Generally Horrible Questions: Scott Montgomery

MysteryPeople's Scott Montgomery

Our first bookseller profile for 2012 is the mystery guru and driving force behind MysteryPeople, the store-within-a-store at Austin's BookPeople.  Scott reads lots and lots of mysteries, the tougher the better.  (Secretly we think he loves The Cat Who series, but he won't cop to it.)  Let's ask him a bunch of questions and see if we can make the tough guy cry.

Generally Horrible Questions: Scott Montgomery

1.  How did you get into the bookselling business?
I was in LA's The Mystery Book Store so often I got mistaken for an employee. [That's funny--Liz is regularly mistaken for a Random House employee.]

2.  Favorite mystery/thriller of all time?

James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss. [...Yeah, we're not touching this one.]

3.  Three desert island books? 
Lonesome Dove, True Detective by Max Allan Collins, and HW Brands' great Theodore Roosevelt biography TR. All good, long books.

4.  What are you currently reading? 

I'm juggling four books--an involving thriller called The Dispatcher, James Carlos Blakes' engaging look at Missouri border guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson, The Wildwood Boys, The Professionals which is living up to its hype, and Elmore Leonard's Raylan.

5.  What is your favorite part of your job?

Money for nothing and your chicks for free...oh wait, that was Dire Straits cover band days. The friendships with the authors and customers. [Gianna claims to see Scott chatting up the ladies all the time.  They MAY be talking about books....]

6.  What books changed your life? 

Swag by Elmore Leonard, The Day The Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton, Reed Farrel Coleman's Walking The Perfect Square. [So...no Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb?]

7.  What is your second favorite bookstore? 

Murder By The Book in Houston. Like any good niche bookstore they're out there to promote the genre and not just sell stuff.

Scott with author
Reed Farrel Coleman

8.  What did you want to be when you grew up?

A veterinarian.  [Great! Someone can start administering Zorro's medications!]

9.  I have never read ______________ and I'm so ashamed.

Jackie Collins.

10. The most important question on the list: Liz or Gianna?

Liz. It's that warm, open personality. [The correct answer is always Liz.]

11. Choose one: Craig LaMorte (Gianna’s nephew), Craig Johnson, Craig T. Nelson, Craigslist, Daniel Craig,  Craig Biggio or you know what the hell….Larry Craig?

Author Craig Johnson

Selling Craig Johnson's books pays my rent, so I'll so with him. That said, I'm a big fan of James Bond and Coach. [What, no love for Mr. Wide Stance?]

12. Which mystery series should we all be reading? 

Reed Farrel Coleman's Moe Prager series. I always suggest the first book, Walking The Perfect Square, when people say the genre can't be literary. It suppresses my instinct to yell or punch. 

13. Last good non-mystery book you’ve read?

HW Brands' American Dreams;  great look at the US from the atomic bomb to Obama.

14. Coolest author you’ve ever met? 

You two broads are trying to get me into trouble since many of my friends are authors. Outside of the writers I normally hang out with, George Pelecanos. He's the definition. The man writes, walks, and talks cool. [Scott is the only person who can call us 'broads' and not risk injury.]

15. If you could be any detective in any novel, who would it be? Please don’t say Stephanie Plum….

Since the best detective writers have haunted or wounded heroes, I'd be Richard Prather's Shell Scott. He was oddly good looking with a white buzz cut and piece of his ear cut, drove a cool car, always had a great quip, never seemed to want for cash, and slept with at least two great looking babes in under 180 pages. Don't know if I'd want to be him when the was naked on top of the hot air balloon. [There's a mental image that'll linger.....] 

Here's Scott recommending blog pal Taylor Stevens' newest book and upcoming MysteryPeople at BookPeople event.

Keep Austin Noir.

"The Best Book I Ever Received": Book Industry Folks Pick Their Holiday Favorites, Part 2

Gianna has gathered another group of holiday/gift-inspired book recommendations from some of our favorite people in the book business.

Karen Valby is the author of Welcome to Utopia, one of our favorite books of the year, and a generally awesome person.  Here's a trailer for her excellent book.


And here is Karen's pick:
On my 12th birthday, my mother gave me a hard-bound copy of Jay Leech’s How to Care for Your Horse. I loved horses--I lived for horses!--so at the time the present felt like a validation of not just my passion but my ability to be a good, capable friend and guardian to them. That year my mother’s bipolar disorder started chewing away at some crucial fibers a person needs to be a parent. As she unraveled, I dug deep into chapters like “Do You Really Want a Horse?” and “Diseases of the Horse” and “Common Unsoundnesses of the Horse.” I would read and study and practice and learn so that I could understand horses and their weaknesses and how to make them happy and healthy and whole. I like to imagine that my mother, who died six years later of a sucide, was already preparing me to take care of myself.

 

Sarah Bird – Author of The Yokota Officer’s Club, the upcoming novel The Gap Year, and a whole bunch of other great books. 

Oddly, Gianna, you are virtually the only person who has ever given me books (other than to blurb or send to my agent.) I guess I’m sort of the book giver in my circle. And I have loved every book you’ve given me, but The Frozen Thames still occupies a special spot in my heart. Maybe because it’s small, maybe because it’s beautiful, maybe because it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read, it has stayed with me in a way few others have. Gorgeous illustrations coupled with a gorgeously-written vignettes about the few dozen times in recorded history that the Thames River has frozen has kept this wonder of a book forever frozen in my memory. Thank you again for sharing it with me.

Scott Montgomery is the mystery expert at BookPeople in Austin, and the driving force behind the creation of the store's mystery specialty store-within-a-store, MysteryPeople.  Here's his pick: 

A first printing of The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. I already had one first that was signed by the man; I purchased it a week before he came to the store I worked at in LA, for four dollars. Even unsigned, it was worth around four hundred.  He told me he had forty copies of that printing when it came out. "I gave them away so I could nail stewardesses."

I started a friendship with this author I admired so much, watching him hold court at whatever bar we were at, talking about the soldiers, criminals, and actors he met, occasionally dispensing writing advice when nobody was looking. We had a mutual friend in Wyoming, writer Craig Johnson. Both would pick on one another and use me as messenger to send their jibes back and forth to one another. It was Craig's wife who called me over two years ago to tell me Jim had died. The news hit me like it was a family member.


That Christmas I got a package Craig. He said they were Wyoming/ Montana themed gifts- a fine cheroot cigarello, a hat band made by an inmate in the Wyoming penitentiary, and another first edition of The Last Good Kiss. I now have two very expensive bookends that remind me of a great hero, mentor, and friend that is the epitome of those larger-than-life characters you meet in this business. With its Hunter Thompson-esque look at the modern West and America in this tough, heartbreaking book, any edition is priceless.

The lovely one on the right is Gianna's mom.
And Gianna is the other one.

Margaret LaMorte - Proud (ish) parent of Gianna.  She may be the most fascinating woman on earth...I mean, she's to blame for Gianna. 

 

The best book I have ever been given is Janet Evanovich’s One For the Money. It was the first book that truly made me laugh out loud. I would read it in the break room at work and my coworkers would come in and ask what the heck I was reading, they thought I was crazy. [No comment upon Gianna's mom's sanity.] We had a little group of people and we would all share the Stephanie Plum books – it was a great little group and a lot of fun. I have many ideas for the movie series but I have yet to have a call from a single Hollywood producer asking my opinion.


Gianna

My choice is pretty low brow – but the thing is, I don’t really get very many books as gifts; keep that in your judgmental mind! Okay, the best book I have ever been given was Hollywood Babylon (thanks Mom!) – I guess I was like… 11 or 12, certainly not age appropriate, what with the Fatty Arbuckle rape trial and the graphic photos of Jayne Mansfield’s car accident, not to mention the Lana Turner drama and Sharon Tate murder. Now that I am thinking of it – it’s the earliest form of TMZ. However you have to understand my obsession with Hollywood – I read every biography of every Hollywood celeb I could get my hands on. I know that this book is … oh boy… sleazy…but I just loved it and would read and re-read it all the time. I don’t know what happened to it – I can’t imagine that I got rid of it, it must have been stolen or tossed out by my girlfriend who had the sense to be embarrassed for me. Don’t fear…it’s still in print as all classics remain (although as a mass market, not a big hardcover).