New Releases [Jan. 31st, 2010]

Award winning translator, memoirist and novelist Bruce Benderson has a new fiction title, out from Semeiotext(e), Pacific Agony. The comic novel A Chapter of Hats by Machado de Assis is out in paperback. One of our best sellers of the new year is The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll. Comes highly recommended by the likes of Johnathan Letham, Ed Park and Bruce Wagner. The much awaited biography Raymond Carver, a Writer’s Life by Carol Sklenicka has been in stock since November.

Keith Waldrop’s poetry collection Trancendental Studies, A Trilogy, for which he won the National Book Award is in stock, as is the aphoristic, open ended manifesto Notes on Conceptualisms from poets (and novelist in the latter case) Robert Fitterman and Vennessa Place, is in stock, published as part of Ugly Duckling Presse’s Dossier series. Venessa Place’s earlier books, the ‘short story’ Dies, and the novel La Medusa, from Fiction Collective 2 are in stock as well. The collection The Map as Art, Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, edited by Katherine Harmon and published by Princeton Architectural is an amazing gift book, as well as being a serious study of the topic.

New releases.

Percival Everett’s most recent novel is finally in stock: I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Regular customers will know that Peter Handke’s Crossing the Sierra de Gredos has been featured in the store for awhile, but deserves a mention here. Christine Schutt’s All Souls, her only full length novel since Florida is in, wrapped in a horribly generic cover which in no way reflects the contents of this weirdest of all girl’s private school novels. Humanimal: A Project for Future Children, Bhanu Kapil’s poetic essay and treated ‘travel document’ based in the well known 1920 discovery of two girls living with wolves is back in stock.

Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s eagerly awaited followup to Empire (published in 2000) is now available. The only collection of writing to intelligently address Michael Jackson as an aesthetic and social phenomena The Resistable Demise of Michael Jackson, edited by Mark Fischer (a.k.a. k-punk) is in quantity. An easily overlooked art book Steve Wolfe on Paper just arrived: he makes mouth watering screen print reproductions of worn vintage modern paperbacks. Finally, fans of Joe Sacco should know that both his most recent graphic novels are here, Fixer and Footnotes in Gaza along with Dash Shaw’s amazing The Unclothed Man

Some Kind of Cheese Orgy: a poetry reading with Linh Dinh, a.rawlings and Angela Szczepaniak

Tuesday, February 2 – 7pm, in store. Admission to this event is FREE. But we will pass the hat – the magical hat. Join us for a special literary event at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, featuring Vietnamese-American poet Linh Dinh and local poets a.rawlings and Angela Szczepaniak.

ABOUT LINH DINH
Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and five books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (2003), American Tatts (2005), Borderless Bodies (2006) Jam Alerts (2007) and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy (2009). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007 and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among many other places. Linh Dinh is also the editor of the anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and Three Vietnamese Poets (2001), and translator of Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (2006). Blood and Soap was chosen by the Village Voice as one of the best books of 2004.

“Reading Linh Dinh is a tonic and a revelation. His poems might have taken off the top of Dickinson’s head, and then some. Linh Dinh raids and reinvents the language with an ardor bordering on delirium.” — Rachel Loden

“Linh Dinh’s is a unique voice in contemporary American literature. He writes with the raging wit and the soul of a poet.” — Jessica Hagedorn

“Linh Dinh is one of the most consistently surprising writers around. One can find sources & roots for his writing, explain the traces of surrealism through the presence, say, of the French in Vietnam (tho they were driven out a decade before he was born), note that he is hardly the only good or successful Vietnamese American poet, let alone the only poet to come from a working class background, yet he is not writing “about” or even “toward” nor “from” any one of these contexts so much as he is through them – they are lenses, filters, that condition his perspective on everyday life. Imagine what any other poet with this strong a sense of form would have had to become in order to write such poetry. Ted Berrigan, for example. Berrigan shares Linh’s class background, which enables him to be as ruthless in a different way as Linh is in his. But the comparison stops there. Linh is writing straightforward poetry, but from a perspective shared by almost no one else. This kind of exile is far deeper than mere geography. Reading Borderless Bodies, you can feel Linh’s deep loneliness on every page & realize that there are aspects of his poetry that you can’t find anywhere else. We probably haven’t had a writer this singular since the death of William Burroughs.”
— Ron Silliman

ABOUT THE ANGELAS
a.rawlings is a poet, editor and multidisciplinary artist. In 2001, she received the bpNichol Award for Distinction in Writing upon graduating from York University. rawlings co-organized the Lexiconjury Reading Series, worked for The Mercury Press, and has lead copious writing workshops. Her first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), received an Alcuin Award for Book Design. rawlings recently received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship; she has used it to spend time in Belgium and Iceland developing three new manuscripts and collaborating on sound and kinetic poetry. rawlings continues to split her life experiences between Belgium, Canada, and Iceland.

Angela Szczepaniak’s writing has appeared in Mad Hatter’s Review, Pilot, P-Queue, Phoebe and FOURSQUARE, among other journals and anthologies. She recently participated in a hygiene-themed poetry-art project with LOCCAL, and as a result some of her work can be found on placards in the better public restrooms of Seattle. She studies and teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives mainly in Toronto. Szczepaniak’s debut poetry collection, Unisex Love Poems, combines fiction, poetry, etiquette advice, slapstick legal antics, and gruesomely illustrated recipes for sweetbreads and love letters into a parody of manners and conduct. An autopsy of language, it makes you savour the visceral, tangible quality of the word.

Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto by Liz Worth

Monday January 25th, 7pm – Admission is FREE – Takes place in the store.
Liz Worth, who was born in 1982, was inspired by fiction to compile a book of interviews with first wave punk rockers from the Toronto scene: “It actually wasn’t until I came across a novel called 1978 by Daniel Jones of Toronto that I learned there had been a first wave punk scene right here. While the story of a group of downtown kids living in chaos is fictional, the bands and venues referenced are all true. After reading names like the Diodes, the Viletones and the Poles, I took a trip to my favorite music store.” And the rest, as they could say, is oral history.

This Ain’t The Rosedale Library was founded in 1979 and its first location shared a front door with The Record Pedlar which was a source for recordings from Toronto as well as imported items and was a punk hangout. The New Rose was a store located at Queen and Parliament just east of the book store and record store. The New Rose was home to a number of the colourful characters who spoke to Liz Worth about the 70s punk scene. The owners of This Ain’t The Rosedale Library were and are personal friends of many of that scene’s figures, especially the late Jones. Dan Bazuin, partner emeritus of the bookstore, organized the light shows for the 70s band Oh Those Pants! “Treat Me Like Dirt” was published by Ralph Alfonso’s BongoBeat Records. Ralph was the doorman/manager for the punk club Crash ‘n’ Burn and managed the Diodes. So the gathering on Monday, January 25 may be a reunion of sorts, but it will not indulge in nostalgia. There will be musical and writerly mystery guests. There will be a punky Q & A. Liz will sign copies of her book.
Fun will be had by all.

Back in stock! [Jan 17, 10]

A few of our feature titles, quickly made unavailable by the holiday rush are back in stock. Rose Alley, the compulsively readable, hilarious and densely layered first novel from Dalkey Archive editor Jeremy M. Davies is back on our shelves. Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell and here earlier collection of essays Landscapes for Politics […] are once again in, along with Barbara Ehrenreich’s Brightsided, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, in many ways its antithesis. Quickly running into its third printing is The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by R. Crumb and also available again is the summer release we were late in getting: American Radical, the Life and Times of I.F. Stone. Finally, the much sought after Barf Manifesto from Dodie Bellamy (Ugly Duckling Presse), to be found along with a few other store faves on Time Out New York’s top ten books of 2009 list is here.

Treat Me Like Dirt, an Oral History of Punk In Toronto and Beyond, 1977-1981

The much anticipated music history title Treat Me Like Dirt, an Oral History of Punk In Toronto by Liz Worth is on sale NOW. Published by Bongo Beat (record label) and comprising 374 pages of interviews with b/w illustrations. Covering Diodes, Viletones, Teenage Head, B-Girls, Curse, Demics, Dishes, Forgotten Rebels, Johnny & the G-Rays, The Mods, The Poles, Simply Saucer, The Ugly, etc.

New arrivals.

We need to draw attention to a few recent fiction titles of note, Occupied City by David Peace, second in his Tokyo trilogy, and Some things that Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohre, from the always reliable Two Dollar Radio. Also in the store are two recent reprints, The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis, Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer again from Two Dollar Radio. Alexander Trocchi’s poetry, Man At Leisure has been reprinted and is back on our shelves.

Non-fiction new releases:
Psycho Too by Will Self
Angels of Anarchy, Women Artists and Surrealism by Roger Carter Allmar and Mary Ann Caws
Heidegger; The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy by Emmanuel Faye

James Gunn’s top ten for 2009

American Romances by Rebecca Brown; City Lights
Bad Peny Blues by Cathi Unsworth; Serpent’s Tail
The Book of Jokes by Momus; Dalkey Archive
Born Yesterday: the News as a Novel by Gordon Burn; Faber and Faber
The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee; Semiotext(e)
The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper; Seal Books
The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman; Arsenal Pulp Press
Metrostop Paris: History From the City’s Heart by Gregor Dallas; John Murray
The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson edited by Mark Fisher; Zero Books
Waiting for the Sun: a Rock & Roll History of Los Angeles by Barney Hoskyns; Backbeat Books

Jesse Huisken’s top ten 2009

8 x 8 x 7 by Colin Smith; Krupskaya. On of the poets of the Kootenay School of Writing.
Short Life Housing by Chris Cheek; The Gig.
St. Petersburg by Andre Bely; Pushkin Press. A new translation.
Institutional Critique, an Anthology of Artist’s Writings, various; MIT.
The Tanners by Robert Walser; New Directions.
Interogative Mood by Padgett Powell; Farrar, Straus & Girioux. This book won me over from complete irritation to total enjoyment by page eight.
The Mandarin by Aaron Kunin; Fence Books. Maddeningly self indulgent and brilliant.
Western Marxism and the Soviet Union by Marcel van der Linden; Haymarket Books.
The Most Evil by Steve Hodel; Dutton.
Zero Books: Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko but Don’t Get Stockhausen, Militant Modernism, Capitalist Realism, One Dimensional Woman, The Resistible Life of Michael Jackson. I know this is a whole imprint, but these books are all great. A contingent younger cultural theorists (mostly of a Marxist post-structuralist type) taking over the New Age imprint Zero. (Zero Books).

Honorable mentions: 8 x 10 by Michael Turner, Rose Alley by Jeremy M. Davies, The Political Mind by George Lakoff, Take It Joshua Beckman, Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Born Yesterday, the News as Novel by Gordon Burns, The Story of Crass, and new in paperback Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms, and from late 2008, Michel Bernstein’s All the Kings Horses.

Co-owner and founder Charlie Huisken’s top ten … or so … titles for 2009

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers; McSweeney’s
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley; Free Press
Rose Alley by Jeremy M. Davies; Counterpath Press
Buying Cigarettes for the Dog by Stuart Ross; Freehand Books
Heaven is Small by Emily Schultz; House of Anansi
Febuary by Lisa Moore; House of Anansi
The Importance of Being Iceland by Eileen Myles; Semiotext(e)
griddle talk: a yeer uv bill n carol dewing brunch by Carol Malyon and bill bissett; talonbooks
The Taste of Penny by Jeff Parker; Snare Books
Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life by Brian Brett; Greystone
Do Not Touch by Eric Laurrent; Dalkey Archive