What to Read While Staying Inside
4 articles and 1 long book review 4 u
New here? Welcome! Consult my first post to see what amateur bibliotherapy means. If I link to a paywalled article that you can’t access, reply to this email and let me know. Finally, complete this Google form or reply to this email any time to let me know what you’re reading. I may include your recommendation in a future edition.
Hi friends. Let’s jump right in this week.
The Articles
Barnes & Noble’s New Boss Tries to Save the Chain—and Traditional Bookselling, The Wall Street Journal (~12 min). This is an interesting look at the economic decisions that executives at Barnes & Noble have made this year. Like everyone else, B&N is suffering at the hands of Amazon, my arch nemesis. But unlike everyone else, B&N was once the Big Bad of Bookstores that local booksellers hated with a passion instead. Their new CEO, who also leads the UK bookstore chain Waterstones, is attempting to infuse some of the local bookselling spirit into national B&N locations:
Led by Chief Executive James Daunt, Barnes & Noble Inc. is abandoning the strategy that made it a bookselling behemoth two decades ago—uniformity designed to create economies of scale and simplify the shopping experience. Instead, the company is empowering store managers to curate their shelves based on local tastes.
If you click on this article and hit a paywall, here’s a PDF.
Dolly Parton Likes to Read by the Fire in Her Pajamas, The New York Times (~2 min). As you should all know by now, I am fully infatuated with Dolly Parton and plan to go to Dollywood the very moment I am able. The press tour for her new book, Dolly Parton, Songteller, is full of fun facts about her. In this NYT article, I learned that my sweet idol is currently reading The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig, which I quite liked when I read it a few months ago!
My Year of Furiously Reading Japanese Women in Translation, The Magic Word (~2 min). Did I write this article? I might as well have. This is part of a series by the bookstore Books Are Magic in which its booksellers reflect on their year of reading (and of course, recommend books for you to buy). I, too, had a year of books by “talented, poignant women authors who I believe challenge, inspire, and are raising the bar of storytelling like never before… they all just so happen to live on an island 6,738 miles away.”
Why Do Cats Love Bookstores?, Literary Hub (~7 mins). I can’t think of anything I enjoy more than a bookstore cat (though no disrespect to the bodega cat, obviously). This ode to cats is a special little chronicle of how and why they reign supreme in bookstores, and everywhere else.
(There’s a special place in my heart for authors who weave cats into literary environs; the best part of Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, in my opinion, is that her underground labyrinth of bookishness has very few people and many all-knowing cats.)
The Books
Today I’m passing the mic to my live-in editor, Martin, who has been reading voraciously. I’ve lightly edited his ode to a very special book below, and embedded the album you should play while reading it.
This past week I read Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown, by Anaïs Mitchell. By the time Hadestown debuted on Broadway last year, it had been over a decade in the making. The “folk opera” is a reimagining of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the original myth, Eurydice dies unexpectedly and a bereft Orpheus resolves to travel to the underworld in order to bring her back to the land of the living. After sneaking in and using his musical talents to entrance Hades, Orpheus strikes a deal with the god of death: he and Eurydice may leave the underworld together, but only if she walks behind him the entire time and he doesn’t look back at her. If he breaks the terms, he loses her forever. At its root, the myth is about the lengths one is willing to go for love, as well as the power of music—a power strong enough to sway the heart of an indifferent god.
Bear with me here, because I’m about to give a decade’s worth of background. If you just care about the book, just skip to the asterisks below (***).
I’ve been obsessed with Hadestown since I first heard it in 2010, when Mitchell released it as a concept album. The record featured Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) as the voice of Orpheus and Mitchell herself as Eurydice. I can safely say that I’ve listened to the album more than any other in the last decade. Everyone who knows me has had to deal with my extolling its virtues, the hold it has on me—I even convinced my boss when I worked at Iridium Jazz Club to book Anaïs Mitchell! (Editor’s note: Mitchell was subsequently booked by the Iridium several times for their annual female performers showcase, which Martin and I attended back in 2017. He’s truly infatuated.) Anna likes to tell people that I used it as a litmus test for compatibility early in our relationship—I don’t think that’s true...but I don’t know how I’d feel if she didn’t like it.
One day in 2016, I was taking the L train home to my apartment in Bushwick when an ad on the train platform at 3rd Avenue caught my eye. The artwork reminded me of the cover of the Hadestown album. I was so excited I got off the train to get a better look.
I stared in disbelief—the music I loved was finally going to be staged as an off-Broadway show! I got back on the train and must have run home from my stop to tell Anna the exciting news. We ended up seeing the New York Theater Workshop production twice during its run. (Editor’s note: you can read my recap of the first time we saw it here, which was one of the most magical days of my young life.) When Hadestown arrived on Broadway last year, we saw it opening week. The show went on to win eight Tony awards, including Best Musical.
While that’s a brief overview of my personal attachment to the show and the myth, I’ve learned that the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice has had a hold on the arts for centuries. Here’s a brief history of other incarnations beyond those by Virgil, Ovid and Plato:
The oldest genuine opera whose music is available today is Eurydice, by Jacopo Peri. It’s from the year 1600.
Since 1600, there have been at least 60 operas alone that tell versions of the tale. There’s enough to justify a genre of its own— Orphean operas.
To name just two films of the tale: Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (part of a trilogy) from 1950 set in then-contemporary Paris, which is considered a classic of French cinema; and Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, which won the Palme d’Or in 1959.
I love the instrumental album Orfée by Jóhann Jóhannsson. He also scored the 2016 movie Arrival.
There’s too many works or art to list here, but definitely go look at some of them.
Anna would like to add that her video game of the year, Hades, has an Orpheus and Eurydice plot too.
***So the music and history is one thing, but what’s so great about the book?
Working on a Song is so much more than a book of lyrics. In it, Mitchell tells the story of each song’s evolution. The revisions and reimaginings that had to be made to turn what was a poetic, abstract album into live theater. It is a story about what at times has to be lost in order to be gained—a beautiful insight into the writing process and the ways in which stories are living, breathing creations.
A red carnation has been the symbol of Hadestown in all of its permutations— a visual through line. Working on a Song is not the flower on the surface. It is the story of the soil, the water, the sunlight, and most importantly the loving hands that painstakingly tended to it for so long so that it could not just grow, but flourish with splendid resilience.
Here’s the original 2010 Hadestown album, a cast recording of the NYTW version, and a cast recording of the Broadway show. Anna thinks the NYTW version is the superior of the cast recordings, and wrote about why back in October. We both agree you should listen to all three versions.
As a final plug, I’d like to suggest the episode of Aria Code, “Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice: Don't Look Back in Ardor.” Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history. In this episode, the host Rhiannon Giddeon speaks with her guests (including author Ann Patchett) about Gluck’s opera and the myth more generally.
Thank you Anna for letting me hijack this much space! I’d follow you to hell and back.
For other ideas of what to read, this guide from Anti-racism Daily compiles recommended reads from Black-owned bookstores across the nation; NPR has released its annual Book Concierge, complete with 2,500 recommended titles and 30+ filters for you to sort through; and Penguin Random House has opened up their holiday book hotline, where you can submit book requests and receive tailored recommendations for yourself and anyone you want to buy for this season.
I’ll send you off with this fabulous interview in which Daniel Radcliffe eats increasingly spicy hot sauces and talks about his movie where he played a farting corpse. Short king Daniel Radcliffe is a total weirdo, and I love him. Toodles!