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Fear, Loathing, and Rare Books in Las Vegas?

It seems an unlikely match.

Bauman Rare Books, a Philadelphia-based rare and out-of-print bookstore, has recently opened up a satellite store in, of all places, The Palazzo Resort Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The Palazzo now joins Mandalay Bay as the only destinations on the Las Vegas Strip housing bookstores. And soon, Bauman’s at The Palazzo will be on its own: Mandalay Bay has announced it will close its Reading Room sometime in the near future.

Which isn’t terribly surprising, considering one doesn’t immediately think of Las Vegas as a particularly bookish city. Even I, the Book Snark, didn’t do much reading on the occasions I visited Sin City. I played The Price is Right slot machines till my fingers turned blue. I attended an “adult revue” that had entirely too many innies and not nearly enough outies. I made love to a sixteen mile long buffet at three in the morning. But reading? Naw, I didn’t do much of that.

Yet I have to hand it to the folks at Bauman. They’ve claimed their little corner of Vegas, and, at least according to store managers, have been doing exceptionally well. “We are averaging 2,500-3,000 people a week who are coming into the gallery,” says store manager Laura Minor. Fellow manager Justin McShea seconds that. “I think on a slow day we see 200 people through the door,” he says.

Remember, this is no Barnes & Noble or Borders. Bauman only sells very rare old books, like a $375 paperback copy of Octopussy by Ian Fleming. And yes, they have a signed first edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for sale as well.

Given their locale, Bauman does try to get out the message that anyone can collect rare books. They even have a few on their shelves for just over $100.

But clearly, the store will benefit the most from those who just won a crapload at craps and are suddenly in the mood for a first edition of Remembrance of Things Past.

As for me, the next time I’m in Las Vegas, I now know where I will spend my Plinko money.

Story Source The Movable Buffet | Image Source LVABJ

September 30, 2008 | Filed Under Random Acts of Snarkness | 114 Comments

Book Review: We Bought A Zoo by Benjamin Mee

Just a few short years ago, Benjamin Mee, a British journalist, was writing home repair columns for The Guardian and living a quiet rural life with his beautiful wife and two kids. So, of course, the next logical step anyone in this position would take would obviously be to…buy a zoo. Which is exactly what Benjamin Mee did.

In the hokily-titled We Bought A Zoo, Mee chronicles the adventures of his family as they negotiate, purchase, and revitalize a brokedown zoo in the English countryside. The story is certainly interesting enough, even if the points of the book’s subtitle – The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever — aren’t fleshed out very successfully. Mee focuses his pen more upon the A Broken Down Zoo part, slightly less on the The Amazing True Story of a Young Family part, and, regrettably, even fewer pages on The 200 Wild Animals.

This kinda sucks because the wild animals were the original reason I was drawn to this book. Instead of having a tiger roaring gorgeously on the book’s cover, it would have been appropriate to have, say, a jackhammer jackhammering away at a slab of concrete, or a steamroller steamrolling a walkway. With the material for such a fantastic story at his fingertips, I was a little flabbergasted that Mee chose instead to illustrate, in often endless detail, the infrastructure problems of the zoo itself, or the icky-poo blankets of grease that covered the zoo restaurant. Like a bratty kid on a long car trip to the zoo, I kept whining, “When are we gonna get to the wild animals?”. There are plenty of stories about anesthtitizing big beasts to relocate them or get them medical care, but even these are done more as a chronicle of the zoo’s renovation than captivating peeks into the lives of wild animals. Sadly, apart from some quick references to a tapir that I would love to meet, and some really, really stupid peacocks, The 200 Wild Animals take a backseat to the bigger concerns of working loos and where to put the pasties stand.

Which brings me to the language. I consider myself well-read and well-traveled, but I struggled in several areas of this book to interpret what Mee was saying. Not because it’s badly written, but because it’s so British. A huge number of references and slang terms in the book were completely lost on me. I kept wishing for an English-to-English dictionary to help me out. I’ve also never in my life seen the word “myriad” used so many times in the course of one book. And there are way too many words in We Bought A Zoo as it is. Mee has a penchant for describing in finite detail some of the most useless and uninteresting information, and even with the useful and interesting, he still goes on for way too long. All in all, the book could stand to lose about 75 pages and still get its point across beautifully.

We Bought A Zoo is not a failure, though. Not by any means. Mee raises some important and enlightened issues about zoos, conservation, and animal husbandry (including a fascinating riff on homosexuality in animals). He also creates a memorable and unique cast of characters, including his 76-year-old mother, who decides to chuck it all and go in with her son on buying the zoo. Mee’s respect and adoration for her is palpable, and he paints his mum as a loving eccentric with a no-nonsense zest for life.

But the most moving aspects of the book come out of a series of events that no one — least of all Benjamin Mee — saw coming. Just after arriving at the zoo, Mee’s wife, Katherine, learns she has a brain tumor and, within a few months, passes away. He gives us a brave, abbreviated glimpse into what it was like during those months, dealing with the zoo — this new project that was now vastly less important — and nursing his young wife through her final days. Mee’s descriptions are full of love and admiration and are more than a little heartbreaking. But he does something truly classy here: he doesn’t turn We Bought A Zoo into a memoir of grief. Katherine’s death plays a big role in the book, obviously, but instead of going on for pages about his agony and loss, he uses it as an impetus to refocus on the work at hand: the work of the zoo. We see how his grief shapes his vision for this project, and he leaves the nakedly personal to himself. He also, very commendably, gives only a slight mention of his childrens’ reactions to their mother’s death. There’s no advertising of bereavement here; Mee and his kids work through their loss outside the pages of We Bought A Zoo. We know quite clearly what everyone is feeling and living through without a word being written about it; this is the mark of a truly good writer.

I only wish Mee included more of the — well, more of the zoo in We Bought A Zoo. Grade C

Title We Bought A Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever

Author Benjamin Mee

Publisher Weinstein Books

Year Published 2008

ISBN 1602860483

Snarkbytes The story told in We Bought A Zoo was the subject of a popular BBC documentary entitled Ben’s Zoo.

September 29, 2008 | Filed Under Biography & Memoir | 13 Comments

Hemingway’s Pussies Are Safe!

I know, I know, I had no idea they were in danger either. But rest assured, Ernest Hemingway’s felines — or, the offspring of his felines, anyway — have been given the all-clear to stay put at his famed Key West home.

There are approximately fifty cats that roam the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. All of the furry little lovebugs descend from Snowball, a pussycat given to Papa in 1935. Interestingly, Snowball had six toes, and all of her progeny carry this gene as well (though some don’t sport the extra digit).

Apparently, the pussies were just minding their own business, doing innocent, fun kitty stuff, when the federal government swooped in and threatened to remove the cats, saying the popular landmark didn’t have an animal exhibition license (and, paradoxically, didn’t qualify for one since the animals were not enclosed). They even went so far as to say they would fine the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum $200 per day per cat (about $10K daily) if the felines weren’t removed.

For nearly four years, museum officials have been meeting with the US Department of Agriculture in a vain attempt to settle the matter of the cats’ fate.

Finally, last year, the two parties agreed to hire an independent animal behaviorist, who found the pussycats “well cared-for, healthy, and content.” He also suggested the installation of a special fence to keep them on the museum’s one-acre grounds.

Michael Morawski, the CEO of Hemingway’s home (where he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and To Have and Have Not) said the museum has spent more than $250,000 on legal matters and the fence, in order to protect the cats and keep them as an integral part of Hemingway’s history. Morawski still questions the need for a special permit, and this is an issue that will more than likely be settled in court. With their new fence, the kitties are within the law and happier than ever.

Here’s to the determined people at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, for their dedication to upholding the legacy of one of our greatest writers.

And here’s to the gaggle of six-toed pussies, who can at last frolic happily and eat bugs in peace.

Story Source Yahoo News | Image Source The Pet Blog

September 26, 2008 | Filed Under Newsies | 7 Comments

The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.

But this much we do know: some have feathers, some have whiskers. Snarks sleep a lot, yet they are an ambitious lot -- with very little sense of humor. They love bathing-machines and tend to bring them wherever they go; they are also handy for striking a light. Snarks live on a far-off island, a place filled with chasms and crags, and are constantly on the lookout for Snark-hunters. Their mortal enemies are hope, care, thimbles and forks.