Putting Words to Passion

One of the nice things about going to a bookstore is that you might walk in on an event and be instantly enthralled.

That happened on Tuesday, as my wife went down to Louisville to visit with her aged parents* and to watch a concert our youngest played in. If I left after work I might have been able to make it if I didn't have traffic and I didn't get pulled over for speeding, but I figured I'd better not risk it.** Since my wife was spending the night down there I decided to visit the bookstore. 

The moment I walked through the doors I knew something was up; a huge crowd had assembled to my right with a speaker at the podium.

"What's going on?" I asked one of the booksellers.

"It's an author signing."

Then I noticed the big poster next to the author:

From Joseph-Beth's Facebook page (and Hanif Abdurraqib).

I'd heard about that book before, but I couldn't exactly remember where. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "The basketball guy."

"Yeah, the basketball guy," the bookseller confirmed. "Go over and listen!"

If on the surface the book was about basketball, considering it was broken into sections about pre-game, the various quarters, time outs, and whatnot, the book was not strictly about basketball itself. It was more a set of essays about life and family and friendship, mixed in with poetry.

But hearing Hanif speak, and listening to him read sections of the book... Holy crap, can that man write. 

It was an otherworldly experience when Hanif read, whether it was opining on when he thought Michael Jordan was at his coolest --the 1985 slam dunk contest-- or relating the story when a friend of his asked him to cut her hair off. However, what charmed me the most was when he was simply discussing things with the audience, about how the first line of this book came to him in a "Boogie Nights"-esque way, or how he'd read Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron in his youth.

"Wow, he's amazing," I said to another bookseller, who was standing nearby, also listening.

"Yeah, he's good," he replied.

"Yeah, if I had only a quarter of his talent... Just, wow."

The bookseller told me they were really pleased with the turnout, and given that Hanif's book tour was only to a handful of locations --Ann Arbor, Michigan, was next-- I think that Hanif knew his audience. 

Hanif also had high praise for his editor, and he hammered home how vital he believed editors were to the creative process. I can't remember the last time I heard an author at a signing give so much praise to their editor in an unprompted manner, and it felt so refreshing for Hanif to give some love to that often overlooked person in publishing.

It was a ticketed event, so I'd have had to have bought a ticket --which included a copy of the book-- for him to sign, but that's fine. I can go back another time and grab a copy of the book. In the meantime, I picked up another one of his books, a collection of essays on music and pop culture, to tide me over.

***

Speaking of things to tide me over...

I asked my questing buddy, a voracious reader in her own right, what I ought to be looking out for. 

"'When the Moon Hatched,' by Sarah Parker," she replied. She'd apparently had her eye on it for quite a while.

Although part of the store was taken up by the event with Hanif, I managed to find it in the SF&F section.

There were quite a few copies there,
which is a pretty good sign.

"It's pretty thick," I told her later.

"How many pages is it?" she asked.

I thumbed through the book to the end. "690 pages."

"OOOO...."

*They're both in their 90s and are still kicking.

**I much prefer the weekend concerts, which I can make more easily. That being said, my time away from home the past couple of weeks kept me from taking the afternoon off to go on down as well. Even then, I would have had to come back that evening because my wife was intent on staying the night anyway. Luckily, my wife informed me that I'd already heard the music they played at a previous concert I attended.