Author Archives: wendywelch

Why my Friend Teri will Live Forever

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Those of you who read Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap will recall a certain chiropractor. Teri gave us unlimited access to her color photocopier in return for free range of the bookstore.

A few years later, we bought our own copier and told Teri her book credit would run out when her middle daughter started college.

MaeveMaeve (and boys, her dad at photo left is a crack shot with a rifle) started college Jan. 13. In the week between Christmas and New Year, Teri appeared with several reusable shopping bags.

There is something glorious about helping your friend shop for books when there is no spending limit. “Try this! What about her?!” We overlap in reading tastes, both enjoying dysfunctional family sagas,  but I need a happy conclusion, or at least a path forward, while Teri doesn’t mind if the heroine commits suicide.

We had a grand time ransacking the shop for dark matter to add to her “read this someday” shelves. We started with Latte Lit (fiction of other times and places) and Southern. As I handed her tomes, she said at one point, “How are you picking these? You’re pretty spot on.”

“I’m looking for books I didn’t like because they were too sad or scary.”

She whacked me with a copy of Little Children (Tom Perrotta).

In less than an hour we had two stacks reaching past her waist, and Teri sat down to do a final cull. As she read the back jacket of a novel, she asked, “Who writes these?”

I glanced at the book in her hand. “Sophie Dahl, I guess” and she snorted.

“The jacket stuff. It’s so important. Like, I’ve decided I won’t like this because it went from sharp to ‘enchanting’.” She pointed at the offending word.

I thought of all the conversations I’d held with Nichole and Pamela about the jacket copy to my own debut memoir. “Yeah, they take that stuff pretty seriously,” I said.

“They should.” Teri sniffed, tossing Dahl aside.

Our photocopier godmama went out the door with some 50 novels and a few memoirs I forced on her. “C’mon, you only like despair if it’s fake?” I griped, and she sighed and shoved Falling Leaves into her bulging bags.

On Saturday, Jan. 11 I sent Teri a Facebook message. “Classes start Monday and we’re closed Sundays. Just sayin’.”

She showed up that afternoon, and we pillaged again. As she went out the door with perhaps another 75 books, Teri hugged me. “So from here on out, I’m a cash only customer, right?”

I grinned back. “Right. How long you think this can keep you going?”

Teri laughed. “My greatest fear in life used to be boredom. Then I had kids. Now I fear dying before I can get enough time to myself to read all the books I have waiting.”

This is Teri’s “to be read” stash. I’m proud to have helped add years to her lifespan.teri's stash

The Monday Book: Istanbul Passage by Joseph Karon

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We apologize for recent glitches in the blog timing. We were experimenting with presetting, and it’s not been going well. We’re going back to manual settings and will be good for Monday, Wednesday and Friday regular blogs henceforth. Technology wins again…. :] and now, Jack’s review of ISTANBUL PASSAGE
I’m a sucker for spy novels, and Wendy and I recently spent two weeks in Istanbul, so this screamed at me when it came into the shop.
I wasn’t disappointed!
Karon is often compared to Le Carre and Greene and my first observation to Wendy was “this is a cross between ‘The Third Man’ and ‘Smiley’s People’”.
The plot is both dense and enthralling – I was continually sucked in and drawn along. To begin with I was confused (actually, after finishing the book I had to go back and re-read the first few chapters). Wendy and I had not only visited Istanbul, but also Romania (not to mention Rumania and Roumania), so all the settings meant a great deal to me. Did being familiar with the places make the book more meaningful? I really don’t know!
Having said that, I definitely got an extra jolt from knowing the settings of the story.
Briefly this is a tale set in Istanbul just after the 2nd World War and as the Cold War is getting going. I had either forgotten or never realized that Turkey was neutral during that war. It was, therefore, one of those strange places like Switzerland and Portugal where the spies, diplomats or black-marketeers could mingle and play out their dramas. One of the main characters is an American businessman who’s become a ‘semi-detached’ spy and another is a Romanian double-agent. In the end the story ends up being about their relationship as much as anything else.
The descriptions of Istanbul rang very true. The book is set in 1946, but all the descriptions of streets and landmarks are just familiar enough to take me back there. Not just that, but the atmosphere as well!
When Wendy and I were flying home from Istanbul after our 15th anniversary vacation last year, one of the movies on the plane was the latest James Bond, which started with a scene in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar – we’d just been there and one of the settings in Karon’s book is also there. Not just that, but Wendy had almost been pick-pocketed there as well.
In the end the book is about choices. Who you owe most to and where your loyalties lie.
There’s an interesting interview with Karon at the end of the edition we have where he says that the best spy novels are not about spying but more about moral dilemmas. I wonder whether all the best books, no matter what the genre, are about those?