Alexander Papoulias. Bookseller.
Though a passive grazer by nature, I will, from time to time devour.
The best thing reading can do besides teach me something is to surprise me, make me
feel wonder.
As Constantinople grew into the capital of the Roman Empire in the first centuries A.D., a marshy backwater rose to be the new seat of power in the West. Though not a major modern city, Ravenna, on Italy’s Adriatic coast boasts eight UNESCO World Heritage sites and a concentration of mosaic art to rival any collection in the world. This is a vibrant, lucid history about a chaotic period of reinvention and renewal that reads like a novel thanks to Judith Herrin’s gift for drawing human stories out of historical records. --Alex
Greece’s Mani region is the wild, isolated, not-exactly-Europe end of the continent – long home to pirates and clans bent on vendetta. Fermor, a kind of roguish Indiana Jones type adventurer braved scorching sun, rocky landscapes, bandits, and sullen donkeys for this one of a kind travel story. A page-turning reminder of the joy of curiosity and that you never need a reason to go exploring. Why? Because it’s there. --Alex
Poe’s influence on American literature cannot be understated. He is known, of course, as an originator and master of horror, but Poe essentially invented the detective story, wrote literary criticism, and was a mighty fine poet to boot. His elegant Victorian prose sounds like a throwback today – a gentle reminder to slow down and enjoy reading beautiful words. Plagued by fears he’d been plagiarized during his life and brief career, Poe is today perhaps one of America’s most imitated authors. --Alex
Walking the landscape to explore the innerscape of the conscious human soul
Iyer’s touch is so light this book will sneak up and stun you with its power. Here is an antidote to our modern hustle crisis, a calm clear-eyed appraisal, and a lucid whisper of hope in a world full of shouting. An outpouring of beauty, this essay exists outside of genre as its own kind of purely human literature. Read it to be refreshed – this is detox for your soul. --Alex
My vision of the final human future is an effort to exteriorize the soul and interiorize the body, so that the exterior soul will exist as a superconducting lens of translinguistic matter generated out of the body of each of us at a critical juncture at our psychedelic bar mitzvah
Poetic verbal anarchy like this abounds in these collected essays and lectures from a singular voice in the American counterculture. McKenna was a visionary, a jester, a psychonaut, and a truth teller whose prose explorations of innerspace will set your mind on fire. --Alex
A laugh-out-loud crook caper and a reluctant hero’s journey in the nexus of American weirdness. Welcome to Florida.
Detective Inspector Ray Lennox of the Edinburgh police is on R&R in Miami – recovering from a catastrophic nervous breakdown and professional humiliation. All it takes is one nasty fight with his wife and Ray ditches his Prozac for vodka and a Scarface-sized pile of cocaine. An odyssey of menace, violence, and manipulation follows. In the middle of it all an innocent child needs a savior. Could it be Ray? --Alex
Intimate and immediate - Jones brings ancient worlds into focus in prose that continually surprises and delights. This one book touched off a long-dormant fascination with history that had been muted for me by years of classrooms and textbooks. Our
ancestors were bizarre, and they thought bizarre things. Lots of these bizarre things became the framework for what we call Western Civilization - if you’ve ever found yourself looking around, wondering “How did this happen?” Crusaders is an edifying and un-put-downable place to start your research.-Alex
Not available
The history presented here reveals itself like a Russian Doll - an analog of the layering and revision that make up the historical process itself. Analogia proposes to trace the emergence of digital technology, and opens upon a universe of Navajo Code-Talkers, a Russian Tzar, a German polymath genius, canoe-making, and particle physics. This is
an original, kaleidoscopic, even eccentric approach to history that is as broad as Dyson’s mind, and reveals connections few else would have the imagination to see.
-Alex
We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly, and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness.
This simple idea serves as the touchpoint for Wright’s fascinating look into the benefits and efficacy of Buddhist meditative practice. Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience are shedding light on why and how meditation has measurable benefits for mood, health, and focus. Buddhist primary texts aren’t often thrilling page-turners, making this the perfect primer for the curious modern human.
-Alex
So much more than an account of the compiled details of murder and detective work. IBGITD is a powerful memoir about obsession and the complex of emotions that drive it. Every fan of True Crime must eventually recon with the meaning and effect of being compelled to explore the dark corners of the human heart - McNamara pulls the curtain back on the psychology and evolution of fixation to reveal something far deeper than morbid curiosity. Atmospheric and evocative of the California suburbs - you can hear the bat-crack of a little league game and smell lawnmower exhaust on the breeze.
-Alex
The year is 1854. Behold: a ship full of secrets and violent men pushes further into the Arctic ice than any have gone before in search of whales. This is a brutal meditation on darkness and the impossibility of redemption. Shakespearean in scale and as desolate as a Cormac McCarthy novel, North Water opens inwardly like a series of doors,
revealing ever darkening shadows, never-ending. The story of the doomed whaler, the Volunteer, is Dante’s Inferno upside-down - courage and savagery play out in a silent sea of ice.-Alex
Taste of blood and bone in the mouth
Bristle of wet fur in the cold desert air.
Smell of taco trucks and diesel
floating on the Santa Ana wind.Steam rises from a fresh kill.
Ambitious, assured storytelling that doesn’t flinch, Sharp Teeth is a novel written in verse that cuts like a knife. Or a fang. Rival packs of Lycanthropes prowl the streets of modern Los Angeles. A down-and-out dogcatcher senses strange, unseen forces at work in the valley below. Meat and romance are in the air.
-Alex