Metroland

Holiday Gift Guide: Children's Books by Kathryn Geurin

Books are magical in general, sure, but there is a special sort of magic packed in the pages of children’s books, where art and poetry and prose swirl together in the unfettered imagination of youth, where the line between fantasy and reality is a wide watercolor swath to splash about in. There is no better gift.

And year after year wonderful new offerings from contemporary authors and illustrators hold their own against beloved classics, tempting us to dive in from the bookstore shelves. Here are a few of this year’s best bets. 

For a stunning bit of seasonal mischief, check out Red Sled from author-illustrator Lita Judge (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, $16.99). In the exuberant, almost wordless tale, woodland animals take a child’s sled, left outside, for a whirlwind nighttime ride. The expressive animals in Judge’s bold pencil and watercolor illustrations punctuate the still panoramas with a series of “Whoops” and “Alley-oops” that are a delight to read aloud.

Walter Wick’s award-winning Can You See What I See Series has a new addition with Can You See What I See: Toyland Express (Cartwheel Books, $13.99). Wicks’ spectacular photographs—some of which were recently on display at Canajoharie’s Arkell Museum—are accompanied by rhyming seek-and-find picture puzzles, follows an unpainted wooden train and other toys from the toymakers workshop into the grand world of the toyshop, to birthday party, to playroom, attic and beyond. As always, Wick’s puzzles engage eagle-eye readers, but the exquisitely detailed images and beautiful story are treat enough in themselves.

One of our absolute favorites for young readers and pre-readers this year for its perfect simplicity is Press Here ($14.99, Chronicle Books), from French designer Hervé Tullet, (whose minimalist Game of . . . book series is equally pure and innovative). Press Here takes the seemingly instinctual childhood urge to press buttons, and makes absolute magic with it—no batteries required. Start by pressing the yellow dot on the cover, then turn the page and follow the instructions: Tilt the book, shake the pages, tap five times. The result is an entirely print-and-paper sort of interactivity that challenges the imagination in surprisingly magical ways.

Millions of people are already in love with Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, the star of the similarly titled animated short from Saturday Night Live alum Jenny Slate and author-animator Dean Fleischer. The big world of the endearing little shell with shoes and one googly eye became a viral Internet sensation, but Marcel is no passing meme. Marcel has now become the star of a quirky picture book, which was storyboarded by the authors, shot by a c cinematographer David Erickson and, finally, rendered in brilliant photorealistic oils by Amy Lind. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Things About Me (Razorbill, $18.99) is arguably even more charming and inspired than the source, and kids and adults love the awkward, imaginative shell, whose answer to his own question, “Guess why I smile all the time,” is simply, “Because it’s worth it.”

For the older set, Wonderstruck (Scholastic, $29.99) is the latest offering from Caldacott Award-winning, genre-twisting author-illustrator Brian Selznick. Like in his earlier The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the cinematic adaptation of which is currently wowing moviegoers, Selznick has revolutionized storytelling with a magical intermingling of text and pictures, which serve, not to only illustrate the story, but to be part of the storytelling itself. Wonderstruck presents the tales of two characters set 50 years apart. Ben’s story is told in words, Rose’s in pictures, and the two intertwine effortlessly and affectingly through 600 pages in what promises to be another classic from the truly visionary Selznick.

In another curious blend of illustration and story, The Myserious Benedict Society is at it again, with The Mysterious Benedict Society: Mr. Benedict's Book of Perplexing Puzzles, Elusive Enigmas, and Curious Conundrums (Little Brown, $12.99), the puzzling companion to the best-selling series from Trenton Lee Stewart and Diana Sudyka. But this one is chockablock mindbending puzzles, brainteasers and riddles that will put you to the test along with your favorite Society members.

And as a true classic, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, acclaimed author Leonard Marcus has released the beautiful The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth (Knoph, $29.99), which weaves interviews with the author and illustrator, excerpts from Juster’s notes, literary commentary and historical tidbits unobtrusively but illuminatingly throughout the beloved story. Milo’s adventures into the Lands Beyond represent youth fiction at its best, an instant and enduring classic. The anniversary edition honors the original and offers new morsels for fans of all ages to appreciate.

Holiday Gift Guide: Literature & Nonfiction by Josh Potter

When you’re not dealing in gas cards and chocolate-covered pretzels, holiday gift giving requires an intimate understanding of the passions and interests that constitute your loved ones. Because of this, shopping for books can quickly become a fool’s errand in bookshelf decoration if that tome’s contents don’t equal its pretty cover art.

Best-selling science writer James Gleick may have inadvertandly solved this Christmas quandry by publishing a book on perhaps the most universal subject: information itself. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood is far from a dry romp through raw data; it’s an insightful history of how humans have attempted to capture and catalog the thoughts and expressions that constitute our very lives, leading up to the present moment where information saturation has become an inescapable facet of society.

Facebook, of course, has been one of the primary forums for info addicts. Author Lou Beach approached the social networking site as a type of artistic opportunity, though, using his profile as an outlet for flash fiction. 420 Characters is a collection of the miniature narratives he posted to his wall, interspersed with gorgeous collages. A byproduct of the pace at which all this text is moving around us these days is, paradoxically, chronic boredom. Who among you hasn’t compulsively refreshed a website (say, Facebook) only to find that the world hasn’t generated any novelty in the last 30 seconds? Boredom is at the heart of David Foster Wallace’s unfinished, posthumous novel The Pale King. While its rough structure (even for DFW) makes this one most suitable to the author’s committed fans, the ideas Wallace was working on at the time of his unfortunate death were incredibly salient and arguably optomistic. Through the work-a-day lives of IRS employees, he seems to suggest that boredom and data overload can actually be a window to joy and transcendence. 

Another big, ambitious novel worth considering for a reader so-inclined is Japanese best-seller Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. The title is a sly riff on the year George Orwell immortalized as the dawn of a new age. The question Murakami inserts is in the mind of a woman named Aomame, who begins to notice mundane evidence that the Tokyo in which she lives is actually a parallel reality. In the style of Murakami’s great surrealist mysteries, 1Q84 features enough twists of logic to make you start questioning the concrete nature of your own world. You’d probably pinch yourself in an attempt to wake up if you found thousands of rubber duckies washed up on the beach. This isn’t an episode from Murakami, though; it’s the event that tips off Donovan Hohn’s journalistic odyssey Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. That title alone probably wouldn’t fit in a Facebook post but will give the most creative fiction writers a run for their money.

Of those fiction writers, a number of them have new books this year. Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides explores a triangle of college students obsessing over the romance of a Jane Austen novel, while the ironic world of the early ’80s swirls around them in The Marriage Plot. A 1950s ocean liner bound for England is the setting for Michael Ondaatje’s latest, The Cat’s Table, as an 11-year-old boy embarks on a coming-of-age journey that mirrors that of the vessel he explores. Ava Bigtree faces some of these same themes, only at her parents’ gator-wrestling Everglades theme park in Karen Russell’s celebrated debut novel Swamplandia! Colson Whitehead has received plenty of press (not to mention sales) for his popular, if unlikely, zombie novel Zone One. There’s a reason for this. Post-apocalypse is explored in a different, slightly ambivalent way in Tom Perrotta’s novel The Leftovers. A sort of rapture has struck a small American town, spiriting some of the virtuous and criminal away with an equal hand, leaving the leftovers to make sense of it all.

He doesn’t use the term post-apocalypse, but author Michael Lewis does attempt to make sense of our new fallen society in Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. With global economies in collapse, Lewis begins his analysis of formerly wealthy nations (like our own) from the financial perspective but hones in on the cultural dimension of this shift. Yes, the outlook is bleak, but humorists have always been our saving grace in such times. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life is Charles Shields’ authoritative biography of one of our culture’s greatest. Funny and insightful, this one also scores local points, as Vonnegut may be Glenville’s most famous former resident.

Holiday Gift Guide: Cookbooks by B.A. Nilsson

Sure, I like to curl up with a good cookbook. That’s why I enjoy ones that balance the recipes with narrative. The narrative in Shaw Rabadi’s Savor the Spices of Life (Food for Thought) starts out like a spy thriller and ends up exhorting you in the nicest possible way to take another look at the way you cook for the betterment of your health. Rabadi, chef-owner of BFS Restaurant in Guilderland, offers a refinement of the Mediterranean rich in flavor, low in all the bad stuff. Find the book at his restaurant and in local bookstores. It’s ring-bound for kitchen-counter convenience, which means that Barnes & Noble, according to corporate policy, won’t carry it. But they’ll make an exception on a local basis, right? Wrong. The magic of big-box stores.

Although American Flavor by Andrew Carmellini (ecco) purports to focus on domestic dining, it reminds us that we’re really poly-gluttons. Carmellini’s acclaimed NYC eatery the Dutch made its name serving this compelling mix of foodstuffs, the development of which is detailed in a fascinating intro. Then on to Mac-‘n-Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf, Lamb Chili with Chickpeas and Raita, Wax Beans with Popcorn and Parmesan and more why-didn’t-I-think-of-this fare.

How about a potato-chip omelet? That’s one of the novel items fed to the staff at El Bulli, acclaimed as the world’s finest restaurant. It closed earlier this year (it never turned a profit), but chef Ferran Adrià’s The Family Meal (Phaidon) gives a month’s worth of daily three-course dinners, lavishly step-by-step illustrated. Beautiful and inspiring!

Two similarly gorgeous restaurant-centered books are Eleven Madison Park by Daniel Humm and Will Guidara (Little, Brown) and Bluestem: The Cookbook by Colby Garrelts and Megan Garrelts (Andrew McMeel). Eleven Madison Park is an oversized volume that screams to live on the coffee table, with the most breathtaking food photos since Charlie Trotter’s gustatory porn of a few years back. Bluestem’s recipes feel a little more home-cook accessible, with a nice seasonal contextualization of it all.

Traveling around the Mediterranean, we find Food From Many Greek Kitchens by Tessa Kiros (Andrews McMeel) which, although short on narrative, offers such a variety of dishes (nicely photographed) that it’s the kind of tome that makes you antsy to cook. I’ve already had a great success with the baklava recipe.

He’s photographed to a fare-thee-well within, and titles one of the chapters “Dude. Preserved Lemons.” Nevertheless, Mourad Lahlou knows how to put an arm over your shoulder and lead you into the kitchen, which is the feeling you get from Mourad: New Moroccan (Artisan). A more classical look at the cuisine comes through A Month in Marrakesh by Andy Harris (Hardie Grant)—ready for Roasted Lamb Shoulder with Orange and Honey Syrup?

Phaidon Press has had great success with The Silver Spoon (and its offshoots) and Recipes from an Italian Summer. This year’s treat is Tuscany, a city-by-city tour of recipes, background and photographs. You know it’s good when it can demystify the classic peasant soup ribollita.

Let’s get down to basics. The supermarket meat counter is scary these days; better to buy your meat from a farmer you know. In which case, The Art of Beef Cutting by Kari Underly (Wiley) shows you, step-by-step, how to break down that steer—and why particular cuts respond to cooking the way they do. Great just for an understanding of the biology of carnivorousness.

Two of the mothership books are back. The Professional Chef, Ninth Edition (Wiley) is what’s used at the Culinary Institute of America. I haven’t seen it since edition six, and it’s been intelligently rethought and redesigned to make the techniques and recipes (now presented together) more accessible. Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire (Wiley) was one of two books I was handed when I started my kitchen training (the other was Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking), but it was an earlier Escoffier version. This new one is what the master chef meant us to have—although you still need to know what you’re doing to get started with his recipes.

Staying in France, Ginette Mathiot’s I Know How to Cook is that country’s Joy of Cooking, so her take on pâtisserie is long-awaited. The Art of French Baking (Phaidon) presents her 20-year-old classic newly translated, a bible of techniques and recipes that well may inspire you make your own puff pastry.

What promises to be a more comforting guide (geared, that is, more for beginners) is Le Cordon Bleu Patisserie and Baking Foundations (Cengage). Coming from the international cooking school, if the about-to-be-published volume is like its predecessors, it takes a teacherly approach (with hands-on illustrations) to ease you through this most scientific aspect of the culinary arts.

But if you really want to show your gift-giving love, pony up for a boxed set of Le Cordon Bleu Cuisine Foundations Gift Package (Cengage). This lavish set includes Cuisine Foundations, detailing all the techniques you’ll need to get through Escoffier, and Cuisine Foundations Recipes, so you don’t need Escoffier after all. It’s handsomely packaged with an official Cordon Bleu side towel, which will drive your kitchen-loving recipient stark, raving fou.

Holiday Gift Guide: Music Books by David Greenberger

From a few ounces to half a dozen pounds, the season is rich with books for any of your music-loving friends and family. First, let’s look at the new offerings on the perennials front. George Harrison: Living in the Material World by Olivia Harrison (Abrams, $40) is a companion to the recent HBO documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. It’s a large and luxurious collection of rare photographs and ephemera. The early years of his well-known band are celebrated in The Beatles in Hamburg by Spencer Leigh (Chicago Review Press, $19.95).

Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown by David Yaffe (Yale University Press, $24) examines four aspects of Dylan’s career: the underrated influence of his singing style, his relationship to racial matters, his image in films, and his songwriting methods. David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka (Little Brown, $25.99) looks at the ongoing influence of the man who hasn’t released a new album in more than eight years. The still-touring Judy Collins has brought forth her autobiography, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes (Crown, $26). Tom Waits on Tom Waits (Chicago Review Press, $19.95) is a bracing collection of interviews with Waits from the past four decades, edited by Paul Maher, Jr.

The life of the R&B-loving son of a Turkish diplomat who built Atlantic records is detailed in The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun (Robert Greenfield, (Simon & Schuster, $30). Who else would have jacket blurbs from Henry Kissinger and Kid Rock? Post-baby-boom musicians are popping up more and more on the shelves. New tomes include This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl by Paul Brannigan (DaCapo, $26) and See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould with Michael Azerrad (Little Brown, $24.99).

There’s a pair of fine wonders for the eyes. Rock Seen (Abrams, $45) is a glorious spread of photos by Bob Gruen, from the iconic Clash shot on the cover to a multitude of John Lennon portraits that have become fixed in our collective consciousness. From the Ramones at CBGBs to Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden, it’s five pounds of photos! Instrument by Pat Graham (Chronicle, $29.95) offers his photos of favorite instruments belonging to members of Wilco, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Wire, New Order, and many others.

Two new books are each devoted to a pair of Californians who are unlikely to ever record together: Eddie Van Halen and Beck. The former is by photographer Neil Zlozower (Chronicle, $29.95) and finds the guitarist backstage, onstage and in the studio. The latter is a playfully artful endeavor by photographer Autumn DeWilde (Chronicle, $35) with a dust jacket printed on both sides that opens up into a large circle, and a foreword by the sympathetically inclined filmmaker Michel Gondry.

Electric Eden by Rob Young (Faber & Faber, $25) is subtitled “Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music.” You’ll learn about everyone from the expected (Incredible String Band, Fairport, Pentangle, Nick Drake) to the lost and obscure (Mr. Fox, Bill Fay, Dr. Strangely Strange). While some might argue that there’s too much Jethro Tull and not enough Soft Machine within, Beyond and Before: Progressive Rock Since the 1960s by Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell (Continuum, $24.95) follows the threads from King Crimson and Yes right up through Radiohead. Another often unfairly maligned genre, fusion, is explored in Birds of Fire by Kevin Fellezs (Duke University Press, $23.95). And banjo players and enthusiasts will be glad to receive Crowe on the Banjo (University of Illinois Press, $19.95), Marty Godbey’s biography of the influential J.D. Crowe.

A pair of books look at different eras and aspects of New York City’s music and cultural scene. Love Goes to a Building on Fire by Will Hermes (Faber & Faber, $30) is subtitled “Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever” and covers the era when punk, loft jazz, salsa and disco were all bubbling in the mid-’70s. Ed Sanders’ Fug You (DaCapo, $26.99) explores the Lower East Side counterculture scene of the mid-1960s, which spawned the author’s store (Peace Eye Bookstore) and band (The Fugs).

Rock and Roll Always Forgets by Chuck Eddy (Duke University Press, $24.95) is a collection of 25 years of music criticism, covering everyone from Emmett Miller to Marilyn Manson, the Ramones to Debbie Gibson. At more than 800 pages, Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute (Faber & Faber, $19.99) offers as complete a history of protest songs as you’re likely to find, from Woody Guthrie to Fela Kuti to Public Enemy. Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll (Duke University Press, $24.95) is a wonderful collection of interviews with an assortment of musical eccentrics, originally published in editor Jake Austen’s long-running Roctober magazine. The 33 1/3 series is pushing towards 100 small volumes (Continuum, $12.95 each). Three new ones delve into an album each by an artist from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s: Johnny Cash (American Recordings by Tony Tost), The Rolling Stones (Some Girls by Cyrus R.K. Patell), and Television (Marquee Moon by Bryan Waterman).

PhanFood

Who's got your heady goo balls? Pete Mason does.

The devoted local Phish head has been busy between tours, editing PhanFood: From the Kitchen Pot to the Tour Lot, the follow-up to PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish.

PhanFood is fundamentally a cookbook but it's also a celebration of the kind of grub you can only find in the lot outside a Phish show. Co-edited by Healthy Hippie editor Taraleigh Weathers, the book features such aptly named fare as the "Poster Nutbagel" and "Ain't No Time to Stash the Chicken and Sausage Gumbo."

The two will be signing copies of the book on Sunday (Feb. 20) at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza. Proceeds from sales will go to foodbanks in Albany, Burlington and towns where Phish regularly tours.

The Year in Pictures: Arts

Alicia Solsman

Saratoga Chamber Music Festival founding director Chantal Juillet said goodbye in August after 20 years at SPAC.

 

At the Open Door Bookstore

Photo by Martin Benjamin

 

Remember Them?

Two well-known ex-journalists, who both left significant imprints on the Capital Region’s media landscape, were at the Open Door Bookstore & Gift Gallery in Schenectady on Friday (Dec. 17) to sign their books.

Ed Dague (left) was signing the memoir Six and Eleven: A Television News Anchor’s Story. According to a press release, the book is “a sage and penetrating look at the news business in the Albany metro area, at the people and personalities who both made and reported that news.” On his sharp, to the point, and entertaining Times Union blog In Media Res, Dague wrote “it is a lot better than I expected.”

Dan Lynch (right) was signing The Thunder of Captains: A Novel of the Battle of Saratoga. The former editor, reporter and columnist’s book was praised in Metroland last summer for capturing the “gripping drama of the courageous soldiers behind both lines,” and for its “rich descriptions of life in colonial upstate New York.”

 

Updated to include photo credit & links.

Cookbooks

Very little cooking can happen if you don’t wield a knife well, and that’s one reason why The Zwilling J. A. Henckels Complete Book of Knife Skills by Jeffrey Elliot & James P. DeWan (Robert Rose) leads this list. Another reason is that it’s a terrific book, laying out the construction and design of kitchen knives before teaching different cutting techniques and then going on to show how they apply to a variety of meats and fruits and vegetables. Nicely illustrated and spiral bound for ease of tabletop use, it’s an essential.
We’re going to get awfully healthy as this list goes on, and where better to start than the Mediterranean?
With the success a few years back with The Silver Spoon, Phaidon Press followed up with a similar book about pasta, and this year’s offering is titled Recipes from an Italian Summer. It comes from the Silver Spoon team and further explores what can be done with fresh ingredients from a benevolent climate. Lots of salads. Plenty of grilled items. Unusual fare like ham and kiwi mousse. Even in the dead of winter, it’s filled with inspiration.

Phan Food

Pete "PhanArt" Mason is at it again. The devout Phish fan and Menands resident who brought us PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish, a coffee-table compendium of parking-lot sticker art, posters and T-shirt design, has joined forces with Healthy Hippie editor Taraleigh Weathers to bring us PhanFood: From the Kitchen Pot to the Parking Lot. That's right: An instructional cookbook and encyclopedic celebration of tour grub--from heady garlic grilled cheese to dank veggie burritos, "Ain't no time to stash the chicken and sausage gumbo," "Posternut bagels," and even goo balls.

The book is out on SUNY Press and there's going to be a launch event up at Nectar's in Burlington on Dec. 11. But if you can't make the haul and are still interested in the book, you can order it from their site. All net profits will benefit food pantries in towns that the band visits regularly.

Metroland Holiday Gift Guide!

BOOKS!

TOYS!

MUSIC!

DVDs!

GAMES!

TECH LIFE!

LOCAL/GLOBAL!

Pictures of fun stuff we recommend:

 

(If you're wondering about the TOP image, I didn't write about Holiday CD's this year, as is my wont. Go out and buy, in a local used record store, an old holiday LP like this Firestone tire compilation instead.)

UPDATED to improve layout.