Newtonville Books Community Blog

So I’m a huge fan of The Smiths — they’ve provided the soundtrack to the last ten years of my life more or less — and in the process of some routine shelving in the past few weeks, I’ve come across a surprising number of books with Smiths’ song titles as their title. This led me to do some research, and it turns out there are a ton of books that borrow Smiths’ song titles. Some are out of print, and some are about Morrissey or The Smiths, but here’s a list of the ones I found — let me know what I missed!

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before by David Yoo

Meat is Murder!: New Edition: An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture by Mikita Brottman (I’m not making this up)

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes

I Know It’s Over by C.K. Kelly Martin

Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by Andre Jordan

Girl Afraid by Rick Remender, Eric Nguyen, and Joelle Comtois

Hand in Glove by Robert Goddard

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers (I know it’s missing “Bigger than Others” but it’s close enough)

Hang the DJ by Angus Cargill

Please stop by the store for our limited number of signed editions of Eating Animals,  and some of Jonathan Safran Foer’s other books.

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Louis Auchincloss, a Wall Street lawyer from a prominent old New York family who became a durable and prolific chronicler of Manhattan’s old-money elite, died on Tuesday night in Manhattan. He was 92.

His death, at Lenox Hill Hospital, was caused by complications of a stroke, his son Andrew said. Mr. Auchincloss lived on the Upper East Side.

Although he practiced law full time until 1987, Mr. Auchincloss published more than 60 books of fiction, biography and literary criticism in a writing career of more than a half-century. He was best known for his dozens and dozens of novels about what he called the “comfortable” world, which in the 1930s meant “an apartment or brownstone in town, a house in the country, having five or six maids, two or three cars, several clubs and one’s children in private schools.”

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My heart breaks a little today to learn of the death of historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn.  Zinn died of a heart attack yesterday in California, he was 89.  I don’t think its hyberbole to say that for myself, and many of my friends, A People’s History of the United States was a life changing book.  I had seen him speak several times, the last was just a few years ago, and he was still so inspirational and full of energy.  I’m sure there will be many remembrances of him forthcoming, most more eloquent than mine, but I’d just like to say he was a great American, and will be greatly missed.

My staff pick this month is The Heretic’s Daughter. I read this because, aside from mystery, I would say historical fiction is my next favorite genre of book! I was thinking this would be a book about the Salem witch trials, another topic that has always interested me, but it is so much more than that. It is about family and being true to yourself and what you sometimes need to sacrifice to survive in a world where the whims of a few girls can ruin so many lives. I haven’t cried while reading a book in a while – but this one did it – and that is why I am making it this month’s staff pick!

A recent review in the New York Times has sparked some local interest here in Newton. “Ransom”, by David Malouf, dives into the final days of the Trojan War with new twists and dynamic prose. Already receiving stellar reviews, acknowledging the novel as not just a book about war- but also soaring with engaging character reflections and language. I’m looking forward to picking up this epic undertaking.

“The Homeric epic opens in medias res, already in the 10th year of the Trojan War, and it draws toward its suspenseful close with one of the most brilliant and counterintuitive epi­sodes in all of ancient literature, Priam’s stupendously dangerous journey to the heart of the Greek camp to ransom the corpse of his son Hector from the Trojans’ implacable enemy, Achilles.” To read more, click here.