Carpenter, Jane H. Betye Saar. Pomegranate, 2003. Cloth, dj, quarto, 116 pp, 69 full color plates. List price: $35.00.  Our in-store sale price: $11.95.

In Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, one of the most unique writers of our time gives us his first sequence of short fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro, who pursued a musical career before dedicating himself to writing, combines the loosely connected five narratives like the movements of a symphony, organically intertwining characters, conversations and motifs from story to story.  Readers will quickly recognize Ishiguro’s signature bittersweet and witty style applied to the more ephemeral form of the short story, as he effectively synthesizes literature with its musical counterpart.  Though the stories are not as fully developed as his longer works, Nocturnes stands on its own as a beautiful and haunting exploration of music in the life’s decrescendos.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. Knopf, 2003. Cloth, dj, octavo, 221 pp. List price: $25.00. Our in-store sale price: $4.95.

Besides the 4th of July, Thanksgiving and its retail counterpart Black Friday are two of the most uniquely “American” holidays. Does standing in lines and fighting the crowds on Black Friday make you a good American? In A Consumers’ Republic, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Lizabeth Cohen argues that during the second half of the twentieth century, good consumerism and good citizenship became inseparable ideals; a good citizen morphed into a good consumer. She describes the post-war landscape of mass consumption, highlighting its economic, racial and gender inequality with provocative historical accuracy and an eye to the future. Complemented by 64 photographs, this bold and pertinent analysis of the creation of the “citizen consumer” brings the buyer’s history into the present and proffers its contributions to the contemporary unrest of the aptly-named 99%.

Cohen, Lizbeth. A Consumers’ Republic. Vintage, 2003. paperback, octavo, 576 pp. List price: $16.95. Our in-store sale price: $5.95.

What do John Wilkes Booth, Paul Robeson and Megan Fox all have in common? Well, it turns out not much besides William Shakespeare. In her new book, Shakespeare and Modern Culture, world premier Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber doesn’t just imply that the sweet swan of Avon remains a heavy hitter in literature classes; she contends that Shakespeare and modern culture are inseparable. From George W Bush and Sex and the City to Sigmund Freud and the foundations of continental philosophy, Garber takes the reader on a lively jaunt through the bawdy bard’s colossal and complex legacy, highlighting the appropriations and misappropriations of character, verse and original thought from ten of his most celebrated plays. This book is not just for serious students of literature, but for anyone interested in the evolution of modern culture, for as Cole Porter said, “If she says your behavior is heinous / Kick her right in the Coriolanus / Brush up on your Shakespeare / And they’ll all kowtow.”

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare and Modern Culture. Pantheon, 2008. Cloth, dj, octavo, 326 pp. List price: $30.00. Our in-store sale price: $12.95.

]]>