strange and random happenstance

Bookstore: Unabridged Bookstore

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Why I Love Them: Now the story of Unabridged in Chicago is going to be a little back to front, in that I went to one of their offsite events three years prior to making it to their brick and mortar. By back to front I mean that I'm going to talk about the store first and the event second. It was a freakishly cold April day, snow virtually blinded us all the way to Chicago with unseasonal whiteout conditions. After seeing the musical, Matilda, it seemed only right to go to a bookstore as Matilda herself would have done. So we headed up to Unabridged in Boystown and eventually secured parking. The store is about three rooms jammed with books. But it's the special touches, the subsections you wouldn't expect that make Unabridged a wonderful bookstore. The first place to hit is their discount section in the back left of the store, which amazed me the first time I saw it, full of so many books I wanted I didn't know which ones to buy, and yes, I was TRYING to be frugal. I did pretty good grabbing only three books from this section, two of which were ones I'd been eyeing for a few years. Yet this section, despite how epic it is, wasn't what made me love this store. What made me forever want to visit Unabridged whenever I'm in Chicago is that they had a jaw-dropping section of just New York Review Books Classics, which print so much British and Mitford goodness that I squealed with joy. And then I found their section of special edition Penguin books and it looked like my friends might not be able to get me out of there to go eat dinner. Specialty sections are easily the quickest way to my heart! As for the wall of black penguin classics, I might have developed the vapors. 

Best Buy: Though my best buy was my first brush with them resulting in me meeting Neil Gaiman. In 2013 Neil was embarking on his last signing tour promoting The Ocean at the End of the Lane. One of his stops was the Music Box Theatre which was hosting a reading and signing put on by Unabridged and about a mile and a half away from their brick and mortar. Seeing as it was 100 degrees outside we weren't in any mood to walk that distance twice therefore it would be three years later and the polar opposite in weather when I would finally walk through their door! But back to the day at hand. I have talked before about everything coming together to make a perfect day... well this wasn't perfect, it was too hot, the wait was very long, but there were moments that were perfect, and the whole day was memorable, especially the coconut sorbet I had after the event. But the highlight was sitting in the second row of a cold theatre and listing to Neil Gaiman speak. While The Ocean at the End of the Lane will never be my favorite of Neil's books, it will always take me back to sitting there and listening to him read. I can never thank Unabridged enough for getting a chance to not only meet Neil but to tell him how I found him as an author and how reading Neverwhere, after a gruelling several month ordeal reading East Asian Literature to finish my Bachelor's degree, made me actually like reading again. I didn't actually tell him all that, what I told him was that it was the first time ever my cat sat on my lap while I read an entire book. This was something Spot NEVER did. He didn't like me having my attention divided. So here's to stories about cats and Neil. If you really want to read about this day in more detail I wrote about it previously during my Gaiman Gala.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Book Signing, Boystown, Cats, Chicago, Matilda, Music Box Theatre, Nancy Mitford, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, Penguin, Spot, Support Your Brick and Mortar, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Unabridged Bookstore

As summer drew to a close in 2015 my book club took advantage of the fine weather for our meeting and sat in cafe chairs sharing a Caprese salad while the last warm breeze teased the air. It was a day where you could feel the shift of the seasons, summer was ephemeral, much as the impression left by The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Ironically the member of my book club who put Neil's book into the hat was unaware of the unofficial book club outing two years previously, but somehow, the book getting picked, despite the attempted rigging to get The Martian selected, seemed right. The Ocean at the End of the Lane was coming full circle. We got to talk about our previous adventure but having now read the book there was a deeper meaning to that journey. What struck me, and the rest of book club, was that while we all rated it highly we agreed that it was a hard book to discuss, because much like summer, the book was slipping away from our collective conscious.

Much like the unknown narrator's continual memory loss as to what exactly happened in those days with the Hempstocks, this is a book that you enjoy while reading yet somehow when you finish you don't quite remember what happened. Oddly enough I don't think that this is a deterrent for the book. I think often of A Wrinkle in Time and how many endless occasions have led to me re-reading that book since it was first read aloud to me in forth grade, and yet I can not for the life of me tell you what exactly happens in that book. Yet both these books leave behind this feeling of childhood and hopes and dreams and endless possibilities that are just there for the taking. They are both classics in that they capture something true. Something crucial to hope and life. Now The Ocean at the End of the Lane might not be my favorite book by Gaiman, but I connect it to hope, and these wonderful experiences I have had with my friends, and that is pure magic.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Book Clubs, Fall, Gaiman Gala, Gaiman Reminiscence, Hempstocks, Memory, Neil Gaiman, Summer, The Martian, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

On an April day in 2013 I received an email that Neil Gaiman would be coming to Chicago that summer to do an event for his forthcoming book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I didn't even bother to wait, instantly buying my ticket and spreading the word among my friends that they should do likewise so we could have a wonderful adventure together. I was beyond excited because I was finally going to meet Neil. What made it even more momentous was that Neil announced that this would be his last signing tour. He'd still be doing events, just not signings that went on into the wee hours of the morning and left his hand crippled.

Fast forward several months to Tuesday, July 9th. Four of my friends were going with me and we left damn early, arriving in Chicago a little before noon. I had already secured parking in advance, so now all we had to do was wait until the doors opened at 6PM. I think when my friends noticed that there was no line and we had about seven hours to wait they thought I was a little crazy for leaving so early, but by the end of the night they would see the genius of my plan. We ate a delicious lunch a few doors down from the Music Box Theatre, and then ambled into line. Or I should say, we started a line. A line that would soon stretch for blocks and blocks, weaving and snacking over the hot pavement as the rain we were promised didn't materialize and the umbrellas we had brought were soon being deployed to block the harsh rays of the sun as we tried to cling to whatever shelter the marquee of the theatre offered us.

We even started taking turns going to the CVS a few streets down, not to get anything, but to revel in the air conditioning. That sweet sweet air. Eventually the time the doors were to open got nearer. There were actual employees of Unabridged Bookstore on sight... one of which I might have in my heat induced mania yelled at saying they were a line cutter. And yes, I did apologize once I was let in saying it was a long wait and the heat of the day had taken it's toll. Despite being the first ones in line we weren't in the first row... because that was reserved for friends. So we had to content ourselves with the second row.

That's right. There was some floorspace and one row of seats of "special" guests between us and Neil, once he appeared that is. At this point the relief of the cool theatre and having seats started to assuage the doubts of our early arrival on the scene and the hours in the blistering sun. The next hour was spent writing questions down on pieces of paper for Neil to answer in his Q and A, as well as buying even more of his books because I can not pass up books at a book signing and neither can my friends. As for my question for Neil? I know at the time I felt it was very important and I had to know the answer, but it wasn't picked and seeing as I don't even remember what the question was, it couldn't have been that interesting.

When Neil finally took the stage I had a sense of unreality. The long day, the heat, and somehow, here at the end of it, was Neil standing before me reading in that melodious voice of his from The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Whenever I read the section where we are first introduced to the Hempstocks I hear his voice like a siren call and remember the chills I had when he first read them aloud to me. Chills on such a hot day, I didn't think it was possible! Neil also read from Fortunately, the Milk, and it instantly became my most anticipated book of the fall.

But let's get to what it was all about in the end, the signing. Those few seconds in which I could interact one on one with Neil. I had brought with me an old Marvel trading card that used to be my brother's and featured Neil, as well as my copies of The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere. They had said only one item could be brought from home but I brought everything just in case, and it paid off, because they said we could have two items signed besides our copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane and thanks to my friend and fellow toaster Aaron, I got everything signed. Neil was very polite when I pulled out the trading card giving me a little story about how they had airbrushed on his tan in a tale he's probably told many times before but which entranced me.

Yet it was my story that I wanted to tell him, about Neverwhere and a cat. About how the first time I read one of his books my kitty Spotty never left my lap, which was unheard of. Reading Neverwhere is a memory I will always cherish and it's thanks to Neil that I have it. He declared the appropriate thanks to Spot for his fortitude, knowing the fickleness of cats, and signed my copy of Neverwhere. That right there was all I had ever hoped. The chance to tell Neil how his book gave me a memory of my two favorite loves, my cat and reading, which, except for him, were always like water and oil.

My group was done with the signing line at around 9:30PM and right then is when my friends realized my cunning plan. That signing line was to go on until 3AM whereas we went back to that lovely restaurant, had amazing desserts, seriously, a coconut sorbet to die for, got back to the car by 10:30PM and were home in our beds before Neil had even had a chance to put his pen down. It was a day to remember for the rest of my life, much like a day two days later where I went on a walk and got so many mosquito bites that I went into shock. But that's a story for another day. Or a story for never. Yeah, let's never revisit that story.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Book Signing, Cats, Chicago, Fortunately the Milk, Gaiman Gala, Gaiman Reminiscence, Music Box Theatre, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, Spot, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Unabridged Bookstore

"Mister Gaiman. You should hear this toast in my flat middle western, slightly southern accent. I speak quite quick. Perhaps even fast. But my first words, Missssssttttteeerrr Gaaaaaaaimannn are slow and deliberate.

Quite odd indeed.

I should, from the start, say that I met you in graphic novels. That I was a nerdy girl pretending to be a cool nerdy girl and I wanted a comic because I am a painter and yet nothing ever appealed to me. Until Sandman.

And many hundreds of hours and mugs of strong tea and thick lattes later, you became one of my top five.

But many more eloquent writers and readers than me will talk about Sandman.

I should say I’ve read and listened to both versions of American Gods, and while I enjoy Coraline and Neverworld and The Ocean at the End of the Lane better, American Gods is a perfect book. And yet I am sure one of my friends will toast you with some little known mead and the perfect synopsis of why the tenth anniversary is indeed a better choice.

Best leave it.

Instead I want to celebrate the fact that as I write this, it is not my own voice I hear in my head (as usually I do when I write) but yours. I should find this curious but I do not. While I have read practically everything you’ve written (with the exception of the sneezing Panda books that I am saving for my soon to be niece or nephew), I have also listened to everything you’ve written.

For example, at this moment, both “A Study in Emerald,” “Wolves in the Walls,” and “Coraline,” are all downloaded in my phone. For that matter, so is “The View from the Cheap Seats.” I pick a chapter when I want to think about a writer or an idea. I pick a story when I want to be scared or entertained or frankly soothed.

But most of all?

It’s the way you tell your stories aloud. Neither reading nor performing, but telling.

I feel small and unaccountable excited as you spin out anything - interviewing Stephen King, introducing me to Dianna Wynn Jones (for which I will be always grateful), the kittens! that appear like Capra’s crows in so many books, although I did cry when the Opal Miner killed the narrator’s kitten in Ocean - and it reminds my of why books are magic. Of how hearing something I love makes my chest tight and my breath fast. How there can always be new worlds, even in the most boring of places. How books can be stories and stories are told.

Still it is your voice in my head and I think of this idea of the story. A tale you can tell for the simple and complex enjoyment of hearing it. And then I hear you read Neverwhere, and I believe, absolutely believe, that possibly this story is at least a teensy bit real. “I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.” I wanted to live in the London of two Londons. Of Ming China eating terrible scary men and bumbling heroes making it up as they go along. I never wanted it to end.

Except I definitely wanted to find out how it would end up.

So as I toast you, mug of hot chocolate in my hand, I imagine you sitting on a chair next to my bed or at the other end of the couch from me, and I know I need only wait for you to take a breath.

Then you will tell me a story.

And I will listen with a kitten on my lap.

Gaiman readers one and all, be upstanding, raise your mugs of cocoa and give thanks one and all to Mr. Gaiman’s telling of the story.

Which absolutely beats toasting the Haggis in Gaelic." - Courtney

Courtney and I have actually never met in person, but in this day and age what does that really mean? Like many of my book loving friends I first became aware of Courtney through The Rory Gilmore Book Club on Goodreads, but it wasn't until one of our mutual friends insisted we get to know each other better that we noticed a similar taste in books and television. In fact just in requesting this Gaiman toast from her I might have reignited her addiction to Helen Fielding which I also suffer from. But it is her love of the mystical and magical and Gothic that made me know my Gaiman Gala wouldn't be the same without her.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Study in Emerald, American Gods, Cats, Coraline, Gaiman Gala, Gaiman Toast, Goodreads, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, Sandman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The View from the Cheap Seats, Wolves in the Walls

The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: June 18th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter follows the adventures and travails of heroes Joshua Valiente and Lobsang in an exciting continuation of the extraordinary science fiction journey begun in their New York Times bestseller The Long Earth.

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, humankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by “stepping.” A new “America”—Valhalla—is emerging more than a million steps from Datum—our Earth. Thanks to a bountiful environment, the Valhallan society mirrors the core values and behaviors of colonial America. And Valhalla is growing restless under the controlling long arm of the Datum government.

Soon Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a building crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any humankind has waged before."

Ok, firstly, I've been eagerly awaiting this book since the first in the series came out last year and was subsequently awesome, making it onto my top ten list for last year. Secondly, I think it's totally funny that seeing as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett are friends and I saw the two of them AND Stephen Baxter all at the last North American Discworld Convention, that their books would come out on the same day. Problem though... which to read first?

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: June 18th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 192 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.

This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real..."

Not sure if I'm excited for this or not... because really, I love Neil's YA writing so much more...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Neil Gaiman, Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth, The Long War, The Ocean at the End of the Lane