Open Stacks

To deny our place in time is to imperil our perspective, says Marcia Bjornerud, professor of geology and author of TIMEFULNESS. This time on Open Stacks, we expand our view of the Seminary Co-op, with new looks at the Front Table, James Joyce's time-intensive staff favorite ULYSSES, and Bjornerud's poly-temporal thinking and reading to support the claim that, contrary to current trains of thought, time is on our side.

Unwatchable, unreadable, or merely hard to find. It all adds up on this episode of Open Stacks as excesses of art and life are on (and off) display. Uncover your eyes and ears as editors Nicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, and Laura Horak discuss our mediated era and contemporary modes of spectatorship in Unwatchable, and other books worth reading closely. From the front lines of the Front Table, Rachel Galvin's News of War examines early 20th century poetry's critical distance from cultures of war. And Co-op Manager Adam Sonderberg esteems value in books browsed and left behind.

To accept that truth and expression can be easily conveyed is to become a ploy of dark forces, says poet, essayist, and scholar Charles Bernstein, whose "difficult" poems take on the opacity, adjacency, multiplicity and technology of language by "slipping on the banana of words." Picking up where our conversation in the stacks of the Co-op leaves off, James Bridle calls for new metaphors and questions to guide us through our new Dark Age of information.

It's that most wonderful time of the year and our booksellers and books are here to help, surprise, challenge, and delight every reader on your list. From Biography to Cooking (of a sort), indulge in books worth giving and lives worth living, with Imani Perry on the radiant and radical life of playwright Lorraine Hansberry; Norman C. Ellstrand on the romance of plants and your food; and Co-op Booksellers' Top 5 favorite books of 2018.

A bookstore is more than a retail space, and on this episode of Open Stacks we welcome back old friends and longtime members of the Co-op for a celebration of community committed to a sense of time and conversation spoken across the ages. Poet David Ferry goes in search of a communal voice in his landmark translation of Virgil's The Aeneid; peace activist and Indologist David Shulman walks us through the West Bank in Palestine, retracing the "ambiguous grounds for action," freedom, and despair in territories that can't seem to coexist; and Hyde Park's own Michelle Obama returns to the Co-op to kickoff her tour for Becoming.

Our journey into other worlds continues on this episode of Open Stacks in preparation for the after and before-lives of great books, with lions, bears, and very hungry caterpillars (oh my!) that makeup and reveal the environmental wisdom of children's literature in scientist and poet Liam Heneghan's Beasts at Bedtime. Then eavesdrop on the great indoors of the neighborhood bookstore, with educator and activist Bill Ayers and Co-op Booksellers on Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller.

This episode, an interview with fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes, Penguin Book of Hell editor Scott G. Bruce shares hell tales and lessons, and former Co-op Inventory Manager Conor Bean walks us through his reading list for confronting fearful times.

Just before the fantastic Epic Reads Meet-Up this past September at 57th Street Books, we sat down with celebrated YA author Kristen Ciccarelli and our own (National Book Award finalist) Franny Billingsley, who mentored Kristen through the completion of her first novel, The Last Namsara. And it was their first time meeting face-to-face! From why fantasy is an empowering genre to where writers choose to work (hint: bookstores are always close at hand), you can listen in on the conversation right here. Stop by to pick up a signed copy of Ciccarelli's newest book, The Caged Queen, and receive a free Epic Reads tote bag (while supplies last)!

A trick-or-treat special: Penguin Book of Hell editor Scott Bruce tells a hell tale. Hear more from him, along with Jack Zipes and Conor Bean in our next episode of Open Stacks, out November 11.

Music: Zombie Lovesong by Apache Tomcat

Elastic thinking, says theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow, isn't about following but inventing rules, trading analytic for elastic thought, in order to adapt in an endlessly dynamic world, with non-linear approaches to life and work together. On this episode of Open Stacks, we pave new roads not taken, trajectories informed by social practice, social pressure, and the self at one remove, in conversations with Mlodinow on Elastic; art critic and historian Martin Patrick on books that stretched his notion of performance and identity in Across the Art/Life Divide; and booksellers on Canadian writer Sheila Heti's life-changing novel, Motherhood.