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Allison's Picks

What do you think your job is at Left Bank Books? Rockin' and rollin' and whatnot

What’s your favorite memory? Winning the Triwizard Tournament... oh wait, that was Harry.

Using only one word, describe yourself. indescribable

If they made a movie about your life, who would play you? I don't know, but I know who would play opposite me: Johnny Depp

Stick or Automatic? That's what she said

Author you love to hate: Jack Kerouac

Theme song to your life: "Waiting to Pupate" by Regina Spektor or "10 Speed of God's Blood and Burial" by Coheed and Cambria

Favorite smell: Those smelly markers they gave us in art class in elementary school, the cherry one especially.

Favorite pair of shoes (past or present): My Grinch shoes!

   

The Children's Book (Paperback)

$16.95
ISBN-13: 9780307473066
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Vintage, 8/2010
The Children's Book concerns, among many other things, the flowering of creativity and imagination in the Edwardian Era in England and the way in which it comes to a screeching halt with the beginning of WWI and it's horrors. The story centers around Olive Wellwood - well-known author of fairy-tales for children - her family of 6 children, and all of their friends. While much of the story deals in the realities of living through this period in England - and Byatt is very thorough in pulling in details from the history of the time to inform the characters' milieu - much of the story also takes place in the fantastical realm of Olive's imagination. Olive writes children's stories to escape from her rather dark and troubled past, but it's no surprise that rather than escaping her past Olive just relives it within her stories and the fantasy-realm darkness that results remains a presence throughout the book, haunting many of the characters as they try to deal with growing up at the eve of WWI. Olive's fantasies and the real world blend together until it's difficult to tell where one world begins and where the other ends. This leads to disastrous results for some of Byatt's characters, especially the Wellwood children who are especially entangled in Olive's fantasies. While this book can be a bit dense and Byatt can be a bit pedantic at times, the elements of fantasy and the darkness that haunts not only Olive and her children but really all of England as WWI draws near and threatens an end to their Edwardian bliss really made this book unforgetable and impossible for me to put down. I was so caught up in it's epic unfoldings that I never wanted it to end.

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9780385501125
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Doubleday, 6/2010
Perfectly normal Rose Edelstein discovers on her ninth birthday that she is not so normal after all. She takes a big bite of the lemon birthday cake that her mother baked specially for Rose and discovers that on top of lemon and sugar she can taste her mother's emotions, her loneliness and despair. From then on, Rose has a very difficult relationship with food. She learns to live on pre-packaged goods, the more processed the better, or hazards discovering things about her friends and family that she would rather not know. This book is just the right mixture of realistic and haunting otherness. While Rose's dilemma and discoveries of course hold the book together and keep you reading, I was most intrigued by the glimpses we get into her brother's struggle with a similar ailment. While Rose learns to live with her "gift," her brother's story has a much more haunting conclusion.

$24.00
ISBN-13: 9780805091144
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Henry Holt and Co., 1/2010
I loved, loved, loved this book. Ida discovers that - tendon by tendon, vein by vein - she is turning slowly to glass. It begins with a splinter-sized piece on the sole of her foot and spreads day by day, inch by inch up her legs. In desperation, she travels back to the place it all began: St. Hauda's island, a monochromatic land of ice but also a magical land of tiny, moth-winged cattle and an unnamed creature that turns everything it sees pure white. Here, Ida meets Midas Crook, a painfully introverted photographer who becomes Ida's constant companion. As the two search desperately for a cure, Ida, out of pure need for connection and love, violently cracks the more metaphorical ice surrounding Midas. Dragging him out of his shell of inhibitions and memories, she forces him to be fully present and fully alive now, with her, before it's too late. Wonderful. I'm recommending it to everyone and anyone.

Everything Matters! (Paperback)

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780143117513
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 7/2010
An excellent book. Since before his birth, Junior knows the specific date, time, and method of the end of the world, and he has to live with this knowledge as he grows up and lives his life. What would you do if you knew the world was going to end on a specific day when you're 27? Would you try to save the world? Would you have children? Would you bother loving anything or anyone? Junior's choices, and his second chance, are captivating and eye-opening. I loved the frame that Currie sets up with the "voices" in Junior's head - or the otherworldly beings, whatever you want to call them - commenting wryly and with a supreme level of detachment on everything that's happening. The book's themes and concerns are really pertinent to today's world. I really think everyone should read this book.

The Sparrow (Paperback)

$12.00
ISBN-13: 9780449912553
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 9/1997
In the year 2019, humans finally recieve a transmission from outer space: the most beautiful music ever heard. While resulting UN debates threaten to drag on for years, the Catholic Church and its Jesuit community does what it has done throughout history and prepares a team to visit the planet Rakhat. Years later, the mission has failed and only Emilio Sandoz returns, alive but forever haunted and disfigured by the events that transpired on that distant world. What unfolds in a series of flashbacks is the powerful story of the first-encounter between two intelligent cultures and the uplifting discoveries and disastrous mistakes that result from their misinformation and good intentions.

$8.99
ISBN-13: 9780756404741
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: DAW, 4/2008
Orphaned protagonist? Check. School of magic? Check. Ongoing feud with a snotty fellow student? Check. Your usual fantasy tale? Che... Wait, no! Uncheck! Patrick Rothfuss' "The Name of the Wind" is anything but typical. In his capable hand, the seemingly familiar trappings of fantasy twist and transform into a completely unique and completely enjoyable tale. It's a marvelous story of a world both strange and familiar, a magic both extraordinary and pragmatic, and a protagonist who is both a living legend and heartbreakingly human. proclaimed by the Onion to be "one of the best stories told in any medium in a decade," this book must be read. Can't wait for the sequel? Check!!

   

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