A few months ago, we believed the pandemic was waning, and that by September vaccinated persons would be able to gather safely again. Our Collectors’ Book Salons are nice things where unusual bibliophiles find friendship and explore one another’s passions, but sometimes our behavior does not warrant nice things. We were looking forward to resumption of our book-nerdy soirées but at this moment in August, I believe public health is more important than our intellectual fun. Our rare book room is too small for me to feel comfortable encouraging unmasked guests with food and drinks to gather.

To avoid conflict with holidays, we do not host Collectors Book Salons in November and December. Looking to the future, we hope we will be able to safely gather at the end of January. If we remove political nonsense from the health crisis, maybe we can have nice things next year.

The pandemic years have been hard for everyone in different ways and to different degrees. I am grateful that my family and our staff have remained uninfected by CoViD19 and that we now are all vaccinated. While emerging from the pandemic shut-down intact, I believe everyone has been stressed with worry and uncertainty. For Lila Weller’s safety, she stopped coming to work in our bookstore in March 2020 at the age of 104. The reduced physical and mental engagement of being sequestered at home affected her much. Nonetheless, she was alert and in good health until the final weeks of her life.

She passed away in her sleep on April 15th. She would say, “Tax day,” as she did for half a century as our financial manager. I have always felt her contributions to our bookstore were as important as Sam’s, but Lila was a quiet person and many regular customers did not meet her. I do not own a cellphone or use social media. During the pandemic, I participated, sort-of, in a few zoom meetings without becoming comfortable there. When my mom died, I really could not embrace the idea of complicating my stretched emotions with a virtual memorial.

This past spring, it seemed the world would be much safer by autumn, and I decided to postpone my mother’s memorial for half a year so it could be done in person. Although the pandemic is not over, I am now planning my mother’s memorial for the evening of Monday, October 25th, the date she would have turned 106. She will also be memorialized on September 18th at the Celebration of Life Monument on Library Square with others who donated bodies and organs to persons in need or to science. At her request, Lila’s body was donated to The University of Utah’s School of Medicine.

Here is a unique chance to own the rare, original Royal Charter of the Boy Scouts Association with hand-written amendments by founder Robert Baden-Powell! This undated small narrow folio contains 19 pages with “The Royal Charter and Bye-Laws.” The original charter was printed in 1912. Extensive efforts located no record of a second Charter being printed prior to the date of Baden-Powell’s notes from 1915. It is our determination that this is a copy of the original 1912 Charter marked up for a later version, a seriously rare piece of history and scouting treasure. $12,000.

“There is a crisis in the archives. The contemporary world requires that increasingly vast amounts of material be archived…” begins the cover text of Lost in the Archives: Alphabet City No. 8, published as the companion volume to Canada’s entry in the 8th International Venice Biennial for Architecture, 2002. Edited by Rebecca Comay, these 570 pages contain 57 intriguing essays by writers including Derrida and Flaubert. Hip graphics. Heavy untreated buff wraps are lightly bumped and soiled. $500

From Sam Weller’s collection comes a first edition of a very scarce book by Will Durant, the historian philosopher who, with Ariel his wife, is best remembered for their massive, widely read 11 volume set, The Story of Civilization. In 1930, after a visit to India, Durant wrote The Case for India, which is a bold indictment of British control and concomitant suffering of the Indian people, published 17 years before overcoming the Raj. A very scarce first edition in a dust jacket. $350

A small portfolio containing 21 bright color prints of contemporary Chinese painter Qi Mengguang. Bold and surreal. $125

Lila Weller was a reader, a very avid reader, and a subtly cool cat. Newly published books are not yet rare and most lose value with time. But any curious reader who chooses her own books will sometimes buy books that gain value with time. Rare book from my mother’s collection were acquired by her for reading and I’m sure their future value did not concern her. Lila was a fan of jazz and old and curious enough to have bought seminal books that are today hard to locate. Here are four first editions of uncommon Jazz titles in dust jackets. Lila’s copies!

Receive 20% off when you purchase during September & October

What does it mean to be Mexican, especially in the US? This question nags the family at the heart of The House of Broken Angels. “The sibs all thought Little Angel was cheating the system somehow. A culture thief. A fake Mexican. More gringo than anything.” Does being born in Mexico make you more authentic, as Little Angel’s half-siblings think? Or is it more valid having been born in America, as a chicano? Is it better knowing your ancestors struggled in the States to build a better life for you, just so long as you don’t squander it? But to be a mestizo, like Little Angel, isn’t valid at all. You’re not Latin enough, you’ll never understand what it means to be Mexican. At the same time, the white kids are confused by you, they ask “What are you?” The House of Broken Angels had me thinking about these questions of identity, connecting them to my own family and experiences, and ultimately made me adore this book.

In The House of Broken Angels, family patriarch Big Angel de la Cruz is dying, and he wants to go out with a bang! One last, big family party. However, shoving everyone in a house for the weekend, feeding them cake, and demanding they be quiet and polite for a few hours, proves to be very difficult. Everyone has their memories and stipulations they refuse to let go of. None of this matters to Big Angel—he won’t let his last moments with his family fall apart. The show must go on! So everyone gathers for the patriarch. The book is full of messes and emotion, and every reader will find something to connect with.

Big Angel is one of the most stubborn and hot headed characters I’ve ever read about. Never in the wrong, even when he tears his family members down, he manages all the while to remain lovable. His relationship with his younger half-brother Little Angel is endearing. Despite their differences, they always manage to remain family and forgive one another. That’s the main thing about keeping a family together: learning how to constantly forgive, accepting one another while acknowledging when you are in the wrong. All of these virtues can be seen in the closing of the book. Families can be intricate and convoluted at times, but they can also be peaceful and alluring. It is always important to remember these moments. 

The book largely focuses on the relationship between the two brothers, and the validation they felt in being Mexican. Little Angel is in a battle to prove to his half-siblings that he is worthy of their attention. He’s often shrugged off, and when he attempts to talk in Spanish, the answers he receives are always in English. Despite his love for his younger brother, Big Angel gives in to these temptations to undermine Little Angel. It has been an issue their entire lives, and at times has caused massive rifts between them. Little Angel questions whether or not to consider his half-siblings as family, or if he even fits into their family. No family is perfect. At the end of the novel, the characters forget, if only for a moment, these neglectful events—all for Big Angel. No matter how chaotic they may be, the family comes together as one in the end.

The House of Broken Angels is a lovely novel depicting the irritation and love that comes with family, one that also recognizes forgiveness and humility. The necessities involved in keeping a family together, even if it stays in the midst of dysfunction, are represented well in this story. After all, where would anyone be without their chaotic familia?

I highly recommend this novel, from my wacky familia to yours. I also recommend reading it at Mestizo Coffeehouse on North Temple. There, the atmosphere of Mexico will surround you, and you’ll even find local Latin artists. It’s a must visit, and will create a immersive experience to go with The House of Broken Angels.

Anthony Doerr

Scribner

978-1-9821-6843-8

$30.00 Hardcover

When an author has already written the most reader-beloved book in recent memory, as Anthony Doerr has done with his Pulitzer Prize winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, his new book Cloud Cuckoo Land requires a revised methodology to measure how far he has surpassed his previous work. It should be weighed in carats like a massive gem, or in megatons for its impact, or in some impossible combination of both. If I was Anubis balancing this book like a human heart on my cosmic scale, what counterweights would I use? My first impulse would be to stack David Mitchell's groundbreaking, 21st-century classic Cloud Atlas on top of Richard Powers' Pulitzer Prize bestseller The Overstory. And if I still needed more heft to balance the scale, I'd add Albanian author and inaugural International Booker Prize winner Ismail Kadaré's book The Siege to the pile. 

 

Like Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Cloud Cuckoo Land juxtaposes personal struggles against social injustice, superstition, and empowered arrogance across three eras in the past, present and future. Also like Mitchell, Doerr's characters are living, breathing, walk-off-the-page singularities, utterly immune to cliché and stereotype. 

 

Similar to direct action environmentalists in Powers' The Overstory, in Cloud Cuckoo Land, present-day preteen, outsider and nature-lover Seymour, attempting to avenge destruction of his personal patch of Eden, triggers events in present-day Idaho that threaten to escalate into a small town disaster. Five hundred years in the past, Anna and Omeir find themselves entrapped on opposing sides of the 1453 siege of Constantinople, echoing loudly the Ottoman Empire's assault on a medieval fortress-city in Kadare's The Siege. And, as if reflecting Mitchell's distopian future in Cloud Atlas, in the not-too-distant future, Kontance, in solitary lockdown on an interstellar generation ship, searches for an exoplanet to replace her dying home. 

 

Cloud Cuckoo Land's epic and intimate tapestry spanning time and place may be evocative of similar stories, but it is never, even slightly, derivative. And it is thoroughly laced with Anthony Doerr's hyper-empathic imagination. Inevitably, each era's personal quantum entanglements are woven together in surprising ways: the ancient threads of the lost-and-found Greek text origin of the title suspending the diverse characters in their mesh. 

 

Cloud Cuckoo Land will be published September 28, 2021. Come in, call, email, or visit us online to pre-order!

Prepare to cross your bones and dot your ayes with these reads!

We’re delighted to once again partner with the Utah Humanities Book Festival to bring you a variety of readings, conversations and signings this fall! Our events will be both in person and online.

Festival events are indicated in the events below with "UHBF." We look forward to seeing you!

If you need any accommodations, please contact palomo@utahhumanities.org. For a full lineup of Festival events, click here.

Join us for this virtual poetry reading with Susan Nguyen, Dear Diaspora, Sara Sams, Atom City, and Bo Schwabacher, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs. (Poetry)

9/28 TUESDAY, 6-8 PM — Open Mic Night at WBW

PLEASE NOTE: Open Mic will be CANCELED this month for the Alix E. Harrow event.

Check out our YouTube channel to watch even more excellent events with favorite authors.

Come visit us!

Ebooks available through Hummingbird and Kobo