A BOOKSHOP wears a ruddy glow in the holiday season. The stock is new, and the jackets attractively giddy; the classics in tooled leather and gold have come out of hiding; the sedate biographies for sedate uncles, the Court memoirs for Cousin Elsie, and the best sellers with their vaguely familiar titles (Let me see — have n’t you a novel called Enchanter’ s Nightshirt?) are easy to find.
It might be appropriate, then, for me to say some words in praise of Odd Volumes. I mean just that — books that do not conform, books that strike off on independent paths of their own. The titles I mention will not suit every palate, but they may reward those who read with a difference.
The Running of the Deer,by Dan Wickenden (Morrow, $2.50). Christmas holidays in a cheery, hard-up American family. A refreshing story.
Famine,by Liam O’Flaherty (Random House, $2.50). This is a novel of Ireland as it was in the potato famine of 1845 — a narrative whose gloom is relieved by tender passages, an etching in black and white, not easily forgotten.
Brother Petroc’s Return (Little, Brown, $1.75). A miracle story by a Dominican nun whose initials are S. M. C. Agnes Repplier says, ‘After the first gasp, nothing marred its perfection.‘
Their Eyes Were Watching God,by Zora N. Hurston (Lippincott, $2.00). The talk and life of a Negro community. This novelist has promise.
When I Lived in Salem, 1822-1866 (Stephen Daye Press, $2.50). Salem’s golden age in the delightful reminiscences of Caroline Howard King.
A Song-Catcher in Southern Mountains (Columbia University Press, $4.50). Some 600 folk songs and ballads (with music) ‘caught’ by Dorothy Scarborough.
Phudd Hill (Messner, $2.00). Thoreau would have enjoyed these Yankee essays of Alan Devoe for their love of nature and their repudiation of city life.
