James Hynes

Very sad news from Ann Arbor today: Shaman Drum Bookshop, one of the great bookstores in North America, is shutting down for good on June 30. I've written earlier about Shaman Drum's troubles, which are the result of the usual suspects—the Internet, the chains, the economy, you name it—but even though I knew this was possibility, it's still very sad. You can read the message from owner Karl Pohrt about the store's closing here, and there's an article from the Ann Arbor News (which is also shutting down) here.

Rather than rehash the store's recent difficulties, I'll only say that it was my favorite place to give a reading, and not only because Ann Arbor is more or less my home town and the readings were attended by my friends. The store was one of the best venues in the nation for all sorts of great writers, which made it one the most prized destinations on any book tour. You'd always get a great introduction and an attentive and engaged audience. Each reading took over one half of the shop, and it was a wonderfully relaxed and intimate setting in which to read (beautifully designed, I have to add, by my friend, the architect Margaret Wong).

The Drum has been, for almost the last 30 years, one of the vital centers of literary culture in the Midwest, and not only because it went out of its way to carry small press and scholarly titles. The staff were like the Jesuits or the Marine Corps of booksellers, passionate about books and just that much better than other booksellers. My friend, the poet Keith Taylor, was manager there for many years, and, back when he was still smoking, he came to be known as the Mayor of State Street for the little literary/gossip/networking confabs that would happen out in front of the store—Keith knows everybody in the Midwest who ever put pen to paper—whenever he stepped outside for a cigarette and one writer or another would stop to talk with him. I was standing with him one sunny day in the early 90s when the writer Charles Baxter came steaming angrily up to us and said, without a word of greeting, "Borders just got sold to fucking K-Mart." Keith, I think, already knew (he always knows everything first), but it was the first I'd heard of it, and looking back on that moment now, all three of us should probably have felt the chill of the zeitgeist stepping on Shaman Drum's grave.

I was looking forward to reading from Next there next year, especially since so much of my new novel takes place in Ann Arbor. Now that's not going to happen. It's sad, sad, sad. I don't know what else to say.

My new novel, Next, is coming out nine months from tomorrow. I can't really say anything about it, or show  any of it, but here's the cover.

Well, I'm back. My day job has been pretty intense since January, but that's behind me now, and I've got a little more time for useless, unremunerative pursuits such as blogging. Of course, I haven't got a single goddamn thing to say, but (as I understand the rules) that's not actually a handicap in the blogosphere. In fact, I gather that it's an actual job requirement. (If you need proof, just read my previous posts.)

So, in the interest of filling some cyberspace, and reminding anybody who actually reads this thing (Hi, Mom!) that I still exist, I will append a list of the books I read last year. Inspired by my friend Keith Taylor, who's been doing it for years, I've been keeping an annual list for about ten years, and this morning, as I cleaned five months of accumulated papers and dust bunnies off my desk, I came across my list for 2008.

I attach it without comment, except to say, please don't give me a hard time for having read only 36 books last year. I'm a slow reader, and there's a lot of good stuff on TV.  Also, number 2, the Brian Green book, is about string theory, and it's beautifully written and almost completely incomprehensible, so it took me a really long time to read. Oh, and a few of the books are by friends or former students, and I read them in manuscript, meaning you can't find them on Amazon just yet.

1. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
2. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
3. Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
4. The Tailor-King, Anthony Arthur
5. The Weight of Numbers, Simon Ings
6. Death of a Murderer, Rupert Thomson
7. The Unknown Terrorist, Richard Flanagan
8. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby
9. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. Darkmans, Nicola Barker
11. Stoner, John Williams
12. Miles Gloriosus, Plautus
13. Roman Britain: Outpost of Empire, H. H. Scullard
14. The Origins of Britain, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing
15. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, Ronald Hutton
16. The Heart of the West, O. Henry
17. The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome, Jaroslav Pelikan
18. Philly’s Best, Tom McAllister
19. The Magician’s Book, Laura Miller
20. The Good Thief, Jane Thurmond
21. Antigone, Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
22. Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, Robert Stone
23. Devi, John Marks
24. Oedipus the King, Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
25. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
26. Women of Trachis, Sophocles, translated by David Raeburn
27. The Agricola and The Germania, Tacitus, translated by H. Mattingly
28. Ajax, Sophocles, translated by David Raeburn
29. Nation, Terry Pratchett
30. Theogony, Works and Days, Hesiod, translated by M. L. West
31. The Works and Days, Theogony, The Shield of Herakles, Hesiod, translated by Richmond Lattimore
32. The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, Charles M. Schulz
33. Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan
34. Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis
35. Life Class, Pat Barker
36. The Complete Peanuts 1952-1954, Charles M. Schulz