Western Book Roundup
Two Mystery Bookstores and Proulx’s “Tits-Up” In The New Yorker
By Jenny Shank, 6-11-08
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| Annie Proulx, photo by Karen Cipolla, courtesy of Simon & Schuster. | |
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Alicia Wallace of the Daily Camera reported this week that a mix-your-own wine store, The Blending Cellar, will move into the space on Boulder’s Pearl Street recently vacated by High Crimes Mystery Bookstore, which converted to an online-only operation in February. But another regional mystery bookshop is thriving: Jeff Baker of The Oregonian reported that Portland’s Murder By The Book Mystery Bookstore is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary (via Shelf Awarness). Owner Jill Hinkley attributes the store’s longevity in a tough market to “loyal customers,” and Baker notes some other ways that Murder By The Book stands out:
“Not every bookstore allows its customers to rent books and return them. Not every bookstore has a system to remind regulars if they’ve already bought a particular title. Not every bookstore divides one genre into more than 20 categories, including ‘The Butler Did It,’ ‘Shot on Location,’ ‘For Crime Out Loud’ and ‘Cherchez La Femme.’”
The AP reported that the New York City Opera will adapt Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” into an opera that will debut in 2013. In other Proulx news, the June 9 New Yorker summer fiction issue features a new story called ”Tits-Up in A Ditch,” which, judging from the title alone, sounds as though it’d make a fine opera, too.
Patti Thorn, books editor at the Rocky Mountain News, ran an all-Colorado books section last week with five features, including my review of David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (I also interviewed the author here), Desiree Marie Belmarez’s interview with Jessica Brody, the Colorado-raised author of The Fidelity Files, and Vince Darcangelo’s review of Unlucky Lucky Days, the debut short story collection by Denver musician Daniel Grandbois.
Several regional books recently won awards, including Wayne Sheldrake’s Instant Karma: The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum (published by Denver’s Ghost Road Press), which won ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Gold prize for Adventure/Sports. Check out Krista Crabtree’s review of the book and David Frey’s interview with Sheldrake here. Sonya Unrein of Ghost Road Press noted that “Guillermo Vidal’s Boxing for Cuba was a finalist for the same contest in the Autobiography category, and the book is currently a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, nonfiction.” The multi-talented Bill Vidal is also the deputy mayor of Denver.
Finally, the Independent Publisher Book Awards (the Ippy Awards) honored several regional books, which is only natural, given that they have a category called West-Mountain: Best Regional Fiction. The winners:
Gold: Where the Rivers Run North, by Sam Morton (Sheridan County Historical Society Press)
Silver: The Arc and the Sediment, by Christine Allen-Yazzie (Utah State University Press)
Bronze: Coyota, by Martha Egan (Papalote Press)
And in the West-Mountain – Best Regional Non-Fiction category:
Gold: New Geographies of the American West: Land Use and the Changing Patterns of Place, by William R. Travis (Island Press)
Silver: Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of the Grand Canyon, by Elias Butler and Tom Myers (Puma Press)
Bronze: Wild About Wildflowers: Extreme Botanizing in the Crested Butte, Wildflower Capital of Colorado, by Katherine Darrow (WildKat Publishing Co.); Brave New West, by Jim Stiles (University of Arizona Press); Natural Revelations, by Susan Swartz (Susan Swartz Studios)
And Colorado writer Gary Schanbacher picked up another honor for his collection Migration Patterns, tying for Bronze in the Short Story Fiction Category.
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Comments
In short: it's a great read. She certainly knows how to wrap small-town, rural America up in a package and make everyone want a piece.