Love Y'all Returns

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, but it won't be the only love fest in Atlanta that weekend. The Love Y'all Book Festival is back and better than ever! The romance book festival will be returning to Downtown Decatur for the third year in a row from Friday, February 13th through Sunday the 15th.

 The festival is back with all the usual bells and whistles: author talks & signings, plenty of vendors, and unique Experiences that you can participate in with authors. But the people running Love Y'all have learned from the past festivals and are using that knowledge to take this year to the next level. I can hear you asking, "What exactly is this next level going to look like?" Well, dear reader, I sat down with Preet Singh, Eagle Eye Bookseller & Love Y'all co-founder to get the inside scoop.

 One of the most significant changes this year is an increase in involvement from publishers. You'll be able to see this in the form of publisher booths, but they have also been providing more support behind the scenes. This support (along with an increase in ticket price) means that there's more stuff in the VIP bag this year. A purchase of a VIP ticket will bring with it five books, a shirt, a free experience, and more! The selection of books will also be greater, because there are more authors coming to Love Y'all than ever, including some from Germany, India, and Canada, as well as throughout the United States.

This year, Love Y'all is also trying to highlight more of Decatur's vibrant bookstore community. Besides the various bookstores that will be selling at the festival, a special Book Shop Tour will take attendees to a number of other shops, including Little Shop of Stories and Atlanta Vintage books.

If this sounds like something that's up your alley, or if you're interested in finding out more about Love Y'all and the authors that will be there, you can check out their website at loveyallfest.com. 

 Check out our Love Y'all authors here. 

A Black History of Anime

Valentine's Day isn't the only thing going on in the February, it's also Black History Month! Eagle Eye is fortunate enough to be located in Atlanta, Georgia, a city rich with Black history. And as this history meets the present, a large number of intersectional groups have emerged within the city. Specifically, we've got a burgeoning community of Black fans of anime and manga.  

One group that has emerged from this community is Trap Sushi, who put on events throughout the year that "merge the best of Atlanta's cultural diversity with the allure of Japanse pop culture." Attendees are encouraged to show up in full cosplay regalia, dressed to the nines as their favorite characters. 

As anime & manga have continued to grow in popularity around the world, Trap Sushi & other cultural crossovers were inevitable. Historically, however, representation of cultural groups outside of Japan within anime and manga have not always been the most respectful. There are many examples of overly-exoticized or down-right caricaturish Black characters, but there are also plenty of examples of positive representation in Animanga.

Naruto's Killer Bee and Bleach's Captain Tosen are two characters from some of the biggest series of all time that serve as pillars of their respective universes. While we're talking Bleach, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Yoruichi, one of the most iconic women in all of Animanga. Her lightning speed and bubbly personality have earned her a place in the hearts of fans around the world. Another iconic character is Dragon Ball's Piccolo, who, while technically an alien from the planet Namek, has also been widely accepted by the Black anime community due to his characterization as an "other" within the story. 

Gachiakuta, a recent breakout success, features Black characters in many roles, from the leader of the series heroes to one of the most powerful villains. Kei Urana, the series' author, also regularly illustrates Black background characters, a small detail that most other creators may forgo but that helps to widen the scope of the world. 

As anime & manga continue to grow in popularity, it is heartening to see creators uplifting the communities that support their work. Even more importantly, though, it is wonderful to see groups that have traditionally been spurned be able to support each other and create spaces where they can celebrate themselves.

 

Check out Bleach volumes here.

Check out Gachiakuta volumes here.

Check out Naruto volumes here.

Check out Dragon Ball volumes here. 

A Reader's Guide to the Book Prize

    The end of the year brings with it the conclusion of the literary awards circuit. With the Nobel Prize in Literature announced in October, the Booker Prize & National Book Awards following suit in November, and pretty much every other book award having been announced already, we've got a whole list of books that are supposed to be pretty good.

    Coincidentally, it's also gift-giving season, and having this list of books is a great resource for finding things to both ask for and give as gifts. Besides just announcing the prize-winning books, many awards will also provide their long & short lists for you to review. One of my favorite new releases from last year, Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake, was on my radar because it appeared on Booker's long list way before the book was even released.

    Consulting rewards lists can also be good if you're looking to buy a book for someone who reads outside of your genre. For the Science Fiction & Fantasy readers in your life, consult the Hugo or Nebula awards. Looking for some Horror? Then check out the Bram Stoker & Shirley Jackson awards. For Romance there are the Romantic Novelist awards, complete with twelve different subcategories, but if you need a romance recommendation in store there's always Bookseller Preet's staff picks shelf!

    Awards lists are a good starting point for finding a good book, but with tens of thousands of new titles releasing every year there are simply too many titles for the panels of judges to review. Luckily we've got each other to fill in the gaps, like with Preet's aforementioned staff picks shelf. Additionally, if you find a book on a list that looks interesting, a good way to find similar titles could be checking out the rest of the books in the publisher's catalogue. Fitzcarraldo, for example, has published the works of a number of Nobel Prize Recipients, but they also publish the works of Fernanda Melchor, one of my favorite authors who hasn't claimed that specific prize yet, and plenty of other cool authors.

    To sum it all up, awards lists are a good place to find good books but they aren't the only place. A couple well placed questions can also get you where you need to go, whether they be addressed to a friend, bookseller, or internet search engine. And at the end of the day, if you give or receive a book that you don't particularly enjoy it's not the end of the world. It might even give you something to laugh about down the road.

The Books We Prize

    My grandmother kept a modest bookshelf. The top few rows held her photo albums, folios filled with memories of her people, her travels, the playbills of operas she’d seen. Then there were her Dutch books, ancient volumes that have seen more of the world than I have. The writings of philosophers and psychologists, books from her youth that followed her for the rest of her life.

    Below those shelves sat her fiction. I’ll always think of her when I see People of the Book, not because she ever mentioned to me that she particularly liked it but because it was what she had on her side table when I’d visit her seventeen years ago. The cover really etched itself into my mind.

    In her last months, she read The Dutch House. I would ask her about it when I’d visit, curious to hear what she thought of Ann Patchett’s writing.

    “Well, it’s not very Dutch,” she answered, a sly smile on her face. As a native of the Netherlands, I could tell she was a bit disappointed.

    When she passed and we had to gather up her belongings, it was easy to tell which books were the ones she prized. Her children’s children’s books, grown brittle and yellowed from years of shelf-life. The foreign language dictionaries that helped her to forge a new life, first in North America and then in the South, before finding her way up to Tennessee. The rows of photo-albums that extended past the modest bookshelf, into her guest room and closet.

    We kept all of that, minus some photo-albums, but we also kept some of the other ones too. The one’s that reminded us not just of the places she went and what she accomplished there, but of who she was when you’d visit her on a Saturday in August and ask her about The Dutch House. The ones that transport us back to those childhood visits. The ones that remind you that a person weaves a long and storied tapestry of life over one hundred years, but at the far end of that weaving there’s still a smiling Oma ready to crack a few jokes and offer you something to snack on.

The Future

        Between climate change and the general state of the world, the future can be scary to consider. Where will we be in 10 years? 50? Will we make it another 100? 

     The answer is: most likely yes. With the rapid rate of scientific advancement, some good old human ingenuity, and a sprinkle of good luck everything should turn out fine. Once we've made it that far, though, things will have changed a good deal, and those changes can be scary to consider too. 

    Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica, explores one of these potential futures. When a virus that is lethal to humans infects the world's wildlife, humans choose to take the preventive measure of wiping out the animals. The world's population survives, but they are left with one big question: "What are we going to eat?" The answer for most is "special meat," otherwise known as human flesh, though going vegan is still an option. 

    The novel follows Marcos, the manager at a human slaughterhouse. Despite his occupation, he is one of the aforementioned vegans, and while he bears witness to the slaughter of countless factory-farmed humans he spends much of his time trying to actively dissociate. A lot of Tender is the Flesh's fear factor comes from the sheer amount of brutality inflicted on humans, but what's even more disturbing are the lengths to which the practices have been normalized. From Most Dangerous Game style man-hunts to in home coolers for storing live "head," also known as humans, for those looking for the freshest cuts.

    Throughout the novel, Bazterrica weaves a plot thread that might make you believe that there may be some sort of silver-lining to all of this, that reconciliation is still possible. Just as you are turning the final pages, though, the thread is severed. All hope is lost, you are left to wander in the dark. The future is scary.

    But it doesn't have to be that way. 

     Under the Eye of the Big Bird, by Hiromi Kawakami, looks even further into humanity's future. What exactly this future holds is revealed through a series of interconnected short stories, and the mix of intrigue and satisfaction that each story's reveal gave me made up for a large portion of my reading enjoyment. Even as time has passed, though, I still think about this book, so I can assure you that it's not all instant gratification. This is all to say that this book may best be enjoyed blind, so if you have any interest in reading it I recommend you call up Eagle Eye and order a copy (We probably have some on our shelves). Spoilers can't ruin the best stories, though, so feel free to read on regardless.

    Under the Eye of the Big Bird's stories follow humans in strange circumstances. Some of them use numbers for names. Others live in isolation, only being visited by another person occasionally for the purpose of procreation. People are occasionally visited by younger versions of themselves. The lucky ones have psychic powers. It's revealed about halfway through the book that all of them are part of a grand experiment to evolve humanity, one that started out of necessity millennia ago and will continue for millennia to come. 

    Kawakami takes full advantage of the story's time frame to both give us some glimpses into humanity's speculative future (my favorite potential evolutionary branch are the super chill plant people) and show us how the appearance of these extraordinary individuals might be received. Despite how far-fetched some of the ideas in the novel may get, what Kawakami is really looking to explore is human nature. What drives us? What scares us? How far will we go to secure our own future? Under the Eye of the Big Bird may not provide clean answers to these questions, but the ones it does offer are certainly quite interesting.

    The last story of the book follows the two final members of humanity. There's an inherent sadness in reading about the last two girls in the world growing up, but there's also something pure in those pages, something like serenity. The future Kawakami envisions is uncertain, but unlike Tender is the Flesh it is not without hope. 

    The future might be scary, but that's not all it has to be.

Why We Like to Be Scared

 

Scary movies, tales of ghosts, witches and goblins, and haunted houses dominate this time of year. It’s Halloween and time for all things scary – including scary novels, better known as Horror Fiction.

A quick Google Search indicates one of the first scary stories can be traced back as far back as ancient Mesopotamia to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Since then scary stories have only gained in popularity over time. Some of the most well-known scary stories include Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, a tale she started writing in 1816 at the age of 18. Another classic horror novel, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897. Edgar Allan Poe, who is often referred to as the “father of horror” with his eerie and gothic poems and stories such as The Raven, Annabel Lee, and others, also made a mark in the horror genre. And then, current horror and bestselling author, Stephen King, with his hits like Pet Sematary, The Shining, It and many others have held readers’ interest in the horror genre.

In fact, the website bookinfluencers.com in the article dated July 2024, The Rise of Horror, states that according to Nielsen data,  the sale of books in the horror genre experienced a significant increase of about 54% in 2023, and a number of subgenres such as gothic, vampire, paranormal, dark fantasy, just to name a few, have been created to help readers narrow down their selections based on their chilling, thrilling, creepy or terrifying reading preferences.

So why is it that we like to be scared?

A Forbes.com article from Oct. 22, 2023 entitled The Science of Scared: Why We Love the Thrill of Being Afraid by Nicole F. Roberts says it’s not just one thing, but a number of things such as the adrenaline rush, escapism, a shared experience with others, and more, that allows humans to experience and enjoy the emotion of fear in a controlled environment.  

And a healthessentials article on the Cleveland Clinic website entitled Why Do We Like to Get Scared? states that “Our brains are hardwired to enjoy being scared,” but also adds, “as long as there’s no real danger.” Fear is an emotion that can cause a number of simultaneous processes to occur in our bodies when we’re frightened. Those processes can include the Flight or Fight response, an increased heart rate and blood pressure, goose bumps, and more.

Unlike films and haunted houses, if a horror story in the form of a book gets to be too much, the reader can always put it down to put some time and space between themselves and the story and then pick it back up when they’re ready. But we don’t suggest putting a book in the freezer like Joey Tribbiani did with his copy of The Shining in the hit sitcom Friends. A cold book is just that…a cold book.

Eagle Eye Book Shop has a number of horror titles and more. Visit eagleeyebooks.com online or visit us at the store for your next spooky read.

Enjoy the scare and Happy Halloween!

Coverage

One of the most exciting parts of working at a used bookstore is seeing all of the different books that people bring in. Besides allowing me to see lots of different books, it also means I get to see even more book covers. You may be wondering how I'm seeing more cover designs than titles, but the answer is simple: alternate covers.

Most traditionally published books have at least a couple of cover designs thanks to the International market. It's usually cheaper to commission new cover art for a book than it is to pay for the rights to use another, so publishers around the world will often use different covers for the same book. There are plenty of other reasons for the divergence in covers than use rights, though. One is that people living in different parts of the world may have different tastes, both in terms of what they enjoy visually and in their stories. Sayaka Murata's Vanishing World is a book that's covers illustrate these differences.

The novel is set in a world where sex has become taboo and children are artificially conceived & raised communally, with no single parental figure to latch on to. The themes grounding the story are quite dark, but Murata approaches things with an imaginative flair that lends the story some lightness. The American release (left), with its overflowing tub of baby dolls, highlights the almost comedic absurdity of the situation. The UK edition (middle) has biblical imagery that seems to be referencing themes of conception & the price of pursuing the forbidden. The German cover (right) dials in on the story's underlying darkness. 

The beauty of these book covers, and alternate book covers in general, is that no matter how much they differ they're all representations of the same text. One of the things that makes books special is their openness to interpretation, how two people can read the same words and be affected by them in completely different ways, and alternate book covers feel like the perfect visual metaphor for this.

The Classics section is another place where you'll find lots of different book covers, but for different reasons. The first is that many classics are in the public domain, meaning that anyone could print a copy and slap whatever they wanted on the cover. Most of the large publishers already have editions of older books in print, though, so you won't see as many of the Classics from smaller publishers. 

This leads us to the second reason for the variety of covers in Classics, which is that there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Different publishers will all put out editions of the same text, so a distinct cover is a good way to make an edition stand out without altering the content. 

Additionally, because many classics are quite widely read & people already have an idea of what they're getting into when they pick up the book, classics covers can afford to be a little more abstract. Penguin's cover's are a good example of this abstraction, where they'll simply feature a painting, usually tangentially related to the text, the book's title, and the name of the author. 

Fitzcarraldo, a British publisher, takes simple cover designs to the extreme. Their covers are all solid colors, blue for fiction & white for nonfiction, and besides basic information like author & title you'll find little else on the book (except, of course, for some blurbs).  

So whether you don't like the cover of your favorite new release or you're looking for a fifth copy of your favorite Jane Austen novel, the moral of the story is to never settle. What you're looking for is out there waiting to be found, you might just have to start looking a little further afield.