What's on Our Impulse Table?

1. Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother, by Sacha Goldberger.
Fashion photographer Sacha Goldberger engages his 93-year-old grandmother as his muse. She dresses as a jock, a ballerina, a chicken, and of course, as Super Mamika. Included are instructions are how to shrink a cape.

All I can think of is how long it took Mamika to dress in all those outfits.

2. Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown. Before their fight to the finish, before being raised by Obi-Wan Kenobi , there was Darth Vader and his son, 4-year-old Luke Skywalker. Together they can rule the galaxy, and then Luke can have a treat!

Buyers have their own predilections, and coincidentally, but Amie and Jason are both fond of all things Star Wars, so there was no way we weren't going to feature this. That said, I were the buyer, I still might give this a try, mostly because I'm guessing our Chronicle rep has seen all six movies. Guess how many I've seen? The answer is neither zero nor six, by the way.

3. Zombies Hate Stuff, by Greg Stones. Among other things, zombies hate nudity, Martians, kittens and mimes. Here's a website with Greg Stones's paintings. It makes me think there is an impulse book in Stackmatic.

 I recently complained to a card vendor that there were not enough good zombie cards. But we are carrying the "If you were a zombie, I would totally let you eat my brains" card from Ghost Academy, so I am less complainy about the void.


4. On Ambivalence: The Problems and Pleasures of Having it Both Ways, by Kenneth Weisbrode. Ambivalence has been an issue since Eve and the apples. Eat it? Don't eat it? The author lives in Turkey, which has its good points and bad points. This book is published by MIT, which thinks in terms of impulse more than most university presses.

Case in point regarding MIT--they had that long-standing impulse staple, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and after losing the package to Hachette, they did their own 100 Things to Learn in Art School, and it wound up doing better than all the official spinoffs, at least at Boswell.