McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: bookstores (Page 71 of 107)

A Dickens of a Day…

August 24, 2013 /

The lady came back to the checkout counter and glanced at her companion, then looked me straight in the eye and said, “Tell her about William Wallace.”

Smack me. What?

Do I have a forehead tattoo? History Geek? Maybe inked in Old English Script?

Alas – the gauntlet was thrown down.

“Do you have a couple of hours?” I asked the companion, then gave the four-minute synopsis of the Scottish legend who gathered the always-feuding clan families together long enough to defeat the British in 1297.

I wasn’t around back then, but it is known as the Battle of Stirling Bridge. You’ve guessed by now that she had me pegged correctly. Truth is – I am a bit of a history nut.

But – what came over that woman to suddenly demand a medieval dissertation of me? We had not been talking about Scotland, bagpipes, broadswords, or even history. Well, I did mention the year 1847 when I was showing her the date on an antique copy of The Pickwick Papers.

Maybe I’ve the late afternoon scent of a kilted Highlander. I’ll hit the deodorant stick after I rub off that head-tattoo.

Not a historic day, here in the Rose District, but it has been somewhat history-oriented. Sold a copy of Beowulf. George Orwell. Fahrenheit 451.

The nice lady who pressed me for a lecture on the Old World had just purchased an illustrated edition of Oliver Twist. Of course, a good day is made even better when a copy of Dickens goes home with its new family. Honestly, that lady was after my heart: she asked about the book because of the George Cruikshank illustrations.

Dickens went through several artists during the course of his writing career, but his books were loaded with drawings, a fact that nearly shot me down in freshman English. We were reading a Tale of Two Cities. (In truth, the rest of the class was reading the assigned work.)

I wasn’t reading. Not a bit.

Mike Green – my aspiring artist friend – and I were too busy drawing freehand copies of the wonderful Hablot Knight Browne illustrations. It was a competitive thing. A sketcher’s version of a footrace. We’d both begin the hour with a blank piece of paper and a Parker brand ink pen, then before the hour was up, we’d pass the finished drawings around in secret for our fellow students to grade. (Click on the image for a better look at Browne’s skill. It’s an illustration from Tale of Two Cities of the sort we plagiarized during class.)

Some days Mike had the better drawing. Other times, I got the nod. Neither of us got the plot of the Tale, since we hadn’t read a thing beyond the captions accompanying the illustrations.

I’m ashamed to say it was years and years later when I finally sat down with Charles Dickens and he became my best friend. At least, he became my best dead literary friend. And Oliver Twist is a favorite acquaintance – especially the George Cruikshank illustrated version.

There’s a copy over there waiting for its new family.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

Remembering Tulsa’s KAKC Radio.

August 21, 2013 /

They called it THE BIG 97 and it’s fun to remember just how big it really was. KAKC was at the top of the hill when AM radio was still king in Tulsa, and the images in Steve Clem’s new book are reminders of the impact of radio and the excitement created by the deejays working the shifts.

Pretty straightforward title: Tulsa’s KAKC Radio: The Big 97.

Some of you will say, Wait a Minute! KAKC was at 1300. True, but that change came later and is covered in Clem’s book. In fact, a lot of territory is covered but easily digested in the photo-heavy format of Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series. (Shameless plug: Arcadia was the publisher of my little book on McAlester and Pittsburg County, Oklahoma.)

When I was a yoot in my yoot-full days, I relocated to Tulsa in hopes of securing the easy life of riches and fame by playing music. Got an apartment. Got a day job building bicycles, working next to KOTV alum Jim Kudlacek. Scoped out places where the band could play – there were plenty of spots back then.

Bang!

The band broke up. There were several reasons, but the effect was the same. I was in a six-month lease and paying rent by assembling Schwinn Continentals.

It was KAKC on the radio when I drove to work. KAKC on the drive home. Mike McCarthy, the Morning Mouth. Scooter B. Segraves. I sold the Chevy van I’d needed to haul the band’s equipment around and bought a Triumph Spitfire. It was brilliant red and so low to the ground that I could only pick up KAKC in certain parts of town. Linda Ronstadt and “You’re No Good” coming out of the tiny little speaker.

I was living large on minimum wage.

My car in high school was tuned to KOMA in Oklahoma City and I constantly mimicked a fellow named Jim St. John, who worked afternoons, if I remember right. Between my practiced impression of him, my hours listening to the KAKC crew, and the broadcasting-insider stories of Sir Kudlacek, I landed myself a desk at a broadcasting school and a twenty year career in radio and television.

Never did get rich or famous. Looking over the KAKC book reminded me how it was easy to spend all that time doing that kind of work. It was fun. Later, it wasn’t as much.

Things changed. And not just KAKC’s frequency jump from the Big 97. There is still fun in the media, to be sure. It’s just a different level than the times depicted in the pages of Tulsa’s KAKC Radio.

Underneath those rock-and-roller-hairstyles are plenty of smiling faces, from the first image in the book to the final picture – a snapshot of the author with Scooter Segraves. Mr. Clem has captured the excitement that filled that era in Tulsa, when radio was a part of people’s everyday lives with music and concerts and contests.

And smiles.

It’s a fun book, too, for media fans and former KAKC listeners. Makes me want another low-riding British sportscar.

Probably couldn’t get into it.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow, OK!

Catching the 3:10 to Yuma and points Beyond.

August 20, 2013 /

When I finished the last page, I started to shut the book, but – out of curiosity – turned to the copyright page. I couldn’t believe it.

1969.

If not for a reference to the price of a house in Detroit and Tigers’ pitcher Denny McLain the story could have been written this week. Well… more than likely there were other references, but certainly nothing jarring. I remembered McLain on the mound back in the day so that stuck out as a little dated. There are plenty of books that don’t hold up so well over time.

The Big Bounce was filmed in 2004 and hopefully Elmore Leonard got a vacation out of it. His novel was set in his longtime hometown of Detroit but they set the movie in Hawaii. Probably a party-set thing for actors Morgan Freeman and Owen Wilson. There were a number of other areas that departed from the book and I’m guessing that’s why the film has a 16%-positive rating on a review website.

I thought the novel was pretty good.

In the shop here, you’ll have to look in three separate locations to find all the titles by Elmore Leonard, but – in this particular case – it isn’t due to my disorganization. It’s more a reflection on the diversity of Mr. Leonard’s writing.

Many of his stories are recognizable as successful films. (26 of his works have been adapted for movies and television.) Most of his works are in the mystery section. 3:10 to Yuma and others like it are over among the Westerns. That title has been filmed twice, with the latest version starring Russell Crowe pulling over 80% on the critics rating scale (on Rotten Tomatoes site). They stuck pretty close to the Leonard version.

For a guy actively writing for more than half-a-century, Mr. Leonard never lost his sense of urgency. At age 84, he was working on a new novel that would have incorporated the main character of the F/X network program Justified. The show is based on a couple of Elmore Leonard stories, so he would have been borrowing his own character back.

His son Peter says Mr Leonard never recovered from a stroke suffered a little over three weeks ago and lost his battle earlier today.

With titles like Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Freaky Deaky, the prolific author will live on – a timeless legacy of the Dickens of Detroit.

RIP.

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