01/21/04 WED:
---Here today from Meisha Merlin:
Asprin, Robert & Jody Lynn Nye MYTH ALLIANCES, Meisha Merlin, 9/03, new 14.00

Huff, Tanya RELATIVE MAGIC, Meisha Merlin, 9/03, 1st, (fantasy stories), new 16.00

Lee, Sharon & Steve Miller THE TOMORROW LOG, Meisha Merlin, 2nd(3/03), (Gem #1), new 16.00

Martin, George R.R. TUF VOYAGING, Meisha Merlin, 9/03, (linked stories; orig: Baen Books, 1986), {hc in dj available @ $30}, new 16.00

---From Stark House:
Rabe, Peter THE BOX/ JOURNEY INTO TERROR, Stark House, 12/03, new 19.95
---No website for Stark House that I can find, but the two novels reprinted were hardboiled Gold Medal pb originals by a top author.

---From Borderlands Press:
Lansdale, Joe R. A LITTLE GREEN BOOK OF MONSTER STORIES, Borderlands, 10/03, 1st edn, one of 500 SIGNED copies, (original stories), new no dj as issued 20.00

---Disc Log:
- Aretha Franklin I NEVER LOVED A MAN THE WAY I LOVE YOU (Xgau: A)
- Schumann SYPHONIES Nos. 1-4; Other Works (Philadelphia Orchestra; Sawallisch, cond.) (3CD) - self-released and on NY Times Best of 2003 list
- Air TALKIE WALKIE - freebie sample for in-store play; too bad my store is always deserted except for me

---Heard from the editor of ARGOSY (which I have in stock):
“Hi all,
I'm very happy to report that Argosy has just gotten a writeup in the
Village Voice.
Here is the link: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0403/hunt.php
Thank you for all the support and I hope that everyone is well.

Best,

Lou Anders, Senior Editor
Argosy Magazine”

---Good to see a new Rock&Roll& by Robert Christgau (Good Morning Little School Girl).
---Also reading James Ridgeway in yesterday’s Village Voice: Pundits Continue Their Attack on Howard Dean.

---Part of the special skills of being an experienced book dealer: being able to figure out who dee-awn-ee dew-awn-ee is (as heard pronounced on the telephone). (Hint: Diane Duane).

---Sampled as computer prompts and cellphone rings, familiarity will breed eventual fondness for that birthpang outcry of Howard Dean. A stroke of in-the-moment genius we should embrace now for its well-meaning but really not unsophisticated sound of possiblity. In the eleventh hour Iowans blinked shamefully and embraced the establishment, showing up in media-frenzy-driven droves to follow the dictates of the latest slick trial-lawyer or war-hero thirty-second spot they watched or the absurd takes of not-much-more-than-thirty-second pundits bent on their own collective jihad to misrepresent and tear down the man not quite totally under the thumb of the incorporated interests that think they should own all our forebrains.
---In that embarassing moment to hear that basic cry of anguish at what has ended up not changing one iota despite the bit of promise that had been tanatalizingly out there but was finally snatched away just as might have been expected all along, I hope Howard Dean does not back away from that moment but carries it further: finally, unlike other candidates, stepping outside the scripting and the orchestration and relying on his own true nature and sympathetic personality to come through, not filtered or adulterated by poll-driven expediency.
---No canned victory speech by John Kerry or carefully orchestrated State of the Union can upstage the ultimate urgency of Howard Dean’s outcry from the outer edges of desperation. At our peril do we turn away with bemusement that from sound coming out of nowhere with no meaning we can readily discern. It was a sound of ultimate meaning emitting from the true place where things rarely come any more, with the media filtration and titration we now allow and allay. I hope New Hampshire shows Iowans that at least there is still somewhere the establishment and convention can still be defied these days, because Iowa sure dropped the ball this time.