On Our Shelves: The Argonauts

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We have a book recommendation for you today—and since this title is cat and staff approved, you really can’t go wrong!

The Argonauts

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press)

Maggie Nelson’s 2009 Bluets was a rigorous and engaging analysis of heartbreak and despair, filtered through an exploration of the color blue—and now, with The Argonauts, we have a similarly smart, genre-bending, inventive examination of Nelson’s most recent intellectual obsessions: emotional intimacy and sex, pregnancy and motherhood, and, at the heart of the book, the author’s romantic relationship with the fluidly gendered artist Harry Dodge. Just as Dodge rejects the familiar binary narrative that sees transgender people as ‘trapped in the wrong body’—“I’m not on my way anywhere, Harry sometimes tells inquirers”—Nelson rejects a culture that demands we pick a side in every debate, and instead embraces ambiguity and improvisation:

I looked anew at unnameable things, or at least things whose essence is flicker, flow. . . . I stopped smugly repeating ‘Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly’ and wondered, anew, can everything be thought.

And, fittingly, Nelson’s spare and swirling prose defies categorization, moving deftly from reminiscence to criticism to philosophy. Even a ‘conventional’ experience like motherhood becomes somehow stranger and richer when seen through Nelson’s fearless reflections. Her aim is not to define, but to question—to seek comfort and freedom in uncertainty and transition. If you’re looking for a beautifully written memoir that challenges you and thumbs its nose at traditional genre expectations, The Argonauts might be just the book for you.

Gifts Galore at Malvern Books

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The festive season is well and truly upon us, my dears—and if you’ve left your shopping till the last minute, fear not, as all your essential Yuletide gifts can be found here at Malvern Books! We’re open every day until the 25th (with a slightly early closing time of 6pm on Christmas Eve), and to make your present-purchasing a little easier, we’re also offering a stupendously generous Holiday Gift Card Offer—for every $40 you spend, you’ll receive a $10 gift card. (Please note, the gift card can not be used on the day of purchase.)

As for what to buy… well, there are plenty of handsome new arrivals featured on our home page, but here are a few more top picks for the beloved bookworms in your life:

Hit ParadeBrooklyn’s Ugly Duckling Presse recently released Hit Parade, a bilingual Russian-English collection of poems by Semyon Khanin, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, and Artur Punte, the four most acclaimed members of the Orbita creative collective, based in Riga, Latvia. Lyn Hejinian called Hit Parade “one of the best collections of poetry I’ve ever encountered,” so it’s a pretty safe bet that your favorite poetry lover is going to appreciate these greatest hits.

Last week we eagerly unpacked a new order from Chax, a Texan indie press founded in 1984 and dedicated to “increasing the impact of new writing in our culture.” We received a host of awesome titles, including Reason and Other Women by Alice Notley, The Complete Light Poems by Jackson Mac Low, Andalusia by Susan Thackrey, and Linh Dinh’s Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, which might just be the most enticing book title ever.

chax press

And don’t forget our lovely sidelines! We have holiday cards, t-shirts, mugs, bookmarks, and beautiful Leuchtturm notebooks in a wide range of colors.

Sidelines

Malvern Books Turns Two

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Party CatLast week we celebrated our second birthday! Can you believe we opened our doors over 730 days go? And, after a brief and puzzling visit to Analytics Land, I can share some equally mind-boggling numbers with you: over the past year we’ve hosted 143 events; shared a whopping 437 videos on our YouTube channel (with over 537 hours of watched footage); and had over 44,000 visitors to our website. Yes indeed, we’ve been a busy little bookstore—and it’s all because of you lovely people! Our heartiest thanks to everyone who has bought a book, shared a link, or taken part in an event. We really appreciate your support, and we’re so thrilled to be a part of Austin’s lively literary community.

Of course, we couldn’t let our second anniversary pass us by without CAKE and a party. So last Saturday we threw an all-day birthday bash. We staged a communal reading of Kenneth Koch’s epic 100-stanza poem, “When the Sun Tries to Go On,” with our Curmudgeon in Chief, Joe Bratcher, starting and ending the reading. Other intrepid readers included Fernando Flores, Kurt Heinzelman, Dean Young, Tyler Gobble, Ken Fontenot, Jon Meador, Chris Brown, Teresa Roberson, Josh Ronsen, Jefffrey Dahlgren, David Jewell, Becky Garcia, Dave Oliphant, Polly Monear, W. Joe Hoppe, Schandra Madha, Tony Tobin, James M. Cullen, and Laura Perna. And yes, we collectively covered all 2400 lines!

When the Sun Tries to Go On

Then we tapped our feet to live music from Americana roots duo Mark Viator & Susan Maxey and played a few spirited rounds of Poetry Karaoke. If you missed out on the fun, do check out the footage below. And, to conclude with another astounding number, please note that the video of our EPIC reading clocks in at over three hours! Malvern Books, the bookstore that just won’t quit…

Autumnal Action At Malvern Books

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Fall is on its way (thank goodness), bringing with it that lovely back-to-school feeling of new beginnings—and a packed-to-the rafters Events Calendar! Here’s a recap of three very eventful days…

On Friday we hosted something rather special: poet and scholar Wendy Barker joined us to discuss Emily Dickinson’s use of metaphor to challenge nineteenth-century restrictions on women. Her talk was part of “The Poet Sings: Emily Dickinson,” a series of events based around a wonderful recital by the Conspirare virtuoso choir. Wendy’s talk was fascinating, and I enjoyed hearing about how she came to love a writer whose poems she’d once viewed as “silly little things.” (Check out our YouTube channel for extra footage from Wendy’s talk, including an audience Q & A.)

The weekend continued in fine style on Saturday night with a talented trifecta of young poets: our old pal Tyler Gobble, plus Ben Kopel and Emily Bludworth de Barrios, who shared some poems from her brilliant first collection, Splendor.

And last but not least, we rounded out a happily hectic few days with a Sunday afternoon reading featuring three acclaimed poets: Taisia Kitaiskaia, Kurt Heinzelman, and Fani Papageorgiou. If you want to meet a Harp Queen and hear some Not So Ill poems, check out the footage below…

The Freshest Farms, Fields & Fiction

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What better way to spread a little midweek cheer than to introduce some new-to-our-shelves bits and bobs for your literary delectation?

Farm

We’re all a little bit obsessed with the absolutely stunning I only thought of the farm, a chapbook by Lisa Ciccarello (Doublecross Press). This hand-typeset, letterpress edition of 150 was produced in collaboration with Austin printmaker Laura Brown—and it’s only $10 for your copy of all this green goodness!

FieldsContinuing with our bucolic theme… if you’re looking for a beautifully designed journal that focuses on work by up and coming writers, poets, and painters, then fields is calling your name. Issue 4 includes a profile of Chicago poet and filmmaker Dakota Loesch; an interview with Austin slam poetry champion Loyce Gayo; short stories from Elisabeth Murray, Jo Vraca, and Torrie Jay White; poetry from Madeleine Barnes, Ally Covino, Brett Foster, and Brad Liening, among others; and artwork from Kimberly Benson, Diane Englander, Maggie Hazen, and Manik Raj Nakra (who created the lovely cover).

Into the Go-SlowAnd we also have a couple of new titles from the City University of New York’s Feminist Press, including Into The Go-Slow by Bridgett M. Davis. Go-Slow is a fascinating coming-of-age story that follows the narrator, Angie, as she attempts to come to terms with the death of her sister. Set in both Detroit and Lagos and covering a time period from the 1960s-80s, this novel deftly spans continents and eras and brilliantly captures the narrator’s loss of innocence and emerging sense of self.