Shelf Awareness for Friday, August 24, 2018


William Morrow & Company: Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Dial Press: Within Arm's Reach by Ann Napolitano

Soho Crime: Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime (Miss Sharp Investigates) by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang

Shadow Mountain: Millie (Best Friends Dog Tales) by McCall Hoyle, illustrated by Kevin Keele

Granta Books: Granta 167: Extraction by Thomas Meaney

Quill Tree Books: Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

News

Phinney Books Owner Opening New Seattle Store

Tom Nissley, owner of Phinney Books, Seattle, Wash., is planning to open Madison Books in the city's Madison Park neighborhood by November, the Madison Park Times reported, adding that the store will be "filling a void felt in the neighborhood for more than a decade."

"We just get that there's this hunger for having this store right in the middle of everything," said Nissley, who has owned Phinney Books in Phinney Ridge since 2014.

Madison Books wasn't his idea, "but that of longtime resident Susan Moseley, who spent some time reaching out to potential partners before tapping Nissley," the Park Times noted.

"I think she's been trying to get a store in the neighborhood ever since Madison Park Books closed in 2005," he said. "I had not been looking to expand. Susan got in touch with us, and just the more that we talked about it, the more appealing it sounded."

Tom Nissley
James Crossley

James Crossley of Island Books on Mercer Island will manage the bookstore starting in October. "That's also part of what made it seem possible in my head," Nissley added.

Madison Books is the first new tenant for Constance Court, which the Losh family has been restoring and renovating for more than a year at 4114-4116 E. Madison St. "It's a really small space, that's going to be one of the challenges, so try to pack in as much as we can," Nissley said. "What we do down here (at Phinney Books) is keep it as general as we can."

A November opening is the goal because of the holiday season, though he observed: "I can even imagine doing some kind of popup if things weren't quite completed in the store."

Describing the decision as "an exciting development," the Seattle Review of Books wrote that "it's a testament to how much the neighborhood wants a bookshop. The venture is supported by lifetime resident Susan Moseley, who's been trying to bring a bookstore back for more than a decade. With James Crossley of Island Books stepping up to run the store, there's some exceptional talent in play--people who know who to do general interest curation, and know how to make a small space sing."


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Hot Summer by Elle Everhart


Peacock Books & Wildlife Art Open in Rochester, Minn.

David and Lisa Loucks Christenson have opened a new bookstore, Peacock Books & Wildlife Art, "in a dark wood-lined, 325-square-foot space on the west side of the Kahler Grand Hotel" in downtown Rochester, Minn. The Post-Bulletin reported that "things haven't gone exactly as planned. The original idea was to open the shop on September 1, but potential customers kept wandering in as they painted and prepared Peacock Books."

"So we decided we had to go ahead and open up (two weeks ago). We've been overwhelmingly busy since then," said Lisa Loucks Christenson. The store carries a wide selection of new books, from bestsellers to children's books to works by regional authors. "We've talked about this for some time as something we'd like to do."

Once fully stocked, the shop will have up to 6,000 books and also feature Christenson's framed wildlife photography, as well as fantasy artwork by her daughter Emme Christenson and "sweet creations of David Christenson, a well-known local fudge maker."

Peacock Books "is attracting a steady stream of visitors, who still lament the departure of Barnes & Noble from downtown," the Post-Bulletin wrote.


Viking: Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker


Kübler Named Taschen COO

Hans-Peter Kübler

Hans-Peter Kübler has been appointed COO of German illustrated book publisher Taschen, effective September 1. The Bookseller reported that Kübler will work closely with publisher Benedikt Taschen and managing director Marlene Taschen, "taking on responsibility for the logistics, distribution, finance, administration, controlling and IT divisions." Since 2017, he has been managing director of the German consulting firm Viamerca and previously held the same position at German wholesaler Libri.

"Hans-Peter Kübler is an expert in developing businesses and optimizing processes," said Benedikt Taschen. "We are very happy to have him join our team. I am confident that his long-term experience will significantly contribute to our continued international growth as Taschen moves into its fifth decade in business."


Frances Lincoln Ltd: Hare-Shaped Hole by John Dougherty, illustrated by Thomas Docherty


Barblan Joining AAP as V-P, Public Policy

Matthew Barblan

Effective August 27, Matthew Barblan is joining the Association of American Publishers as v-p, public policy. He is currently executive director of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) and Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University.

"Matt is a talented lawyer with a deep understanding of the many complex issues facing the publishing industry," said Maria Pallante, president and CEO of AAP. "His extensive experience in both policy and litigation will be a great asset to our mission and our members."

At CPIP and George Mason University, he has taught courses on copyright and trademark law and overseen a range of academic and policy programs addressing copyright's importance in fostering successful creative industries.


B&N CEO Hunt: Update

Readers have continued to make nominations and vote on possible new Barnes & Noble CEOs with book world experience. We're happy to see so many thoughtful and detailed responses. (Our survey is open until late next week. If you haven't already, make nominations and vote here. See the results here.)

Quite a few nominees are either B&N employees or have worked there in the past. Several work or have worked at the store level:

John Mesko, B&N store manager. "He cares about the people who work for him and has enough business savvy to know what to call and when to call it. Also started on the ground level in B&N and understands how stores actually function, not how the business thinks it should function."

Lita Weissman, who worked at the B&N at the Grove in Los Angeles for six years. "Lita loves bookselling, and the Grove's location means she's worked with a stunning range of authors and personalities--her even temperament in the face of some of the strange 'talent' requests is perfectly suited to leading B&N in the vanguard against Amazon and other threats."

Jill Giordano, store manager. "Totally capable, with great ideas that she's not allowed to use. She is the best manager I've had in my 15-plus years at B&N. If I had the money, I'd open a chain and have her and other 'real' booksellers run it in a second!"

Most strikingly, the winner of numerous nominations was Heidi Fairchild, a B&N bookseller in Georgia with more than 15 years of experience at the company. She was described variously as "a master merchandiser," "bookseller extraordinaire," "funny, passionate, nerdy," "a great leader and very organized," "loved by many on the B&N Facebook group." In addition: "She understands the needs of the business, the customers, and the employees." "Exactly the kind of person every current/former employee will follow to the ends of the Earth because she's been in the trenches, knows the business backward and forward, and still manages to be positive and cover all of her responsibilities despite the lack of payroll hours and trained employees."

Among current and past executives:

Tim Mantel, chief merchandising officer at B&N, one of the current acting CEOs. "Word on the street at one publisher is that Tim is very sharp, learning quickly and given time might be the guy to put B&N on solid footing for years to come. Sounds as if he has the backing of the B&N rank and file in NYC as well."

David Cully, president of Baker and Taylor, received several nominations. Among the comments: "He's been in the book business for most of his life and even worked at B&N previously [as president of B&N Distribution]. A brilliant and creative book person." "Bonus points that his wife [Lynn Cully] is publisher at Kensington, showing that the love of book runs through the blood of his family." "He knows publishing, is creative, innovative and can make change happen fast."

Mary Amicucci, former v-p, chief merchandising officer at B&N. "She has the non-book retail experience and book retail experience that will be needed and desired for the new CEO. She has worked with almost all of the B&N buying staff (many of whom I would nominate, but they are so good at doing what they do), she has energy and drive to make things happen."

Mark Bottini, former store operations executive at B&N. "Beloved by pretty much all booksellers he met and most people in corporate. Strong and intelligent leader, military discipline, and has spent his career in books with an obvious love for the product, people and business. Unlike so many corporate lifers, he takes a very active role in listening and incorporating feedback, suggestions and the like. And he is brilliant, always three steps ahead of everyone in the room."

Patrick Maloney, executive v-p, operations, Barnes & Noble Education and president, Barnes & Noble College. "A Mr. Riggio protege and a book lover. Decades of experience and B&N culture."

Jon Anderson, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Children's, received several nominations. "Knows B&N inside and out having worked there through the '80s and '90s. Understands both the retail and publishing sides of the business; has bookselling in his blood; has experience effectively running large operations; is both a numbers guys and a creative guy, and B&N badly needs both." "He began his career there and spent 17 years moving up from clerk to heading the chain's children's book buying. I can't think of anyone better."

More nominations on Monday.


G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
Be the first to have an advance copy!
The Night Ends with Fire
by K. X. Song
GLOW: Ace Books: The Night Ends with Fire by K. X. Song

A desperate young woman joins the army, embraces a sea dragon's magic, and falls for two very different princes in K. X. Song's adult fantasy debut, The Night Ends with Fire. This series-starter reimagines "The Ballad of Mulan" and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, re-casting Mulan not as a devoted daughter but as Meilin, a morally gray warrior. Anne Sowards, executive editor at Berkley, compares this "fast-paced, accessible, and incredibly readable" novel with The Poppy War, Iron Widow, and Daughter of the Moon Goddess, and praises the "fierce main character who fights to claim more from life than what her society allows women to have." With plenty of wuxia-style action and forbidden romance, Meilin's quest for power will be a hit with fans of the burgeoning romantasy genre. --Suzanne Krohn

(Ace, $30 hardcover, 336p., 9780593815724, July 2, 2024)

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#ShelfGLOW
Shelf vetted, publisher supported

Notes

'Must-Visit Independent Bookstores Around the World'

In featuring its picks for the "10 must-visit independent bookstores around the world," G Adventures wrote: "Do you love to read as much as you love to travel? According to a recent Pew Research Centre survey, the average American reads 12 books a year. Yet if that number seems low to you and independent bookstores are unequivocally your favorite places to shop, your biggest concern about international travel might be staying under the weight limit when you fly home with a suitcase full of books."

U.S. bookshops highlighted were Powell’s Books, Portland, Ore.; the Ripped Bodice, Los Angeles, Calif.; and Books Are Magic, Brooklyn, N.Y.


'Vast Brussels Bookstore Where Books & Dining Meet'

"Hungry for some new novels?" Cook & Book, a "vast bookstore in Brussels, might just be the place to go." Lonely Planet showcased the business that features "nine thematic bookshops spread over 1500 square-meters" (about 16,150 square feet) and is "a vast cultural hub to feed the body and soul. Each store is uniquely designed and has a dedicated dining experience to match."


Media and Movies

TV: The Little Drummer Girl

AMC has announced the premiere date for The Little Drummer Girl, a six-part miniseries based on the John le Carré novel. Deadline reported that the show will air over three consecutive nights beginning November 19 with a two-hour episode at 9 p.m.

The Little Drummer Girl, which stars Alexander Skarsgård as Becker, Michael Shannon as Kurtz and Florence Pugh as Charlie, "comes from the executive producers behind The Night Manager and marks the television debut of visionary Korean filmmaker Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden). The project is co-produced by the BBC, AMC and The Ink Factory, in partnership with 127 Wall," Deadline noted.


Movies: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Zoe Colletti (Annie) is attached as part of the ensemble cast of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the Guillermo Del Toro-produced film based on Alvin Schwartz's bestselling book, Deadline reported. Del Toro (Shape of Water) adapted the screenplay with Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman. Shooting is slated to begin this month.

Directed by André Øvredal, the film's producers also include Sean Daniel, Elizabeth Grave, Jason F. Brown and J. Miles Dale. Entertainment One and CBS Films are co-financing the project, with CBS Films distributing the feature in the U.S. via Lionsgate. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is expected to be released next year.



Books & Authors

Awards: Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Literary

Murray Rae, "a Dunedin-based architect who retrained as a theologian," won this year's NZ$10,000 (about US$6,640) Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Literary Award for Architecture and Theology: The Art of Place (Baylor University Press).

"Through Brutalism, Modernism and to today's shoddy constructions with the focus almost entirely on how much revenue can be obtained from increasingly ugly and depressing constructions, Rae states 'this is a crisis of the human habitat,' " said convener of judges Adonia Wylie. "Upon reading this book one can only regret that the sense of a harmonious, numinous and spiritually enhancing built environment has deserted us almost entirely. This is an extremely worthwhile, educating, uplifting and much needed literary accomplishment."


Reading with... Ada Limón

photo: Lucas Marquardt
Ada Limón is the author of The Carrying (Milkweed, August 14, 2018) and four other books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by the New York Times. Her other books include Lucky WreckThis Big Fake World and Sharks in the Rivers. She serves on the faculty of the Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer in Lexington, Ky.
 
On your nightstand now:
 
I travel so much that I often get homesick for my book-laden nightstand, but right now I'm home and savoring every stacked book. I am reading Southernmost by Silas House. Man, can he write a sentence. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes. I actually don't know how he just keeps getting better and better, but he does. He's an inspiration. I am almost done with Carrie Fountain's young adult novel I'm Not Missing, and I love the half-Mexican protagonist. Such a good book for young people.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:
 
At a very young age, I think it was Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I loved the idea of secret worlds, anything where another parallel universe of magical creatures lived. Especially a secret world that can be accessed by rage or loneliness. I loved the idea that magic existed, but we just didn't always notice it. Actually, let's be honest, I still love that idea. I continue to believe magic is real somewhere and we just have to find it. I felt the same way about C.S. Lewis's the Chronicles of Narnia. Some part of me is always opening closets and expecting another land to be on the other side.
 
Your top five authors:
 
This feels like a nearly impossible task. They are always changing. But I can tell you the authors I return to over and over when I feel as if I need to be re-lit all over again, turned on by language.
 
Lucille Clifton is someone who I re-read a great deal; her poems defy classification. She has such a keen and almost brutally observant eye, yet she manages to practice great empathy, connection and gratitude at the same time. Elizabeth Bishop was the first poet that I really loved. I discovered her work when I was 15, and I still think Geography III is near perfect. The patience she takes with each seemingly minor image as well as her secretive tendencies--both hiding the self and exposing it--have always amazed me.
 
It might seem cliché, but Pablo Neruda was an early influence, and I continue to turn toward him. It wasn't the love poems that I was first drawn to, but rather Ode to Common Things. I loved the idea of writing about the smallest, simplest, mundane objects and turning them into odes. Perhaps that goes back to my wish for real magic to exist. Since then I've been to all of his houses in Chile and even though, like any historical figure, he's problematic, I can't help but admire his absolute dedication to the strangeness of the world.
 
Larry Levis is another poet that I return to. His book Elegy is an essential book for me. He moves in a way that no other poet moves; his willingness to extend an image or a metaphor over numerous complex lines and truly map the wildness of the mind is extraordinary. Toni Morrison is another writer that I lean on when I want to be reminded of what brings me to language in the first place. I feel like I get lifted and schooled by every single sentence.
 
Book you've faked reading:
 
I think there was a time when I faked having read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'm sure it's a good book, but I was living in Brooklyn in 2000 and everyone was talking about it constantly. I think I just heard so much about it and was inundated with so much hipster hubbub that I secretly held a grudge against that book. I never picked it up. I'm sorry, Dave Eggers. I'll read it.
 
Book you're an evangelist for:
 
The book that I most likely have told people to read, or sent copies of, or taught, or mentioned in my own work is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. It's a book that really shifted the way I thought about my own relationship to nature and to the earth. But it's more than a book of indigenous wisdom or the power of plants, but a book that makes you look at the connectedness of all things. When I feel untethered and breathless, Braiding Sweetgrass reminds me that there is beauty here and that I can belong here. It's a hugely important book to me.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:
 
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. And the cover was right; it's amazing. I already had read pretty much everything Gaiman has written, but the cover intrigued me and I am notoriously drawn to watery images (Pisces Moon and all), so I had to have it as soon as I came across it.
 
Book you hid from your parents:
 
I am pretty sure that I hid Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus in my closet or under my bed. Erotica has always held a certain allure for me. It must be so hard to write good erotica, interesting erotica, without being clumsy or crude, and very early on Delta of Venus was a book I couldn't put down.
 
Book that changed your life:
 
I think Sharon Olds's The Dead and the Living was one of the first books of poems that made me want to really be a poet. Or made me believe that I could be a poet. Her voice, her courage, her sense of sight and self still ignite a large impulse in me to write when I pick it up. It was around the time that I was reading that book while working as a receptionist for King County Water and Land Resources Division in Seattle that I decided to attempt to take poems seriously and start to apply for graduate school. I'd apply between answering incoming calls, and read on my breaks in the lobby of the Seattle high rise. In the end, I went to NYU and had the extraordinary chance to study with Olds. A great honor. So, in a way, The Dead and the Living made me into poet.
 
Favorite line from a book:
 
"I had the idea that the world's so full of pain/ it must sometimes make a kind of singing,/ and that the sequence helps, as much as order helps--/ first an ego, and then pain, and then the singing." That's from Robert Hass's poem "Faint Music" in Sun Under Wood. I say it all the time to myself. It seems so true to me. I also think that's a way of understanding poetry.
 
Five books you'll never part with:
 
I have a signed copy of Stanley Kunitz's The Collected Poems. I have a confession: I rarely get my books signed. I never want to bother people. I see the long lines and the patient time they take with each person and I think I don't need or deserve their extra time. But that means I am left with very few signatures of people who have passed, and I wish I had been braver. So the book is very dear to me. I also have a first edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Questions of Travel that was given to me as a gift and I cherish it so. The Art of Losing is a gorgeous anthology on grief edited by Kevin Young and I cannot live without that book. My other favorite anthology is Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry. It's such a wide variety of voices and every page holds something new and exciting. The only book I ever stole: How Does a Poem Mean by John Ciardi. I was much too young to really grasp the book, but I stole it off my English teacher's shelf when I was 15 and never gave it back. Since then I've read it many times looking for language to describe why I love both reading and making poems. I am sorry I stole it, but hopefully she forgives me. I have used it only for good.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
 
Oh, that's tough, because with poems that's what we do. We read them over and over. Each time getting something new, something widening the eye. I suppose I'd love Alejandro Zambra's Multiple Choice again for the first time. I love what that book did to my brain. I had no idea what I was getting into and I just went with it and let the multiple-choice questions unfold without trying to "figure them out." That book is such a force and a pleasure.

Book Review

Review: The Incurable Romantic and Other Tales of Madness and Desire

The Incurable Romantic: And Other Tales of Madness and Desire by Frank Tallis (Basic Books, $27 hardcover, 304p., 9781541617551, September 18, 2018)

British clinical psychologist Frank Tallis (Lovesick: Love as a Mental Illness) explores the intersection between love and mental health with a compassionate look at some of the most challenging and interesting cases of his career.

In an instant, a meek, conventional woman becomes passionately obsessed with her dentist, and no power on earth can convince her that he does not reciprocate her feelings of almost spiritual connection. A wealthy married man spends his fortune romancing more than 3,000 prostitutes, then jilting them once they fall for him. An elderly widow misses her husband's presence so strongly that she begins to hallucinate his ghost. A man who visits prostitutes insists a demon possesses him and causes his behavior. Over the course of Tallis's career, he watches love change and even destroy lives, often in ways that might make little sense to the casual observer. He also includes episodes from his own life, such as the time he and his ex-wife lived in a rural village where a neighbor ran afoul of a messianic evangelist suffering psychotic delusions.

"Love is a great leveller," Tallis points out in a preface that provides background on the historical perception of lovesickness. He posits that although modern Western society no longer treats lovesickness as a serious condition, the act of falling in love can have long-lasting implications for mental health, particularly when it goes awry. Also the author of the Max Liebermann mystery series, Tallis knows how to create suspense, breaking up the cases into short doses. He splices the stories together with relevant pieces of the history of psychiatry, pausing to illuminate and reflect upon our contemporary attitudes toward maladies of the heart.

Although his material could easily lend itself to a more gossipy treatment, Tallis treats each story with the utmost seriousness, by turns empathetic towards his former patients and fascinated by the conditions and obsessions that plague them. Love may be a many-splendored thing, but it also has many faces, some of them holding sharp teeth. Though entertaining and written with wry good humor, The Incurable Romantic digs deeply into the emotion of each situation and makes a case that a human experience as impactful as love can carry deep consequences. Whether or not the study of lovesickness will come back into vogue in our time remains to be seen, but this accessible read will appeal to fans of light narrative nonfiction. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: Frank Tallis, a British clinical psychologist and mystery writer, chooses 11 of his most interesting cases to illustrate the link between romantic turmoil and mental health.


Deeper Understanding

Robert Gray: The Stories Alan Rabinowitz Could Tell

During the 1980s, I was working as an editor for a windsurfing trade magazine when I was dispatched, just before high season, to cover a World Cup tour event on the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. One night, I went out to a local café with another journalist and an intense photographer who'd just arrived that afternoon from Belize, where he'd spent an extensive amount of time in the jungle with a man named Alan Rabinowitz. He had so many stories to tell he was nearly breathless, and gradually an American zoologist I'd never heard of became a larger-than-life character in an adventure tale. As soon as I returned home, I read Rabinowitz's first book, Jaguar: One Man's Struggle to Establish the First Jaguar Preserve.

Everything is a story. Earlier this month, I was on vacation when Rabinowitz died. He was only 64 years old. Had I been working and aware of the news, I'd have written a Shelf Awareness obituary note to mark the passing of this explorer, wildlife conservationist and writer. But time passed before I finally learned of his death and somehow that prompted further exploration.

Who was Alan Rabinowitz?

His legacy may not be common knowledge, but it is epic in its way. The New York Times reported that Rabinowitz "established the world's first jaguar preserve, in Belize, and a vast tiger preserve in Myanmar. His radio telemetry research on the Asiatic leopard, Asian leopard cats and Asian civets at a wildlife sanctuary in Thailand helped determine how much space each species needed to live and reproduce and led to its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site.... In northern Myanmar, for example, he discovered a previously unknown species of deer, the leaf muntjac, and in the Himalayas he met the last known Mongoloid pygmies in the world, called the Taron."

Rabinowitz also co-founded Panthera, a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting the world's wild cat species. "He raised a lot of consciousness on behalf of wildlife, not just big cats," said George Schaller, the legendary--Peter Matthiessen was with him on the expedition that inspired The Snow Leopard--wildlife conservationist who originally invited Rabinowitz to study jaguars in Belize. "He made people realize that these are beautiful animals and that they, and their habitats, are threatened and you have to fight for them."

The Times also noted that during his life, Rabinowitz "became a prolific storyteller, describing his work in many scientific articles and books," including Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness; Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed; An Indomitable Beast: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar; and his children's book A Boy and a Jaguar.

This "prolific storyteller" was born with a debilitating stutter, and ultimately became a Stuttering Foundation spokesperson and board member. "Animals were the only things I could talk to as a child," he recalled. "Animals listened and let me pour my heart out. At some point in my youth I clearly remember realizing that animals were like me, even the most powerful ones I'd read about or seen on television--they had no voice, they were often misunderstood, and they wanted nothing more than to live their life as best they could apart from the world of people."

Of his 2014 children's picture book, A Boy and a Jaguar, Rabinowitz told NPR: "I wanted to go back inside and pull that child back out which has always been in there. But that child is a broken child, or at least a child who thought he was broken. And that was painful. I remember crying as I wrote this book. It's even painful now reading my own story because I never wished any young person to go through anything like that, that much pain."

This week I listened to Rabinowitz tell stories in a pair of old segments for NPR's The Moth Radio Hour. Artistic director Catherine Burns has said that one of her favorite Moth stories features him: "When people hear a story it makes you reflect on something in your own life and maybe gives you the courage to make the change you need to make. It's thrilling. Someone heard his story, quit her advertising job and moved to Africa to try and save baby gorillas. She's been doing that for the last 10 years."

I also listened to him share stories with Krista Tippett because On Being recently paid tribute by rebroadcasting a 2010 interview. Speaking of his cancer diagnosis, Rabinowitz had said: "I always thought I could fight everything. I really believed anything I wanted to do, I could overcome.... Now, just as I was starting to get a bit tired and actually considering slowing down, now I'm told that I have cancer. And what that's done is, that put away all thoughts of slowing down, all thoughts of being tired, and it's another wake-up call. Why me? Why not me? And why isn't it a good thing? Now I'll accomplish more. Now I will never, never wake up a day and sit back and thinking, 'This is enough.' All I ever do is think of the things that I haven't done yet and that still need doing. So it's a good thing."

And now he's gone. I keep thinking about that Guadeloupe café on a hot night three decades ago, drinking beer and listening to those Rabinowitz-fueled jaguar tales bursting from a photographer who'd only just begun to decompress. That's a story to remember.

--Robert Gray, contributing editor (Column archives at Fresh Eyes Now)

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