Chin Music Press

Reviewed by David Kowalsky

Every year there are a few debut novels with Japan-related themes. I wrote a short review on this year’s If You
Follow Me (Harper Perennial) by Malena Watrous for this blog, but also deserving attention from last year is Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s Picking Bones From Ash (Graywolf).

Picking Bones starts out as a 1950s coming-of-age story set in a small mountain town in Japan. Eleven-year-old Satomi narrates about living as an only child with her unmarried mother, who alone runs a small izakaya.

Satomi’s talent at playing the piano leads her to attend high school and college away from home. After graduating from college, she cannot continue to get the kind of instruction she needs within Japan to launch a career performing for international audiences, so she auditions and gets accepted to continue her training at a school in Paris. There she meets Timothy, an American courier for a antique collector in San Francisco, and both Hitomi’s career path and this book go in a very different direction.

While skipping out on her piano studies for a trip to Japan with Timothy, Hitomi hears the news that her mother died a month earlier. She was so late to find out by not being back in Paris when the news arrived by post. Her mother’s body was already cremated (here we understand where the book’s title comes from), but Hitomi is in Japan just in time to attend her mother’s forty-nine day memorial. During the weekend of the memorial, Hitomi meets an Englishman named Franςois, who is in Japan studying to be an anthropologist.

The book soon jumps ahead from the late 1960s in Japan to San Francisco in the 1980s with Rumi, the daughter of Franςois and Satomi, now as the narrator. Learning the ins and outs of the Asian antique business as she works for her father, it isn’t long before she becomes a gifted authenticator of antiques thanks largely due to her own rather unusual talent of being able to hear the stories of inanimate objects. If that is not already strange enough, Rumi starts hearing a ghost, who she believes to be her mother (whom she always assumed was deceased) calling her to Japan.

Picking Bones again heads back in time, picking up where it left off earlier with Satomi as the narrator as she travels with Timothy in Japan. It is not as confusing as it may sound, but the final part of the book is told in separate parts by both Rumi and Satomi, back in Japan, now in the early 1990s. There is the inevitable merging of the two story lines, but I won’t write as to not give away what happens.

Picking Bones From Ash is an enjoyable book to read on many different levels. It changes directions out of the nice coming-of-age story into something much more complex; it skillfully interweaves the stories of three generations of women, and finally, it blends a mystery and ghost story into one overall highly recommended debut novel.

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…Buddy Zooka, that is.

Today, Bookslut launched its 99th edition with a brilliant round-up of “Southbound and Down” books for young adults. Including our very own tale of zany French Quarter antics and contemplative environmental awakening, reviewer Colleen Mondor shows us her take on recent books taking place in southern locales with Buddy joining in as the Gulf Coast delegate.

Ms. Mondor hails author Tracey Tangerine’s debut novel as “utterly original” and “a very charming novel with an element of sweetness tempered by humor and occasional silliness.”

“This book is a wake-up call about the environment. But it never preaches or becomes didactic, and Tangerine clearly is more determined to paint an accurate picture of her home city’s quirkiness than anything else.” “(She) successfully walks the line of creating a character who both exemplifies New Orleans while not dissolving into parody.”

Speaking to the book’s vintage-inspired design: “To say that Buddy Zooka will stand out on the shelves is an understatement, and further proof of just what an indie press has to offer that the big publishers (so fond of their black and purple photo illustrated covers) have yet to embrace.”

Thank you! We’re very flattered and glad that you enjoyed reading Buddy Zooka as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.

Find Bookslut’s full review here. Also, check out Ms. Mondor’s feature on the post-Katrina angle of the University of New Orleans Press for some other great picks.

Buddy Zooka is available through our online store and through fine booksellers and wholesalers everywhere.

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By Jessica Sattell

Courtesy of Anthropologie.com

How much literature do you see in retail outlets beyond bookstores? Lots, with Penguin’s new wave of book design taking hints from smaller presses.

In addition to my work with Chin Music Press and other fine independent publishers, I lead a second part-time life as a shopgirl at an upscale boutique in Seattle’s Japantown. Besides books and paper of all kinds, my other passion is scouting store design and opportunities for both Chin Music Press and my little shop to sell beautiful papergoods, clothing, and antiques. I constantly scour local sources as well as the grand world wide web to find new talents and creative artists. Over the past year, I’ve noticed a gentle swing towards larger publishers catching on to something that Chin Music has been dedicated to since its beginning: making beautiful books at a very affordable price.

Recently, a series of tomes by Penguin Books are the darling of design blogs and mainstream publications alike and are steady sellers in both big box book and lifestyle stores. Penguin has a long and treasured history of a dedication to simple yet incredibly desirable book design, and they’ve made the jump to affordable hardbacks with their cleverly designed Hardcover Classics series. Curated by renowned designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, at an accessible ($20) price point you can own your very own copy of Jane Austen’s Emma dotted with proper parlor chairs, or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island lush with palms and parrots. Touted as “striking new editions of literature’s most beloved books to cherish, collect, and pass on,” the books feature stamped linen covers, colored endpapers, and ribbon markers. In a stack, they’re visually striking, and in one’s hands they feel wonderful. They harken back to the literary curio collections of old with a vintage feel, intended to last for decades.

The line has proven very popular for booksellers everywhere, and also for international retail chains such as Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, who incorporate the books into their artsy, quirky lifestyle aesthetic aimed at a demographic both highly educated and highly discerning. They’re also popping up at smaller, more thematic home and clothing boutiques as marketed lifestyle accents. With Penguin’s shift towards a re-thinking in book design looking to decades past, breathing new life into classics (and reflecting it in a visual presentation taking cues from the past but updated with modern sensibilities) has proven a refreshing approach to an industry still caught up in pinching pennies and sacrificing product quality.

Although Penguin’s project feels progressive in 2010, Chin Music Press has been doing this from its beginning in 2002. Have you seen Kuhaku, with its woven-in bookmark and four-color artwork? How about the foil-stamped cover of Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans? It looks like the big guys are taking the hint from the smaller presses, and the widespread public is catching on to what books can (and should) become.

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