Off the Beaten Stacks

obscure, forgotten, rare, overlooked, experimental, foreign, independent, underrated, odd, avant-garde, or just plain beautiful to look at...if you want something different to add to your reading list, you've come to the right place this librarian-run blog updates once a day with a noteworthy book rescued from the depths of the 16,000,000+ holdings found in the SearchOhio library catalog SearchOhio is a growing consortium of (currently) 28 libraries located throughout Ohio; to see if your local library is a member, click here each entry contains a link to the record in the SearchOhio catalog; all you have to do is follow it to request; click here for help. Archive of Previous Posts

[offthebeatenstacks]

Bernard Buffett: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist, by Nicholas Foulkes "Bernard Buffet:The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist tells the remarkable story of a French figurative painter who tasted unprecedented critical and commercial success at an age when his contemporaries were still at art school. Then, with almost equal suddenness the fruits of fame turned sour and he found himself an outcast. Scarred with the contagion of immense commercial success no leper was more untouchable. He was the first artist of the television age and the jet age and his role in creating the idea of a post-war France is not to be underestimated. As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) he was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a discredited and demoralized country." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Martutene, by Ramon Saizarbitoria "Winner of the Basque Country’s Fiction Prize, Martutene is a unique novel destined to become an essential reference of Contemporary World Literature. "Abaitua and Pilar, a gynecologist and a neurosurgeon, and Martin and Julia, a writer and a translator, are two couples worn down by years of marriage who have slid off into a kind of bored decadence. Their group of friends and family complete an insightful portrait of post-independence movement Basque life in which the arrival of Lynn, a refreshing young American sociologist, will trigger unexpected events. "Martutene is a truly outstanding work of fiction in which life and art weave and tangle. An exploration of those thoughts and feelings that expose our miseries and our deepest fears as human beings." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys "In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young, single women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. One of the most honest and distinctive British novelists of the twentieth century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception and sensitivity in an innovative and often controversial way." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio If no copies are available at that link, try this one or this one or this one. (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

On Dialogue, by David Bohm "David Bohm is considered one of the best physicists of all time. He also had a deep interest in human communication and creativity. Influential in both management and communication theory in what is known 'Bohm Dialogue', On Dialogue is both inspiring and pioneering. Bohm considers the origin and very meaning of dialogue, reflecting on what gets in the way of "true dialogue". He argues that dialogue, as a radical form of exploration that allows different views to be presented, leads us beyond the impasse of conflict and argument to the forming of new views." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Nobel Lectures From the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006 "From the political to the aesthetic, Nobel Lectures collects the words of a quarter century of literature laureates, offering a glimpse into the inspirations, motivations, and passionately held beliefs of some of the greatest minds in the world of literature. "Literature laureates from England, China, France, Austria, South Africa, Egypt, Hungary, Trinidad, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Japan, Saint Lucia, Mexico, Spain, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union offer their meditations on imagination and the process of writing along with keen discussions of global affairs, geography and colonialism, and cultural change in a collection where “the force of their political opinions is what truly distinguishes them” (New York). "From Harold Pinter’s passionate lecture on the nature of truth in art and politics to J.M. Coetzee’s allegorical journey through the mysteries of the creative process, from Toni Morrison’s essay on the link between language and oppression to Orhan Pamuk’s tender memories of the influence of his father, each of the pieces—whether the laureate writes poetry, drama, or prose—is a testament to the power of literature to touch us and, every so often, to change the world." Includes the following laureates: Joseph Brodsky Camilo José Cela J.M. Coetzee Dario Fo Nadine Gordimer Günter Grass Seamus Heaney Elfriede Jelinek Imre Kertész Naguib Mahfouz Toni Morrison V.S. Naipaul Kenzaburo Oe Orhan Pamuk Octavio Paz Harold Pinter José Saramago Wole Soyinka Wislawa Szymborska Derek Walcott Gao Xingjian CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn "“Mr. Shahn sets forth his views on both the practice and the purposes of art with a clarity, cogency, and incisiveness that any professional writer might envy, and he manages to interweave with this a good deal of interesting material about his own development as an artist, as well as a running summary of his opinions on contemporary painting in general… The book is highly controversial…also highly stimulating.”—The New Yorker" CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1943-1983 "Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces as Pickpocket, A Man Escaped, Mouchette, and L’Argent, was one of the most influential directors in the history of French film, as well as one of the most stubbornly individual: He insisted on the use of nonprofessional actors; he shunned the “advances” of Cinerama and Cinema-Scope (and the work of most of his predecessors and peers); and he minced no words about the damaging influence of capitalism and the studio system on the still-developing—in his view—art of film. Bresson on Bresson collects the most significant interviews that Bresson gave (carefully editing them before they were released) over the course of his forty-year career to reveal both the internal consistency and the consistently exploratory character of his body of work. Successive chapters are dedicated to each of his fourteen films, as well as to the question of literary adaptation, the nature of the sound track, and to Bresson’s one book, the great aphoristic treatise Notes on the Cinematograph. Throughout, his close and careful consideration of his own films and of the art of film is punctuated by such telling mantras as “Sound...invented silence in cinema,” “It’s the film that...gives life to the characters—not the characters that give life to the film,” and (echoing the Bible) “Every idle word shall be counted.” Bresson’s integrity and originality earned him the admiration of younger directors from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Olivier Assayas. And though Bresson’s movies are marked everywhere by an air of intense deliberation, these interviews show that they were no less inspired by a near-religious belief in the value of intuition, not only that of the creator but that of the audience, which he claims to deeply respect: “It’s always ready to feel before it understands. And that’s how it should be.”" CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor "Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. "Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself – but first she has to make it there, alive." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio Click here for audiobook (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, by Adrienne Mayor "Amazons—fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world—were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons. "But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. "Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons—Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China. "Driven by a detective’s curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Birds & People, by Mark Cocker; photographs by David Tipling "...Vast in both scope and scale, the book draws upon Mark Cocker's forty years of observing and thinking about birds. Part natural history and part cultural study, it describes and maps the entire spectrum of our engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics and the environment. In the end, this is a book as much about us as it is about birds. "Birds & People has been stunningly illustrated by one of Europe's best wildlife photographers, David Tipling, who has travelled in thirty-nine countries on seven continents to produce a breathtaking and unique collection of photographs. The book is as important for its visual riches as it is for its groundbreaking content. "Birds & People is also exceptional in that the author has solicited contributions from people worldwide. Personal anecdotes and stories have come from more than 600 individuals of eighty-one different nationalities. They range from university academics to Mongolian eagle hunters, and from Amerindian shamans to some of the most celebrated writers of our age. The sheer multitude of voices in this global chorus means that Birds & People is both a source book on why we cherish birds and a powerful testament to their importance for all humanity." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Bestiary, by Donika Kelly "Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters—half human and half something else. Donika Kelly’s Bestiary is a catalog of creatures—from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel from “Out West” to “Back East.” Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award Winner Nikki Finney, Bestiary questions what it is that makes us human, that makes us whole." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, by Kia Corthron "The hotly anticipated first novel by lauded playwright and The Wire TV writer Kia Corthron, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter sweeps American history from 1941 to the twenty-first century through the lives of four men—two white brothers from rural Alabama, and two black brothers from small-town Maryland—whose journey culminates in an explosive and devastating encounter between the two families. "On the eve of America's entry into World War II, in a tiny Alabama town, two brothers come of age in the shadow of the local chapter of the Klan, where Randall--a brilliant eighth-grader and the son of a sawmill worker--begins teaching sign language to his eighteen-year-old deaf and uneducated brother B.J. Simultaneously, in small-town Maryland, the sons of a Pullman Porter--gifted six-year-old Eliot and his artistic twelve-year-old brother Dwight--grow up navigating a world expanded both by a visit from civil and labor rights activist A. Philip Randolph and by the legacy of a lynched great-aunt. "The four mature into men, directly confronting the fierce resistance to the early civil rights movement, and are all ultimately uprooted. Corthron's ear for dialogue, honed from years of theater work, brings to life all the major concerns and movements of America's past century through the organic growth of her marginalized characters, and embraces a quiet beauty in their everyday existences. "Sharing a cultural and literary heritage with the work of Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, and Edward P. Jones, Kia Corthron's The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter is a monumental epic deftly bridging the political and the poetic, and wrought by one of America's most recently recognized treasures." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Charlotte, by David Foenkinos "Internationally literary phenomenon, multiple award-winner, and massive bestseller with over 500,000 copies in print in France and rights sold in 20 countries, Charlotte tells the story of artist Charlotte Salomon—born in pre-World War II Berlin to a Jewish family traumatized by suicide. "Obsessed with art, and with living, Charlotte attended school in Germany until it was too dangerous to remain, fled to France, and was interned in a bleak work camp from which she narrowly escaped. Newly free, she spent two years in almost total solitude, creating a series of autobiographical art—images, words, even musical scores—that together tell her life story. A pregnant Charlotte was killed in Auschwitz at the age of 26, but not before she entrusted her life's work to a friend, who kept it safe until peacetime. The result, an extraordinary novelavant la lettre, was eventually published as Life? or Theatre? (and now reissued by Overlook), a unique, relentlessly complete artistic expression. "In Charlotte, David Foenkinos—with passion, life, humor, and intelligent observation—has written his own utterly original tribute to Charlotte Salomon's tragic life and transcendent art. His gorgeous, haunting, and ultimately redemptive novel is the result of a long-cherished desire to honor this young artist. Infused with the emotion of a writer who connects deeply with his subject, and masterfully and sensitively translated by Sam Taylor, Charlotte is a triumph of creative expression, a monument to genius stilled too soon, and an ode to the will to survive." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1, by Michael Kupperman "Fans and comedy cognoscenti alike, basking devotedly in the glow of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, have made it the smash hit humor comic of the decade. And now the first four issues of Michael Kupperman’s revered series are finally collected into one deluxe hardcover. Even better, Kupperman has taken the original two-color printing and made the entire book full color! These tales are more thrizzling than ever! "The stories in Tales Designed to Thrizzle made their debut in 2009 on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim program as Snake ’N’ Bacon. The show, a mix of live-action, puppetry and animation, stars David Rakoff (This American Life), Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live), Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords), James Urbaniak (The Venture Brothers), and Dan Bakkedahl (The Daily Show), and is produced by Kupperman, Robert Smigel (SNL, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Scott Jacobson (The Daily Show) and Rich Bloomquist (The Daily Show)." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

The Girl on the Fridge, by Etgar Keret "A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad—such are the denizens of Etgar Keret's dark and fertile mind. The Girl on the Fridge contains the best of Keret's first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Artists Unframed: Snapshots from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, by Merry A. Foresta Tucked away among the letters, diaries, and other ephemera in the Smithsonian's archives lies a trove of rarely seen snapshots of some of the twentieth century's most celebrated artists. Unlike the familiar official portraits and genius-at-work shots, these humble snaps capture creative giants with their guard down, in the moment, living life. Pablo Picasso stands proudly on a balcony with young daughter Maya. A tiny, meticulously inked annotation penned by an unknown hand proclaims that "he's very much in love." Jackson Pollock morosely carves a turkey while his mother, Stella, and wife, Lee Krasner, look on. A young Andy Warhol clowns for the camera with college friend Philip Pearlstein, and in a later shot more closely resembles his famously enigmatic public self at a gallery opening with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Artists Unframed presents more than one hundred spellbinding snapshots from the personal lives of legendary artists such as Alexander Calder, Georgia O'Keeffe Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ansel Adams, Elaine de Kooning, David Hockney, Dizzy Gillespie, Marcel Duchamp, E. M. Forster, Eero Saarinen, John Waters,and many others." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)

[offthebeatenstacks]

Vertigo, by Joanna Walsh "Wry, alien, and intimate, the linked stories in Vertigo take us—with lucid precision—into the negative space of the everyday . . ." CLICK HERE to request through SearchOhio (Note: Edition and cover art may vary.)