Books I Bought While Traveling, Part 3
New to the TBR: Novels by Frank Herbert, Patrick Süskind and Jean Rhys
Picking up where we left off, our summer road trip continued as Donna and I drove from Las Cruces, N.M., to Tucson, Ariz., where we stayed at a resort. It was great to get off the road and relax for a few days before we headed back to Brooklyn. While Donna was getting a spa treatment, I sought out a used bookstore. But after we returned home, when I was organizing this three-part roundup, I realized I had a problem. I had two groups of three books, and one group of two. Oh no! I was one book short! What to do?! I thought about joining Donna on her work trip to Philadelphia just to hit a bookstore. But then, I remembered! I had picked up another book in Washington, D.C., earlier this year that I forgot to include in a previous installment. Phew! Crisis averted. Here are the books I bought. Remember to vote on what I should review first.
‘Children of Dune’ by Frank Herbert
I love Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ series, and I have reviewed both the original ‘Dune’ and the sequel ‘Dune Messiah.’ In my review of ‘Dune Messiah,’ I included a poll asking if I should review more ‘Dune’ books in the future. You voted overwhelmingly in favor. So, I kept an eye out for a vintage copy of the third book in the series, ‘Children of Dune,’ whenever I hit a used bookstore. I found this copy at The Book Stop in Tucson. I was excited because it has a design similar to my copy of the first book. But now I have another problem. Look at this:
The middle book is totally out of place! It’s untenable, right? Would I be a madman to replace it? Anyway, as I was writing today’s newsletter, I discovered my copy of ‘Children of Dune’ has a mail-in card for a Long Island-based science-fiction book club still attached inside. What a cool thing to find in a book from 1977! The card even has artwork of a weird-looking dude who looks like he could be from space OR from Long Island. I’ll show it to you in the review. Anyway, this novel is billed as the climax to the ‘Dune’ series (which, of course, it isn’t), and the back-cover description says that the planet Arrakis is turning lush and green, and the Spice is flowing, but nefarious forces are conspiring against Paul Atreides’s ‘supernormal’ children. Exciting!
‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ by Patrick Süskind
We were settling in for the night in Las Cruces, and I was looking at my phone. On Instagram, I saw a post where a bookstagrammer (I forgot who) was talking about this novel, which I had never heard of, and described it as Kurt Cobain’s favorite book. This factoid is not news—here’s a Literary Hub piece about it—but it was news to me, and I stashed it in my brain like:
I found this copy of Patrick Süskind’s ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” at The Book Stop. The book itself seems to have gone on its own journey to get to Tucson. An inside page has an ink stamp from a bookstore in Encinitas, Calif. I did some internet sleuthing, and it seems that the store, The Book Trader, no longer exists. But in its former location there is another bookstore: Artifact Books. A post on its Instagram page shows another book with the same stamp and mentions the connection between the two stores. I love stuff like this! But also, a previous owner had taken a magenta Sharpie and scrawled a weird hashtag across the top of the paperback and on an inside page. I didn’t love that. So I cut the page out and used a marker to blacken the top edge of the book. I love the creepy cover and the description on the back: ‘Once upon a time, in 18th-century France, there lived a human monster unlike anything mankind has ever known. Enter the world of an evil genius, a murderer so depraved that only the most hideous of crimes could satisfy his lust…’ Sounds perfect for the Halloween season!
‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys
On the same trip to Washington where I picked up Fleur Jaeggy’s ‘The Water Statues’ at Kramers, I had forgotten that I also had gone to Second Story Books and picked up ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys. I didn’t know anything about it, but I had seen copies pop up for sale several times on Womb House Books. I remembered it had been turned into a movie, and the title intrigued me enough to want to get it, but someone always bought it before I could. When I saw it on display at Second Story, I was like:
Apparently, this novel was written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre.’ The description reads: ‘A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay for her ancestors’ sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak British home.’ Wow! That sounds intense. What do you think of these books? Have you read any of them? Let me know in the comments, and tell me which to review first by taking this poll:
Books on GIF does not solicit review copies. We feature books we purchase at independent bookstores around New York City and on our travels, or were borrowed electronically from the Brooklyn Public Library.
Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Donna for editing this newsletter!
Until next time,
Mike
I hope you go down the Jean Rhys rabbit hole and love her writing as much as I do. Her writing and her life have fascinated me for a long time. Both as a cautionary tale and how turning our lives into art is a means to surviving it all. No one has written about being a women at the whims of the world quite like her. ♥️💔
I voted for Perfume. Wouldn't mind rereading it. The Wide Sargasso Sea was a book I'd been meaning to read for years. When I finally did, I completely bounced off Rhys' prose. Not every writer is for everyone, I suppose. And not to be a total Debbie Downer, but Children was the toughest volume of Dune for me to get through so far. God Emperor was more engaging. Still... the deeper in, the stronger the sense that plotting has left the building. Big ideas remain, however. Herbert certainly had a unique vision for his fictional universe. But, you know, I'm looking forward to your reviews because maybe you'll change my mind!