning of life and of religion. I haven’t read many books by very religious authors (Robinson is a Calvinist), so it was an interesting change in perspective for me.
The Master and Margarita (trans. Burgin and O’Connor) is very hard to describe. It’s part satire of Soviet Russia, part fun romp with witches, a giant cat, and the devil and his henchman. This is probably an insane thing to say, but at times it reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Mort? Really fun book with lots of references and subtext I probably missed. My edition had notes in the back, which helped with the many jokes about Soviet writers and the politics of the time. I also felt very smart understanding the Pushkin references!
I just finished Pure Colour this morning and am still processing it! It’s a very weird book that’s also hard to describe, but it’s basically about a woman navigating grief and love and also becoming a leaf. I am not sure if I liked it! It felt kind of like reading a George Saunders novel written by an alien that does not really have a sense of humor and that likes to use the word “ejaculate.” There are a lot of beautiful lines and reflections on death here, though. A mixed bag!
Next, I think I will read The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf.
Simon: I’m glad to be finally reading A Canticle for Leibowitz! I was talking with a friend of the shop on Sunday about this, and he noted how much of a fun read it is; I didn’t expect it would be fun, but I agree so far! Nuclear war obviously isn’t a subject to treat lightly, but Miller carefully treads this line with his characters participating in existing social practices (Lent, classical archaeology) reflected in a funhouse mirror. I was a diehard fan of the Fallout video game franchise in my teens, and the influence there has been immediately obvious.
None of my audiobook holds on Libby have cleared yet, so I’ve just been listening to podcasts while commuting. I would love to get a reader recommendation for one to start tomorrow. I generally prefer nonfiction for audiobooks.
P.S. Replies to these emails were previously going to our spam folder, so we didn’t see them! It should all be sorted now if you would like to reply to us.